30 Years Ago There Were Those Who Believed

Thirty years ago I was wandering through a new mall in a new town (Valley West Mall if I recall correctly) and in the hobby shop I saw new models for something called a Colonial Viper and a Cylon Raider. Being the young lad that had just moved from New England I wondered why fighters from the American Revolutionary War had space ships.

At my grandparents house we gathered at the TV set and watched this new show. "There are those who believe that life here began out there..."

Thirty years later I have to say that it holds up much better than one might expect. The effects are top notch. I remember my mother being somewhat amazed (alarmed?) when I spotted John Dykstra's name in the opening credits and noted that he did the special effects for Star Wars! (Yep. Been a nerd for a looooong time now.)

The THEME! I'd be hard put to come up with a cooler TV theme. Some come close (Wild Wild Wild West). The music over all was quite good. (We'll all just skip over "It's Love, Love, Love". It was the 70's.)

The cast was good. Starbuck was the highlight of the original series, too.

Yeah, it's really hokey. (REALLY.) I guess you can look at it and say "So twelve planets full of humanity are mercilessly slaughtered and then those that didn't die are shoved into a rag tag fleet looking for a place to survive? Sounds like happy Sunday night entertainment to me!" (See "Moore, Ron".) But what really strikes me watching the two hour movie (that ran for THREE hours with commercials - that was a late Sunday night for a fourth grader.) now is that this was a story about The Good Guys facing off against an Implacable Foe who, when offered peace, turned around and visited total genocide (helped by an insidious insider and a credulous political class). This was not only 1978 when that sort of thing was not a popular notion, but on the very night of the signing of the Camp David Accords. Wow. I can see why Moore was drawn to taking a more serious bent with nuBSG. Sometimes I think it would be nice if he took a less "people just suck" attitude.

BSG was our Must See TV for the rest of the season. Yeah, there were some not so swell eps (wait, who gets shot down and has to make nice with the natives this week?). But there was also Gun on Ice Planet Zero and Lost Planet of the Gods (where WOMEN *gasp* became fighter pilots! Yep, moving ahead fast in 1978). Commander Caine was SOOOO much cooler back then. I'm still waiting for the Crystal Ships to show up on nuBSG. And Fred Astaire was Starbuck's DAD!

Thirty years? Well frak, that doesn't seem very long at all.