Beginner’s Starbuck
A history of Cylons...
BATT LESTAR GALACTICA: THE COMPLETE ORIGINAL SERIES PG
1978-80 OUT NOW DVD, BD
Despite being overshadowed by its award-winning ’00s remake, the original Battlestar Galactica has managed to endure with impressively few wrinkles. Back when Starbuck was male, the evil Cylons were really shiny and Dirk Benedict wasn’t yet Face from the A-Team, the late Glen A. Larson’s lavish TV epic bridged the gap between hokey space serials and serious sci-fi (in other words, between Star Trek and The Next Generation).
Though created with dubious intentions as a Mormon-flavoured Star Wars cash-in (20th Century Fox unsuccessfully sued Universal), the three-hour mini-series that became 24 episodes brought a fresh sense of breadth and depth to small-screen sci-fi.
Opening with most of the human race being wiped out and Commander Odama (Lorne Greene) blaming his eldest son (Dirk Benedict, Han Solo in a cape) for the death of his youngest, it sees space heroics take a back seat to impossible decisions, murky morality and tough consequences.
Cleaned up for Blu-ray, the visual effects (which cost $1m per episode at the time) do look a bit tacky, and half the boxset is wasted on the rubbish sequel series Galactica 1980. But this is still a definitive release.
Commentaries on every episode, a lengthy retrospective and watchable deleted scenes pad the discs. They’ve even found room for a whole featurette on the ‘daggit’. The new Battlestar (routinely hailed as ‘ The West Wing in space’) may have won a shelf-load of Emmys, but it didn’t have a chimpanzee duct-taped into a teddy
Paul Bradshaw bear suit...
Extras › Commentaries › Documentary › Featurettes › Deleted scenes