The Story of the Twice Failed Battlestar Galactica (1978): Lawsuits, Deaths & Controversies 

Blew my mind as a kid. I loved how they had Dirk Benedict react to it. I liked the A Team that much more just because they had Starbuck in it.

that was included in an episode set on the Universal Studios lot (2x10 "Steel"). The Cylon walking past with the Larson scanner going was Dirk's idea.

That scene always brings a smile any time I see it

@@MrChristopoop funny enough I was watching the Family Guy homage of The A Team the other night and they did that scene doing the opening credits

Same here!

Loved all three shows. Did you notice that of all the actors on the A-Team, only two were chosen to appear on ST TNG: Dwight Shultz as Reg Barclay, and Melinda Culea as Soren, a member of her androgenous (sp?) race?

Was the original BSG a failure? Not to those of us who grew up watching it.

Yes, the 80s. You just had to be there!

@@UToobUsername01 And I pity any fool who thinks he can walk around town with all that gold bling on him or her and not get mugged. IMHO, Mr. T is asking for trouble with all that gold bling draped on his neck and shoulders.

Yeah being a kid in the 80s was awesome.

Any kid who had the urge to place something in their mouth and then fire the missile is surely the type of child who ate paint chips. I had plenty of toys that fired things as a child and never once thought to myself, I think I wanna stick that thing in my mouth and fire the missiles

Just out of curiosity, is your friend still among the living in 2021 or did he earn his own Darwin Award in some other way?

@@lutherheggs451 I'm from the UK and had Britains diecast toy artilllery that shot plastic shells en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britains. Never did I consider doing that. I even had the original batman car that had the rocket launcher, the UFO interceptor with the huge rocket on the front & various others. Oh. And the Colonial Viper.

@@bryanbird1266 I think he's still around. Haven't talked to him in 30 years though

THIS! This is why we can't have nice things.

Yes.

That was definitely the best episode of that series.

..for one episode, yes. The rest of the episodes were still terrible and would not have sustained the show.

Damn right! Great times to be a kid who loved space ships and laser guns.

me three

Even though it was before Star Wars, Space 1999 is what got me hooked on Sci-Fi as a young one.

space:1999 another show i enjoy

Same!!!

Mine too. I did like their two part episodes like 'Gun on Ice Planet Zero'

He picked a bad day to stop sniffing glue. (Airplane joke)

The OTHER Battlestar...?

Hell yes. Bridges was awesome as Kane.

@@Dorelaxen I loved him. Kane was out of his FREAKING MIND and I LOVE him. And yes, him and the Pegasus are still out there.

Oh god! I loved Battlestar Galactica and BJ and the Bear!

I loved watching both of those shows! Speaking of chips… I also loved C.H.i.P.s Plus I loved watching the Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman.

And we went outside to play.

Your mum was very easy going, allowing you to do coke...

Ah, BJ and the Bear, starring Greg Evigan, a Chimpanzee or Orangutan, plus Claude Atkins as the resentful schmuck who chases after him for some reason.That's all I remember about that drama series.

I don't think so either. Each of them is distinguished by their plots and settings. Only the legal eagles at ABC and Universal thought so. Have they ever considered doing a focus group to ask the members whether they were confused between the two series? How about interviewing people on sidewalks: were they confused between the two series? I'm sure that either method would have told the C-suite execs the answer: No, we don't confuse the distinction between the two series.

As this video explained, Star Wars basically tried to act like they owned ALL sci-fi that was visual that was even remotely like Star Wars. It was a bonkers position.

The only way in which BSG could maybe be said to have "ripped off" SW is in the technology they used for the space battles. But the limits of technology at the time made it so that was the only way they could really pull anything like that off. That's why BSG ended up looking like something between SW and ESB (taking into account the limitations of TV budget), because that's how the technology advanced.

@@quigonkenny In that way it was only similar to studio execs, the people behind the purse strings who only saw the profits to be made.

It's been my experience that non-science fiction people cannot tell the difference between franchises! My cousin, for example, is a highly intelligent God-fearing lady whom I love dearly--but she just can NOT grasp the difference between Star Wars and Star Trek!

Damn that’s cool! RIP he was great

I have always that Richard Hatch was quite generous with his time.

@@merlin9943 yeh fun fact Richard I think evenbdonted hugh chunk of scfi vcinvdnt Spence resulduaks to I bdlive xhrties against domestic violence

bring the damn cylons to earth. bad mistake

@@zacharyjochumsen9677 You ok? Should I call an ambulance?

The Cylons were great bad guys

@@paulb4241 At your command!

