BATTLESTAR GALACTICA (and Galactica 1980) On Blu-Ray!

[John Johnson]

Hopefully one day, they might reconsider and decide to reissue the CDs. Looks like the 40th anniversary is going pass by unnoticed.

[KevinEK]

I have serious trouble accepting that this will be the 40th Anniversary.

The only wake-up call I've had from that was the passing of Richard Hatch last year and realizing his age.

To me, it was yesterday that my brother and I would watch those episodes.

[Eric Paddon]

Hopefully one day, they might reconsider and decide to reissue the CDs. Looks like the 40th anniversary is going pass by unnoticed.

If it is noticed, then unfortunately most retrospectives will talk more about the version that I still hate as much as I did when it first came out 15 years ago.

It may seem like such a small thing but honestly I saw firsthand how that whole thing shattered Galactica fandom completely. When I became part of a Galactica fan circle in the late 90s it was an energetic, friendly and positive group in every venue I belonged to. I ended up meeting the dearest friend in my life, a blind woman who lived in the town next to mine, through a Galactica mailing list. As the 90s ended there was not only a friendly atmosphere there was a genuine sense that a new appreciation was taking hold for the series at long last, and that it wasn't out of the realm of possibility that we'd one day finally get that one piece of closure we always kept hoping for.

And then along came Ron Moore and all of that was destroyed beyond repair. Friendly acquaintances literally ended because of that, and there was also a lot of bad feeling generated not simply because the other show stood the original on-end, but because it got this level of praise that came with a sneering "it took a bad idea and made it great" (to paraphrase Harlan Ellison, the supreme hypocrite of them all, who checked all his standards he kept invoking regarding "City" and what people do to someone else's creation so he could kiss Ron Moore's rear end regarding that show) that made a lot of feel people feel like so many years of effort and community to raise some appreciation for the show had now been all for nothing. Message boards that used to be thriving around 2000 to 2002 suddenly became dead and while some of them still linger they never really came back. You just couldn't escape the sense that the war had been lost and that the other show was considered the default version and the original was just this niche piece of late 70s kiddie-fare enjoyed only nostalgists according to Conventional Wisdom and that the one thing that had guided many people with hope for decades, that we would see an original cast project again to give some closure to the series, was also lost for good.

I'm still a great fan of the original, but time has made the memories a lot more bittersweet about it.

[John Johnson]

One of my vivid memories of the series was Mission Galactica:The Cylon Attack. The theatrical feature opened in London, May 1980 at The Empire Leicester Square shown in Sensurround. The film opened the same week as The Empire Strikes Back, which was shown opposite at The Odeon. The series had not been shown in the UK by the time the second film arrived. It would be another year or two before the series would be screened on UK television.

When the series did arrive, the two-parter, The Living Legend, was not included in the package. The rights were tied up with Mission Galactica, so that version was shown instead. It wasn't until the early 90s when the BBC purchased the series, the two parter was finally shown. The BBC screenings were actually the first time the series was networked.

[KevinEK]

My brother watched most of the episodes, especially the two-parters, when they originally aired, while staying over at my dad's for the weekend. When the original three hour premiere aired, the whole family watched it together.

After the show died, I remember both the cut-down pilot movie and Mission Galactica being shown on the Z Channel in Los Angeles. I do remember seeing reruns of Battlestar in syndication after that, and then on Sci-Fi when that started up.
My memory of the episodes wasn't the greatest at that time, so I didn't see the obvious differences between Mission Galactica and what had originally aired until years later.

[Paul MacLean]

I was a big fan of the original series. My family had just moved 200 miles from a small suburb of New York City (the only town I'd ever lived in) to a larger but far-more remote town. My new school was bigger (and more rough) and it was a hard adjustment for me at that age. We didn't have a VCR, and entertainment choices were slim, so the weekly broadcast of Battlestar Galactica was one of my few sources of joy at that point.

While BG obviously took some major cues from Star Wars (space dogfights, the blend of ancient and futuristic, John Dyskstra effects work, and large symphonic scoring -- performed by a world-class orchestra) it was no ripoff, and just the ticket for a disenfranchised sci-fi geek like myself.

