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Battlestar Galactica (1978)

Posted By: Efgrapha

Date: 20 Dec 2014 16:37:52

Battlestar Galactica (1978)
DVD9 | VIDEO_TS | PAL, 4:3 (720x576) VBR | 02:04:18 | 6.8 Gb
Audio: AC3 1.0 @ 192 Kbps: English / AC3 1.0 @ 96 Kbps: French, German, Spanish, Italian
Subs: English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Greek,
Danish, Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Czech, Polish
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance

This feature-length movie is a re-edited version of the first few episodes of the TV series. The story line concerns a spaceship full of survivors of a doomed planet who are headed to the Earth. Led by Commander Adama (Lorne Greene), they encounter villainous robots, threatening their journey to find Earth.

Synopsis by Phillip Erlewine, Allmovie.com

In 1978 the world was riding on a sci-fi wave brought on by the release of Star Wars the year before. It was only a matter of time until imitators jumped on the bandwagon and came up with their similar yet legally distinguishable space epics. Now that the movie version of the original Battlestar Galactica is being re-released on the back of the success of the re-imagined series, I’m asking myself whether it was really any good or did I pick this review with rose-tinted specs on?

The Twelve Colonies of Man are on the verge of a truce with their mortal enemies, the Cylons, a race of machines who turned against their makers. Lorne Green plays Adama, commander of the Galactica, one of the five battlestars in the starship fleet. He suspects the Cylons are plotting against the humans, but his warnings are ignored by the elders in favour of a more diplomatic approach when two of the fleet’s fighters run into trouble. The humans are not prepared for the inevitable attack from the Cylons and Adama’s son Zac is killed.

After destroying most of the fleet, the Cylons launch an attack on the colonies, swearing to wipe out Man from the universe. The Galactica escapes from the attack, and together with the survivors from the colonies Commander Adama leads a convoy towards the home of the legendary thirteenth colony of Man—Earth.

This DVD contains the version that was given a theatrical release and is twenty-three minutes shorter than the original movie of the week. With a budget of $7 million, it was the most expensive TV production at the time and each subsequent episode had a budget of $1 million. Even though Battlestar Galactica was conceived as a group of movies rather than a series, we’re firmly in TV sci-fi territory here. The production design owes a lot to Star Wars but the concept of a group of people heading off into the unknown and exploring strange worlds has closer ties with Star Trek.

This theatrical version feels like three episodes glued together. Every forty minutes the story reaches a concluding point and Lorne Green provides a Captain Kirk-style voiceover. The script is also hampered by the need to introduce the characters and allow them to get in and out of scrapes while holding our attention but never settings its sights so high that the resulting series wouldn’t be able to match.

There are exciting battles at the beginning and end (along with a Death Star-style destruction of a planet) but the mid-section lacks urgency. The humans find themselves in a casino nightclub on a human outpost and the writers take the opportunity to develop the characters at the expense of plot development. Even when we find out that the alien hosts have some kind of nefarious plan, it takes a long time to move the story along and while we are supposed to realise that Starbuck is a cheeky Han Solo type, his plan to get out of the military by managing a group of singers makes absolutely no sense given the predicament the human race finds itself in.

Although the special effects are quite impressive for the time (utilising techniques developed by ILM), some shots are recycled fairly often, which would remain a common trait of the series. The need to re-use footage occasionally leads to obvious continuity problems and if I was watching this in the cinema now, I’d feel pretty ripped off.

There are some plus points though. Dirk Benedict as Starbuck will always remain a classic character, essentially the same charmer he played in The A-Team, and Lorne Greene is imposing as Adama in a role that was offered to Mark Hamill. The production design has its highlights as well. The spaceships look great and the playground arguments of which is best—X-Wing or Viper—have now moved to message boards as the fans have grown up. I still think the Cylons look cooler than Stormtroopers, until they start to move of course, where the weight of the suit obviously makes life difficult for the actor inside. A lot of work has gone into creating the world of Battlestar Galactica, implying that these humans are in some way related to our ancestors who built the pyramids, which is reflected in the costumes and naming conventions.

The excessive budget of the production would mean that Battlestar Galactica ended after one series, followed up by the bargain basement travesty of Galactica 1980, which has been disowned by creator Glen A Larson and fans alike. I have to say I was looking forward to watching this, with fond memories of the closest thing we could get to a Star Wars TV series, but after the first forty minutes I found myself watching the clock. It may be worth checking out once for nostalgia value, but true fans of the series have no doubt already picked up the series itself.

Review by Scott McKenzie, DVDActive

IMDB 6,6/10 from 4 680 users

Wiki

Director: Richard A. Colla, Alan J. Levi (uncredited)

Writer: Glen A. Larson

Cast: Richard Hatch, Dirk Benedict, Lorne Greene, Herbert Jefferson Jr., Noah Hathaway, Terry Carter, Lew Ayres, Jane Seymour and other