So was seeing Kitt the Knight Rider car with that roving eye. That said, Kitt should have been doing something besides sitting on a road like he was on the Great Movie Ride at Universal Studios (CA). For example, Kitt could have been part of the stunt show with all those other cars, bikes, dynamite, fires, etc. But nope, Kitt had to sit all by himself like a lonely guy waiting for a dance on prom night.

I've read that the lawsuits were the reason why the hand blasters and balster rifles never had visible shots, just flashes of light from the barrels. On the other, hand that could have been used as an argument against being a copy of Star Wars. Not sure which it is, but I definitely recall that particular point of difference.

That’s rich considering how heavily Star Wars borrows from other properties.

Star wars took from Flash Gordon

About like Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin now, and their suits against SpaceX and complaint against NASA... OL J R :)

@@yoda908 And Dune and Akira Kurosawa too!

The other big issue is that the writing was just all over the place. Like Dan said, they were pumping out scripts as fast as they could, so there was no QC, and not even agreement on who the audience for the show was. So you'd have a serious adult storyline one week, and a ridiculous kids' show story about cowboy Cylons the next. It was incredibly uneven.

We saw that all the time from network TV. Big budget shows that are fairly popular that get canned because even if they make money... it's not enough return on investment. Thankfully networks like HBO really broke that cycle with developing and airing shows at a loss but then making it back on VHS/DVD/BluRay sales and syndication down the road. First airing time slots and ratings don't really mean a whole lot when your entire plan is to make back the money with years and years of exclusive syndication deals and dvd sales.... Traditional TV Networks were never that forward thinking.

They actually ran out of money before the first season was over.

As usual everything comes down to corporate and/or banking interests. Art and entertainment can't exist for their own sakes or for the human element that creates and thrives on them.

​@@jasonblalock4429 Nothing to do with the writing. That was fine. The problem was it cost too much to continue making with lower than expected ratings.

Well, he was only in the pilot movie...

He'd be alive today if he hadn't been obsessing so much over a girl at the time. Bros before hoes, my brothers...

It's an abomination isn't it!

I was ten or eleven, and I don't think I watched the whole thing. Going from interstellar combat to space kids playing Little League with superpowers and planting crops whilst singing about it was enough to ruin anyone's interest. I really only remember the final episode that dealt with the fate of Starbuck.

@@Corn_Pone_Flicks Galactica 1980 should be sent into a black hole

Me too bro. I had just turned 10 in September '78 when it premiered. I was gutted when it was canceled. Great memories of my youth.

I was humming it whilst watching this video ❤️

Absolutely... loved Stu Phillip's work on Buck Rogers as well! OL J R :)

One of the highlights of the reimagined BSG was when the original theme was brought back as the Colonial Anthem; still sends chills down my spine

@@HLR4th Totally agreed. I like that they held back using the old theme until they had a really good use for it, and then absolutely nailed it.

@@jasonblalock4429 They used it during the reboot miniseries as the theme for the TV talk show that Baltar was on also.

I saw it coming but I still laughed like an idiot

I was just going to comment the same

Same here!

L🤫L

I asked my parents the same thing. They said *NO!* I know my real billionaire parents accidentally left me in front of an orphanage in a rush to spend money.

I enjoyed the fact that when they both hit The SciFi channel the aired back to back.

Did they ever do toys like Star wars? I had the Viper ship, but I desperately wanted one of the laser pistols the Colonial Warriors used...

@@jimenycricket8431 There are resin replica props of the Colonial laser pistols available online from numerous sources. As well as tons of other replica props from DOZENS of old sci-fi shows.

@@johnmullholand2044 Awesome! Definitely have to look it up... they'll have to ship Down Under though. Thanks!

@@jimenycricket8431 Don't bother ordering from Doopydoos, though. I ordered a blaster from them about a year ago, and still no blaster, no response to emails, and I'm out $100.😠

@PODCAST - SørenCast Z it hasn’t changed much, a lot of people worried about a piece of cloth on their face!

@PODCAST - SørenCast Z Are you related to Dr. Z?

That kid, Dallas Egbert, was actually in one of my Dad's English classes when he was at MSU. Which is sort of funny and ironic, because I loved Dungeons and Dragons, as did my brother and to some extent, my twin sister. And my Mom of course, was horrified by it. Egbert's experience, as you might know, actually had very little to do with Dungeons and Dragons, though he did start some long-lasting rumors about MSU's steam tunnels.

My Satanist parents were disappointed that D&D was nothing but math and improvisation. 😏

Frazetta's requirement to retain control of his work was standard in his contracts by the early 1970s, since so much of his work in the 60s had been reused by publishers without his receiving a dime in compensation. It wasn't any kind of particular FY to Lucas & co., just business. His wife & business manager, Eleanor Frazetta, implemented the policy.

