Created by producer Glen Larson, the series highlighted a desperate battle for survival far out amongst the Heavens, as the Twelve Colonies of Man fought in a distant galaxy against a race of evil robots known as Cylons.
After the red-eyed Cylons launched a sneak, Pearl-Harbor-like attack on the twelve worlds (named after the twelve signs of the Zodiac), the last battlestar (a futuristic air-craft carrier, essentially) named Galactica gathered up a rag-tag, fugitive fleet, and headed off in search of a mythical Thirteenth tribe, a planet known as...Earth.
Lorne Greene was cast as Commander Adama, the spiritual and military leader on the Galactica, Richard Hatch was his son, the noble Captain Apollo. Dirk Benedict played Lt. Starbuck, a rogue-ish character, and Herb Jefferson Jr. was Boomer, another stalwart Colonial Warrior.
Although the show lasted just one season, it gained a huge fan following in the years after its cancellation. Packed with incredible special effects courtesy of John Dykstra, and great spaceship and costume designs, the series regularly featured exciting space combat in episodes like "The Living Legend," and even a battle of wills with a devilish higher life form called Count Iblis (Patrick Macnee) in "War of the Gods." Fred Astaire appeared in one episode "The Man with Nine Lives" and other stories were set on diverse worlds consisting of ice ("Gun on Ice Planet Zero") and swamps ("The Young Lords.")
Some episodes re-shaped famous Western films like Shane ("The Lost Warrior") and The Magnificent Seven ("The Magnificent Warriors,") to the TV format but Battlestar Galactica was always fun and never less than magnificently entertaining. The charismatic actors created very interesting - and human characters, and despite protests that the series was a rip-off of Star Wars, Galactica's men and women granted the series its own unique identity.
The series was "re-imagined" in 2003 by the Sci-Fi Channel, and many elements that made the original so compelling, notably a sense of fun, were dropped.
An Analytical Guide to TV's Battlestar Galactica, By John Kenneth Muir
The Battlestar Galactica Episode List
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