We meet again, Galactica 1980

We’re going to watch all 10 original epsiodes of Galactica 1980. We’re not wavering – we had to take last night off to watch the State of the Union and all of the attendant commentary and yapping because that’s the way we roll.

Wait. What? That’s the way we roll? I’ve forgotten the punchline already and I not only haven’t even finished the setup for the joke, I’ve forgotten what the joke was going to be.

Oh, Galactica 1980, you are a worthy adversary, indeed.

We haven’t given up, though. So far, we’ve watched 5 episodes. We’re halfway through this nutty little experiment. Why are we even conducting this experiment? To test our endurance? Our intestinal fortitude? I don’t really know why we’re doing this.

For you. We’re doing this for you.

We’re halfway through the series. It’s the long dark night of the Galactica soul and the only way out is to go straight through.

We can do this, people. Yes we can!

But not tonight, because Husband has to go into work early and he’s working really late. Plus, the Netflix Fairy is supposed to be bringing me more Supernatural.

If you’re just stopping by for the first time, you can get caught up on my original Galactica 1980-induced break from reality here.

(The Battlestar Wiki has been experiencing database errors for days, so I’ll try to edit this post to add some more links when they resolve their problem).

The DVD preserves that silly feature of 70s TV – each episode not only has a lengthy “previously on” segment but also has an interminable segment showing what’s going to happen in the episode. It’s not a series of quick glimpses – it feels like it lasts forever. I suspect that you could skip the scenes from the upcoming episode and condense this whole trilogy into one hour, but then you’d lose that late seventies TV rhythm. Plus you’d have to rouse yourself from your Galactica-induced coma to find the remote.

To recap the first 3 episodes: Galactica Discovers Earth is a three-part story arc wherein Galatica… discovers Earth.

Remember Boxey, the annoying little kid from the first series? He’s all grown up and now he’s an annoying adult named Troy. His best-buddy Viper Pilot is Dillon. Commander Adama consults an oracle, played by Cousin Oliver from the Brady Bunch. He’s some sorta mutant kid who’s super-wise and sits on a plastic laundry-hamper with some Ikea lights inside it. The council does what he says, possibly because they’re jealous they don’t have laundry-hampers to sit on.

Troy and Dillon take their Vipers to Earth to make contact with The Scientists Who Will Believe Them That They’re From Space. Other Viper teams are sent to other countries. They’re mentioned and then forgotten, because Troy and Dillon have gone to the most important place on Earth so it’s their story that matters. (U-S-A! U-S-A!)

They meet a great scientist, played by Robert Reed playing Mike Brady. Mike Brady is apparently no longer an architect, but he still has his man-perm. Wait ’til he finds out Cousin Oliver is the wisest being in the Universe!

A plucky reporter named Jamie Hamilton rounds out our band of plucky folks doing plucky things to save the universe from the plucking cylons.

There’s also a bad guy named Xavier. He goes back in time to give the Nazis some advanced technology so that Earth can evolve faster technologically, so that when the Galactica arrives in 1980 people will be ready to help fight the cylons. Um. Okay.

Troy and Dillon and plucky reporter Jamie follow him back in time and stop his evil plot. Then they return to 1980 and have a conversation with Adama that makes it sound like they’re about to embark on another time-traveling plot, this time to the Salem Witch Trials.

Luckily, no such thing happened.

Wait a minute – if they can time travel, why don’t they just go back in time to when the cylons nuked the twelve colonies and…oh, never mind.

Episodes 4 and 5 are a two-parter: “The Super Scouts.”

I hate these kids.

Fortunately, the show seems to have forgotten about the time travel plot. Unfortunately, the show now has Super Scouts.

The basic plot of eps 4 and 5 is this: Troy and Dillon take a dozen kids who grew up on Galactica to Earth and try to pass them off as a scout troup.

Three of the actors playing Super Scouts are Glen Larson’s kids.

Naturally, wackiness ensues. Also, an Air Force Colonel is in hot pursuit. Luckily, Troy and Dillon have banded together with their plucky reporter friend Jamie to find a cure for the dying Super Scouts who drank polluted water and also to teach the chemical plant owner who was polluting the water a valuable lesson about stewardship of our fragile planet.

Also, Doctor Zee is no longer played by Cousin Oliver, but he still sits on a lighted laundry-hamper. Doctor Zee, that is, not Robbie Rist, who went on to work as a voice-actor for animation.

Also, because the gravity on the Galactica is different than that of Earth, the kids can leap hundreds of feet into the air. I don’t know why the adults can’t do this.

Also, this show is so terrible it boggles my mind that SciFi was willing to take the risk to remake/re-imagine it. The original show, Battlestar Galactica, was NotGood in a good way. Galactica 1980 is NotGood in a “Please, I will confess to crimes I did not commit just make it stop” way.

If you’d like to conduct your own Galactica 1980 experiment but you don’t want invest 5 bucks buying the DVDs, Hulu has 8 episodes and Netflix streaming has all of them available. IMDB also has a few episodes available.

Tomorrow we will resume our Galactica 1980 mission because we love you. Or we’re crazy. Or stupid.

3 thoughts on “We meet again, Galactica 1980

  1. JunglePete

    I was going to compare Battlestar Galactica 1980 to Hydrox cookies and the reboot to Oreos but it’s come to my attention that Oreos are disgusting as well. Which would be unfair. This whole experiment has me intrigued but I am still debating wasting my time watching the old show just for curioisty (and to see the robot dog?) or to just do blind taste tests of oreos, hydrox and carboard cutout circles rolled in chocolate-flavored dirt. Still confused.

  2. rebecca

    Keep in mind this is NOT the original show. That is Battlestar Galactica. This is the sequel series – a show so bad Richard Hatch wouldn’t participate. The new BSG is the 3rd series. And Caprica is the 4th I guess, although it will take place in time before Galactica 1980. Or after. Or something.

    Let’s eat cookies and have a marathon of the first series, it will seem great to me now!

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