Serves him right! Another comeuppance for Baltar. At least Jonathan Harris plays somebody good--Lucifer--rather than the evil nutcase Dr. Zachary Smith from "Lost in Space".

Well, not really. While many of the hour-long episodes are forgettable, the two part episodes about Commander Cain, the ship of lights and Lost Planet of the Gods were essentially TV movies, and were all great.

It's all a circle of money. The people who make the money all fight each other for their size of their slice of the pie. I can't blame them. They have a right to fight that fight. They are the ones who invested the money to create this stuff in the first place. Then there are the fans. We are the ones who, collectively, repay the creators for their original investments and provide the profits which motivate the creators to create in the first place, and we want what we want. And everyone involved dances to the beat of the music we have all created. From a pure entertainment perspective, hell, my answer is "yes" to all of it. YES, I loves Star Wars as a seven year old kid seeing in in the theater (several times). YES, I loves Battlestar Galactica, watched every episode, own a copy of the series and had a Colonial Viper (WITH the missile). YES, being born in 1970, I loved my Star Trek Reruns after school and came down with a lifelong case of "the fever" because of Lt. Uhura. If only it were JUST about the entertainment, then we could live in a world where all of this could coexist peacefully. BUT...if it were JUST about the entertainment, no one would make any of it in the first place, as no one OWES me entertainment. If creators were somehow forced to create this stuff without the money...well...that would be slavery. And slavery is worse that the money dance that caused us all to land on "Galactica 1980." It's not worse by much...but it's a little worse.

Focus on the upside: this got us the absolutely incredible reboot, and Ron Moore being constrained by executives on Star Trek tng (“no permanent damage”) was part of his drive to do make it as realistic and grounded. Plus Richard Hatch finally got to come back!

@@davidlawrence8711 Well, that's debatable. I hated the reboot. It was potentially a good show, that's a matter of opinion. However, it wasn't "Battlestar Galactica". BSG was about a family of lovable Mormons in space going on adventures and saving the day. BSG reboot was a very different show, and should have been called something else. Just like Star Trek Picard is no true successor to TNG, irrespective of how good the show may or may not be.

Even worse were the studios' legal eagles, suing each other for copyright infringement, and then along came the suit by the parents against Mattel for making a hazardous toy that killed their kid.

I thought the same thing - the quote from his parents definitely seemed to suggest he could have been autistic.

I would ride my bike for 30 minutes to get to the only shop that sold the “Starlog” magazine... The death of the young boy was page 2 ( Editorial page) .. I still remember how sad that was, and the Editor stating at the end saying despite how much we love the show, it is... just a tv show.

People have always been crazy, the labels just change over time.

Eddie Sidell. Larson named the character of Col. Sydell in Galactica 1980 after him.

That is interesting. I've been researching the Galactica model herself for over 20 years while building my own replica and know (via Web communities) most of the stories and people involved with the miniatures. Thier acquisition has always been a bit murky but seemed to be legitimate. The models were sold a few years back in a highly publicised auction by Profiles in History for 1.8 million dollars. Our best intel suggests they were shipped to Japan where the trail runs cold. Surely Universal would have stepped in to claim the miniatures back if they were still considered stolen?

I heard it was buried with Atari’s ET game

Honestly I'm more of a fan of the raider Mark 1 from deadlock they took the ship and gave it some better lines

Yes. I loved the Cylon spacecraft, but I loved to watch the Vipers mop up the floor with the Cylon raiders!

@@philiphatfield5666 Of course I always rooted for the good guys, but the Viper is a somewhat ordinary looking spaceship if you ask me. Many fond memories of this show though. Didn't much care for the "reboot" in 1980 *EXCEPT* for the one episode "The Return of Starbuck", which I consider to be the best episode of them all (not counting the 2003 reboot).

I saw it in 1980. My dad caught it all on our super 8 but when it was developed all we saw after entering the spaceship was blackness and a couple of red flashes.😢

I actually remember the universal studios thing. I didn’t until you mentioned it but now it’s a vague memory.

If i win Powerball, I’m building the bridge of Galactica in the room off my man cave. Maybe even the the launch tube and landing bay…

I wished I could have been to the Battle of Galactica, and I *still* wish I had a viper helmet and colonial warrior uniform.

That attraction was awesome. The "Rise of the Resistance" thing at Di$ney is a modern ripoff of it.