Yet, toward the middle of the season, I felt the writing was starting to sag, and scripts were contradicting the original premise. The pilot episode informed us we were watching the last survivors of humanity (other than those who had settled on Earth), yet soon we started to see episodes that took place on various worlds -- inhabited by humans. There were two "wild west" planets, a "prison" planet, a "medieval" planet. These planets weren't among the twelve colonies. So who were these people? And why didn't the Galactica evacuate the inhabitants of these planets to the fleet, when the Cylons would surely wipe those people out once these worlds were discovered? Then Ray Bolger showed-up as a singing android.

Plus, ABC was constantly preempting BG to air stupid variety shows or other "specials". Who can forget the number of times we were informed by Ernie Anderson's infuriatingly cheerful voice that "Battlestar Galatica will not be seen this week!", just as we were sitting down to watch the latest episode?

Still, I was excited by the announcement a year or so later that a "re-boot", Galactica 1980, was in the works. I remember starting to watch the premiere -- and being appalled by the absence of Richard Hatch and Dirk Benedict (I guess Hatch decided Dead Man's Curve was a better choice for his career -- though actually he may have been right!), and seeing the annoying kid from The Brady Bunch as "Doctor Zee". The scenes of the Cylons laying waste to Earth at least promised an awesome, epic battle between the colonial fleet and the their robotic nemesis -- but no, it was just a "computer simulation"!.

In any case, I was starting to get into Doctor Who at this point, finding that the adventures of a problem-solving eccentric were more interesting than space battles, and kind of outgrew BG.

[Eric Paddon]

I can think of no earlier WTF moment in my life than being enthused about the promos for G80 and seeing all the expectations shattered in the first five minutes. All of us fifth graders at recess the next day were in a similar state of mind.

In fairness on the points regarding the other human planets encountered in earlier episodes, the plausible explanation was that these fell in the category of earlier colonization efforts by the original 12 worlds that had become forgotten over time as a result of the war with the Cylons. By the halfway point of Season 1, they had intelligently dispensed with this by properly reasoning that the further they left their home civilization behind they would no longer run into planets stemming from their past. The next human civilization they encountered was something different, but what its connection was to Earth was never made clear. People can only speculate. While the issue wasn't dealt with flawlessly, it did at least handle an ongoing through-line of development much better than earlier 70s sci-fi TV series did like "Logan's Run" or "Planet Of The Apes" which were stagnant from the get-go by being chained to the fact that they had to implausibly stay in close proximity to their starting point to justify the presence of their villains!

[John Johnson]

I'm aware of the similarities between Avengers: Endgame and the finale episode of Star Trek:Voyager, but Battlestar Galactica and The Last Jedi. Huh, It never occurred to me...lol

https://www.superherohype.com/movies/45 ... s2lp4Z70o4

[Eric Paddon]

This author makes a fundamental error about Galactica. Apollo and Starbuck were not Luke-Han clones. Apollo was an older *veteran* warrior, not a naive kid (his younger brother who gets killed off in the pilot was much more of a "Luke" type character). Starbuck was a ladies man rogue, but let's try to recall that in SW, Han Solo was not exactly a ladies man since he was quite unimpressed with Leia (which is why I never bought his romance with Leia starting in ESB)

[John Johnson]

This author makes a fundamental error about Galactica. Apollo and Starbuck were not Luke-Han clones. Apollo was an older *veteran* warrior, not a naive kid (his younger brother who gets killed off in the pilot was much more of a "Luke" type character). Starbuck was a ladies man rogue, but let's try to recall that in SW, Han Solo was not exactly a ladies man since he was quite unimpressed with Leia (which is why I never bought his romance with Leia starting in ESB)

According to a rough cut of Star Wars, Han Solo was something of a ladies man. A girl in every (space) port? Footage of his girlfriend has been around for many years. On a side note, his girlfriend was played by Jenny Cresswell. Prior to this Cresswell was often seen as one of the extras during Space:1999's second season.

[John Johnson]

Decided to take the plunge and ordered the Kampfstern Galactica: Die Spielfilm – Trilogie. First thoughts, the set is in three slim DVD boxes in a slipcase, although the slipcase is rather thin and flimsy. However, saying that, I'm glad they are in their own cases. Quality-wise, I was impressed. All three films have the English language option




Disc One:
Kampfstern Galactica.
Feature Film is presented in a box format, which is rather odd.
There are no extras.

