The greatest conceit of all versions of Battlestar Galactica is easily the idea that the entire show stars humans who are also, technically, aliens. (This is true of Star Wars, too, of course, insofar as Luke Skywalker isn’t from Earth, and has never heard of Earth, because he lives in a galaxy far, far away.) In 1978, the chilling Patrick Macnee voice-over suggested that humanity’s evolution occurred on other distant planets, that life began “not here, but out there, far across the universe, with tribes of humans.” In the rebooted 2003-2009 version of the show, that turned into “this has all happened before and it will all happen again.” And in all versions of BSG, this means that our planet, Earth, is the ultimate MacGuffin, and the thing that the alien humans want to find.
In all of its iterations, Battlestar Galactica has had mixed results in the find-Earth-mystery department. The popular reboot series opted first for a fake-out Earth, then a real Earth, but in the distant past. Meanwhile, the finale of the original show suggested that the rag-tag fugitive fleet could creep up on our own world, perhaps in contemporary times. Then, in 1980, Galactica arrived on Earth and tried to ruin the entire franchise with one of the weirdest sci-fi shows ever, Galactica 1980.
Mild spoilers ahead.
Every once in a while, if you watch the classic Battlestar on Prime Video or Apple, the algorithm will suggest you watch “Season 2.” There never was a Season 2 of Battlestar Galactica, but the 1980 series Galactica 1980 is very, very close, so you can see why the wannabe-Cylon algorithms we live with today get confused. And, in fairness, though technically a different series, Galactica 1980 was series creator Glen A. Larson’s attempt to revive his franchise after ABC outright canceled the show in 1979. Basically, right after that cancellation, Larson lobbied all three major TV networks at the time (ABC, NBC, and CBS) to do a TV movie that would continue the story of Battlestar Galactica, albeit a few decades later and in a different setting. Whereas the first series followed the fleet’s search for Earth, and constant attempts to evade the murderous Cylons, the new series would present a different problem: What if Galactica found Earth? What next?
As its title suggests, Galactica 1980 brings the fleet to modern-day Earth, a full generation after the original series. Commander Adama (Lorne Greene) is still in charge, but now he’s got a big bushy beard. Apollo’s son, originally known as “Boxy” in the original series is now called Troy, and he’s played by Kent McCord. In an attempt to replicate the Apollo-Starbuck bromance of the first BSG, Troy’s bestie is Lieutenant Dillon (Barry Van Dyke), though he’s not related to Dirk Benedict’s Starbuck. (That said, Starbuck does appear in a bizarre flashback episode called “The Return of Starbuck.”)
Because Galactica 1980 is set in the present day, the “action” of the episodes consists of Dillon and Troy going undercover on Earth, hesitant to reveal their advanced technology to contemporary humans. Essentially, this means Galactica 1980 resembles a Star Trek episode in which the crew is hanging out on Earth or an Earth-like planet, trying not to violate the Prime Directive or mess up the timeline. The moral quandary of the Galactica crew is pretty clear: They have massive warships in space, laser blasters, and interstellar travel. Is 1980s Earth ready for this?
The issue is that unlike V, which sort of inverts this premise by having alien visitors reveal themselves openly, Galactica: 1980 lacks tension precisely because the characters are handcuffed by their own weird rules. In a classic Trek episode like “Assignment: Earth,” or Voyager’s “Future’s End,” there’s tension in having futuristic people mucking around in our present. But that tension sort of ends when the premise of the show morphs into: Well, what if we just hung around here for a while and slowly revealed ourselves?
This lack of tension, and obviously much lower budget, erodes everything that made the 1978-1979 Battlestar so wonderful and audacious, which is nuts because it aired just one year after the original Battlestar ended. In Ed Gross and Mark A. Altman’s 2018 oral history book, So Say We All, original series star Richard Hatch put it like this: “[Galactica 1980] ruined the whole story that everybody loved.”
While it might be fun to defend the kitsch value of Galactica 1980, or even praise some of its wild guest stars (a pre-Sherlock Holmes Jeremy Brett as Xaviar is particularly delightful), in the end, Hatch is right. Instead of deepening the lore of the original show, or even showing some kind of speculative destructive conflict between advanced humans and “real” ones, Galactica 1980 became a kind of procedural in which the mystery-of-the-week was no mystery at all.