The Viper was the same color as the X wings !!!, and the Cylon ships the same color as the Tie Fighters !!!. 😳

Interesting take. Only a few short years ago everyone was describing this as being the “golden age” of TV - actors were actually leaving Hollywood movies for tv shows, they had really engaged the prime entertainment space. I wonder if the deluge of streaming services needing to create content ruined that somewhat.

Well that makes sense the new version is not the same as the old one they each appeal to a different market

Predated Terminator 2

So..Rob Liefeld's BSG comics and toys?

It's NOT a gun!

Wimpy? *General Grevious,IG-88 and Dark Troopers want to know your location*

Except what nobody seems to think about is shows like Battlestar Glactica and Buck Rogers wouldn't even exist if it weren't for Lucas and Star Wars......Those shows would have probably never even gotten a whiff of green light had Star Wars not have exploded in popularity.

@@PelinalDidNothingWrong no they want to know the makers of The Simpsons location.

@@lutherheggs451 if you read the Star Wars comics there is an evil version of C-3PO and R2D2 who are straight murder bots.

Creepio doesn't need big robot muscles to inflict suffering

and almost every italian western had a ''csntina'' scene

RATINGS KILLED IT, NOT THE LAWSUIT.

Don’t forget the $1 Million + budget per episode.

@@joek600 *Yep was about to say it but you did. Absolutely, correct. Its just a bar scene from the old west with aliens*

@IfWhiningAtProblemsWorks, WhyDoCorporationsLobby? The inept Storm Troopers also don't check where that made-up sound thrown by Obi-Wan as a diversion while Kenobi was on that machine that controlled the Death Star's shield in The New Hope. They don't double-check ID's, and how come there are no rank insignia on Storm Trooper's uniforms? Ditto for everybody on the Bridge of the Death Star: how does Tarkin know somebody is a commander?

Even if it is total BS, it's still a great fan theory,

That would explain Garth...

I always said KITT was a Cylon.

Explains the eye lol!

This was the one piece of merchandise I desperately wanted. (I did have the model kits of the Colonial Viper and the Cylon Raider.) Sadly, it was ever out of my budget.

My girlfriend at the time had one of the Colonial Warrior jackets, think she paid about 40 bucks for it.

@@clydeferguson519 Oh wow, did she order it from the back of Starlog Magazine? Did it have magnetic clasps?

@@Bill23799 yes and yes. She was gonna give it to me but she didn't want me to wear it, so I told her to keep it.

"Roll Fizzlebeef!"

@@nabguy “Butch Deadlift”

Big McLargeHuge

Red Wheelvalve!

Crush Rockgroin!

& now w/World economic forum, & neural link, getting dangerously closer...

Oh yeah, my first school lunch box was BSG. It was awesome, wish i still had that thing

"See? Crushing disappointment is ANOTHER similarity!" -George Lucas

Yeah, same with the second season of "Buck Rogers"... just too jarring of a transition and really screwed up, basically totally unrelated to the original show from the previous season! Later! OL J R :)

Heh. I was too young to be critical of Galactica 1980. I just wanted more Galactica. Cheesy plots? Discontinuous story arcs? Who cares about that shit when you're nine?

As a kid, I really enjoyed the Cylon attack on Los Angeles. I watched Earthquake years later, and I remember thinking, "I have seen this footage before."

You blow a million dollars an episode on something it BETTER be remembered for a while.

Oh yes, I remember "Space: 1999" with Barbara Bane and Martin Landau--Cinnamon Carter and Rollin Hand--fresh from their roles on the original "Mission: Impossible" series that also included Leonard Nimoy as Paris, Phil Morris as Barney Collier, Stephen Hill as Dan Briggs, (replaced by Peter Graves as Jim Phelps).

i remember that childhood confusion. One Friday night....no Dukes of Hazard. One Saturday morning, no Pac Man. Probably the most surprising, was one Saturday morning in 1996, I was a 22 year old who decided on a throwback morning, poured myself a bowl of cereal (which I hadnt done in years) and couldnt UNDERSTAND why there wasnt a single Saturday Morning cartoon. I was like "when. the hell. did this happen?" Cartoon Network happened, while I was away at college. That's what happened.

Battlestar Galacti-toy? Battlestar Toy-lactica!

At least he had the good sense to move from LA to his ranch outside San Francisco, in Marin County. That way, LA's smog could be cleared out of his nostrils by San Fran's cooling fog.

