A ragtag fleet of survivors, a giant battlestar and the menacing red eye of a Cylon centurion sweeping from side to side. Battlestar Galactica arrived from America in 1978 with effects that looked like a night at the cinema.
The story
Far across the galaxy, the twelve colonies of humankind are wiped out by the Cylons, an empire of robots. Only one warship survives, the Battlestar Galactica, and it leads a fleet of civilian ships away in search of a lost thirteenth colony: a planet called Earth.
The series was created by Glen A. Larson for the American network ABC. Its first episode was shown on 17 September 1978, and the series ran for a single season of 24 episodes until April 1979.
Who was in it
- Lorne Greene as Commander Adama, the fleet's father figure
- Richard Hatch as Captain Apollo, Adama's son
- Dirk Benedict as Lieutenant Starbuck, the cigar-chomping charmer
- Herbert Jefferson Jr. as Lieutenant Boomer
- John Colicos as Count Baltar, the man who betrayed humanity to the Cylons
Children of the time also remember Muffit, Boxey's robot dog, known in the show as a daggit.
Big-screen effects on the small screen
Galactica cost a fortune to make. Its space battles used model work from John Dykstra, who had just worked on the effects for Star Wars, and the Colonial Vipers swooping out of the launch tubes were unlike anything else on television at the time. The opening story was also edited into a feature film and shown in cinemas.
The cost was part of the reason the series lasted only one season. A follow-up, Galactica 1980, picked up the story when the fleet finally reached Earth, but it was short-lived.
"By your command."
The Cylons' flat, electronic reply became a playground favourite, along with their glowing scanning eye.
A legacy that lasted
Dirk Benedict went on to play Face in The A-Team, and Battlestar Galactica kept a loyal following long after it left the air. A completely new version, much darker in tone, began with a mini-series in 2003, with Richard Hatch returning in a new role.
Did you watch it the first time round?