Disc Two:
Mission Galactica - Angrief Der Zylonen.
DVD is in a 4:3 format. I was surprised by the extras on this disc,
Sadly, they are mostly in German. There are some deleted scenes in English, but they have German subtitles.

Extras.
GESCHNITTENE SZENEN - Deleted Scenes
8MM -FASDUNG - Mission Galactica 32mins.
MISSION GALACTICA DEUTSCHER TRAILER - 8MM
TRAILER KAMPFSTERN GALACTICA (The opening scene has a Cylon Raider flying backwards upside down)
BILDERGALARIE - PICTURE GALLERY

Disc Three:
Galactica III - Das Ende Einer Odyssee.
Again, the film is in 4:3 format.

Extras.
INTERVIEW WITH GLEN A LARSON (German subtitles)
INTERVIEW WITH STU PHILLIPS (German subtitles)
8MM FASDUNG DAS ENDER EINER ODYSSEE CONQUEST OF THE EARTH 31. MINS.
DAS ENDE EINER ODYSSEY TRAILER
BILDERGALERIE

[Eric Paddon]

The third one is I am presuming the re-edit of Galactica 1980 episodes that was released on VHS in the US under the title "Conquest Of The Earth"? I recently got an OOP VHS of that since the crazy novelty of that re-edit job (so typical of the many that Universal would do with one-season shows of theirs) was how they shoehorned a scene of John Colicos from the original Galactica episode "The Young Lords" into the proceedings!

The deleted scenes for "Mission: Galactica" which combined "Living Legend" and "Fire In Space" I have to assume would consist of deleted scenes from those two episodes. The US release had deleted scenes for all Galactica episodes except two.

I finished my project of re-editing all episodes into longer cuts using as much deleted footage that was practical. Turned out to be so fun I ended up recording my own commentaries for each episode!

[John Johnson]

The third one is I am presuming the re-edit of Galactica 1980 episodes that was released on VHS in the US under the title "Conquest Of The Earth"? I recently got an OOP VHS of that since the crazy novelty of that re-edit job (so typical of the many that Universal would do with one-season shows of theirs) was how they shoehorned a scene of John Colicos from the original Galactica episode "The Young Lords" into the proceedings!

The deleted scenes for "Mission: Galactica" which combined "Living Legend" and "Fire In Space" I have to assume would consist of deleted scenes from those two episodes. The US release had deleted scenes for all Galactica episodes except two.

I finished my project of re-editing all episodes into longer cuts using as much deleted footage that was practical. Turned out to be so fun I ended up recording my own commentaries for each episode!

Yes it is.
Conquest of the Earth was released in cinemas, around 1983 (I think). It didn't get a big release. It was released as a double bill with one of the Smokey and the Bandit films. Back in those days, I used to have FOH posters and stills from all three films. The deleted scenes are all from Mission Galactica. Mission Galactica was released in the UK on a wider release. It opened in London two weeks before The Empire Strikes Back arrived, in Sensurround.

[Paul MacLean]

I finished my project of re-editing all episodes into longer cuts using as much deleted footage that was practical. Turned out to be so fun I ended up recording my own commentaries for each episode!

Will these be available on Youtube or some other video site?

[Eric Paddon]

If I put them on YT, they'd be taken down in an instant by Universal. I've been putting them on Dropbox and sharing them with a FB Galactica group but I'm happy to share the links here too!

Saga Of A Star World (Extended Cut)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5fcq2dz5yh6gk ... d.mp4?dl=0

Saga Of A Star World (Extended Cut With Commentary Track)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/o6v5q5puvbu2h ... 9.mp4?dl=0

Lost Planet Of The Gods, Pt. 1 (Extended Cut)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/3pbyf5jci8aef ... 1.mp4?dl=0

Lost Planet Of The Gods, Pt.1 (Extended Cut With Commentary Track)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/yfr501sxtj6mc ... 9.mp4?dl=0

Lost Planet Of The Gods, Pt.2 (Extended Cut)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/m3ukvwum5ul78 ... 2.mp4?dl=0

Lost Planet Of The Gods, Pt.2 (Extended Cut With Commentary Track)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ar4xxzj9k0fkp ... 9.mp4?dl=0