Not really... they just made too much use of what was, at the time, a pop culture phenomenon, but which makes the show age like potato salad instead of fine wine. Interestingly enough I saw a video recently where the suits actually were pushing for Lucas to use a "disco sound" for the soundtrack of Star Wars. Going against the "common wisdom" of the time, he chose a classical full-orchestra approach which is more timeless, and has contributed greatly to Star Wars not seeming dated despite the decades that have passed since it was made. Stu Phillips use of a similarly orchestral theme and sound for BSG helps it immensely, but the disco-esque sequences in a many scenes of BSG episodes and throughout a lot of Buck Rogers TERRIBLY date it and make it feel a lot hokier and campier than it would with a more classical sound, though Stu Phillips did a wonderful job on the Buck Rogers theme song and the scores he wrote for the first few episodes... Can you imagine watching "Star Wars" and seeing the same sort of hokey disco themed music throughout the movie, like in an episode of Buck Rogers, and what that would have meant for how Star Wars is perceived today?? Lucas DEFINITELY had the right idea torpedoing the "disco music" idea... Later! OL J R :)

As a child, those disco dancing elements of both shows annoyed me. I knew it didn't fit and it felt embarrassing to me when my parents were in the room watching and one of the stupid disco scenes come on. I wanted them to love it, but I knew they thought it was silly when the dancing started. I don't know why Glen Larson couldn't leave his love of dorky disco at the door.

@@jamiebraswell5520 Might not have been Larson's "love of disco" (I dunno he might have been a disco nut for all I know and it was his idea). A lot of time the "network suits" decided what they wanted to push into the show, or else the writers or whomever wrote it in. Whole plethora of people it could have been. The thing is when it comes to the suits is, they see something that's "pop culture" and they want to put it in everything, to "appeal to the kids" and thus make it "more popular" which equates to "more money"... even if it only works in their own minds. To them it's product that they're "selling" and the BIG money comes in the ratings when it comes out, they're not worried about 'staying power' or how it holds up (or falls apart) over time in the future... Later! OL J R :)

@@lukestrawwalker in an interview, Lucas was quoted saying there was really only one aspect of Star Wars (ep 4) that not only satisfied him, but surpassed his hopes. John Williams' music. I have to agree.

Spandex galore!

The old one is "classic" in a way that the newer stuff is not. It's like the difference between TOS Trek and TNG and newer Trek... the older series has a charm all its own. Not that the newer stuff isn't good, in its own way, at least most of it, but it's just DIFFERENT... That said I wasn't a huge fan of the reboot. I didn't watch it when it was first on, every time I tried I just got bored with it and turned it off. Too unlike the original BSG. IMHO they should have just labeled it something else, because it really bore virtually NO resemblance to the original BSG. I tried watching it several times and just never got into it. I had some people I knew who called it "Melrose Place" in space, and that's pretty much correct IMHO. I FINALLY sat down and watched the whole reboot over a couple months a couple three years back, and while it was "okay", I didn't feel like I had missed a thing. My opinion didn't really change much about it. There were a few episodes or ideas that were kinda neat in their own way, but overall it just left me cold. Later! OL J R :)

I loved the music that was preceded by the narration of their origin story, voiced by the rich voice of Lorne Greene.

The reboot, had baby woke intentions. I did not notice it the first time around, but something was really off with starbuck acting like a crazy character. Could not relate to it at all. Then after a few years I realized that in the originals she was a man, no wonder. The stupid writers thought it was better to change the sex of a main character, which clearly messed things up quite a lot. They also made a mess with the writing, eg: they killed off starbuck for no good reason, and then they revived her with no good reason. Today it seems to me that the writers where at war with each other. Some were actually thinking and some were woke wankers. I am amazed it did as well as it did, considering the woke that was forced on the show.

I'm starting to think it has a lot to do with the differences between serialized and episodic television. If your show is serialized, you rely on the gradual development of the long story to keep viewers tuning in, and if it's a good story, that's enough to keep them hooked. But with an episodic show, you have a new story every 1 or 2 weeks, so the way you keep the audience coming back for more is to get them invested in the characters. If you create characters that people like, viewers will tune in every week just to see what those characters are up to. And on top of that, it has rewatchability that the serialized show doesn't, because you're not there just to find out what happens next; you're there to hang out with old friends.

Wow guess he invented buck Rogers, flash Gordon, forbidden planet, war of the worlds, and dune 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

@@tagreene06 George Lucas based the title crawl in his Star Wars films from the Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon serials.

@@panowa8319 I know

George got sued by John Dykstra, who won the suit, for stealing the idea of astromech droids from Dykstra "Silent Running" movie. Karma.

Gene Roddenberry: "Scuse me, George. Everything that has 'star' in its name belongs to ME!" Akira Kurosawa: "Sorry, Gene, George ripped off 'The Hidden Fortress.' His butt is mine...You can get what's left."