Money issues, space fever, and rip offs -- 1978's Battlestar Galactica was battling more than just bad ratings. Production was chaotic, and don't even get us started on the Cylons.
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00:00Money issues, space fever, and ripoffs
00:031978's Battlestar Galactica was battling more than just bad ratings.
00:08Production was chaotic, and don't even get us started on the silence.
00:11In 1978, the sci-fi TV series Battlestar Galactica hit television screens.
00:16It seems like a promising project at the time, especially in the wake of Star Wars fever,
00:21and many fans loved its epic narrative.
00:24The story revolves around a civilization of humans living across 12 colonies who believe
00:28that they are nearing the end of a long war with the Cylon Empire.
00:32They soon discover, however, that they're sorely mistaken.
00:35In the wake of a devastating attack, Adama, commander of the last starship standing, forms
00:39a ragtag army of humanity's remaining forces and heads out in search of the 13th colony,
00:45Earth.
00:46The show only lasted one season before it was canceled, and critics today consider it
00:50to be one of the biggest flops in TV history, despite inspiring a far more successful reboot
00:56in the 2000s.
00:57In 1979, The Washington Post asked the show's writer, Donald P. Bellisario, why such a promising
01:03show ended up on the chopping block.
01:05He simply said,
01:06"...there are thousands of reasons."
01:08In the end, though, blame lay with the final nail in so many television coffins — ratings.
01:13Battlestar Galactica enjoyed plenty of hype to begin with, leading mainstream media sources
01:17to declare the show a hit.
01:19The premiere, which aired on September 17, 1978, was the fifth-highest program of its
01:24week.
01:25However, the sci-fi show quickly lost ground to competition on CBS, which was airing shows
01:30like All in the Family and NBC, which set the wonderful world of Disney in the time
01:34slot against Battlestar Galactica.
01:36The ratings slid downward rapidly, from a 40-share to under 30 in less than two months.
01:42While the series still didn't do badly overall to begin with, it was incredibly expensive.
01:47Sources quoted in the book By Your Command claim that the three-hour pilot cost between
01:51$7 million and $14 million to produce.
01:54Each subsequent episode cost $1 million, which was more than twice the average of an
01:58hour-long series.
02:00With ratings not meeting expectations, it's possible that ABC decided it didn't need a
02:04massive, cash-consuming sci-fi project.
02:06At the time, Bellisario told The Post,
02:09"...I can't argue with numbers.
02:10We have dropped down.
02:11There's no one thing to blame.
02:13Sunday night is the hottest viewing night of the week, and the other networks hit us
02:16with everything they could."
02:18The show faced a few other problems, however.
02:20"...We're doomed."
02:22Although its creator, Glenn A. Larson, has claimed that the concept for Battlestar Galactica
02:25came from a pitch to Universal Studios in 1967, by this time, he was well-known for
02:30ripping off plots from movies.
02:32And many saw major parallels between his story about fighting an authoritative regime and
02:37the plot of Star Wars, which had been released in 1977.
02:41In fact, the court case that 20th Century Fox brought against Universal Studios, MCA,
02:46and ABC cited 34 similarities between the two projects.
02:50While it's unclear if this lawsuit had any true effect on the prospects of the 1978 series,
02:55it certainly didn't help.
02:57It increased the cost of the show while giving it heaps of negative buzz.
03:00And although the suit wasn't settled until after the show was canceled, it's hard not
03:04to imagine that it had a serious effect on its reputation at the time.
03:08A number of other factors could have accounted for the show's downfall.
03:11For example, some accounts of the show say that the production was chaotic, with scripts
03:15not arriving until close to filming times and the crew shooting on weekends just to
03:19make deadlines.
03:20By Your Command notes that one sticking point between producers and ABC took place around
03:24the casting of character Starbuck, as the network would have preferred a different actor
03:28than Dirk Benedict.
03:30This conflict likely spilled over into a production issue.
03:33On top of all that, sci-fi in general was a harder sell in those days, as producer of
03:37the revamped Battlestar Galactica Ron Moore pointed out in a 2014 interview with Fast
03:42Company.
03:43The original series aired early in the evening during a family-friendly slot, leading to
03:46some censoring of elements that its creative team didn't like.
03:49De Sario complained that the evil Cylons became, in his words, rather laughable, and
03:54the show couldn't depict its killing machines as actual menaces.
03:57He told The Washington Post,
03:58"...we just couldn't take them seriously.
04:01We just couldn't make them believable as adversaries."
04:03In the end, while Battlestar Galactica didn't prove successful in its time, it launched
04:07what grew to become a landmark sci-fi franchise.
04:10And for that, the original series deserves to be remembered.