Battlestar Galactica (1978) 01-03: Saga of a Star World, Part 3

Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about the last third of the Battlestar Galactica: Saga of a Star World TV movie. Well, roughly a third. I haven't measured it to the minute and I have no idea how the film was split when it was divided into three parts for syndication.

If you want to go back to PART ONE or PART TWO you can click either of those links.

I'm sorry it doesn't actually say "Battlestar Galactica" up there, by the way. The words fly onto the screen one at a time, so this is the best I could do without using a distracting looping video. It's a good title though I reckon; it's dramatic without being too cheesy, distinctive enough that it'll be at the top of the results in a Google search, and it just sounds nice out loud. Lots of 'a' sounds in a row.

SPOILER WARNING: I'll be giving away basically everything that happens in the movie.

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Previously, on Battlestar Galactica:

The Cylons have defeated the Colonial battlestar fleet and devastated their homeworlds. All 12 of them. Now only a few humans are left, crammed together in ragtag convoy of vessels, starving and dehydrated. Their only hope was to make it through a minefield to a distant planet called Carillon, and thankfully they made it. There they discovered a casino run by alien insects, who also run the tylium mine downstairs. The aliens offered them food and fuel, along with ridiculously generous odds at the gambling tables, and a lot of the survivors have decided to go down there and stay at the hotel for a while instead of living in shipping containers. It all seems almost too good to be true.

And now, the conclusion:

I'm used to Starbuck being the star of all the scenes in the Carillon casino, but he's busy with a love triangle right now, so we're following this other group of people for a bit I guess.

This is one of those 'hey the lift's taking us to a mysterious basement floor all on its own' kind of scenes, the type that generally ends with a scream. What the woman was screaming about is a secret however. All we're permitted to know at this point is that there's more to this casino that it appears.

Then we get this fantastic view of the side of the Galactica, and if you look carefully you can kind of make out the pole that it's mounted on as well. Though I can't see the name written on the front of the flight pod weirdly.

Hang on, I'll see if I can can enhance the image...

Well that's not right.

The internet gives a few numbers for how long the Galactica is, but it seems to be around a mile or a mile and a half. Around the same length as a Star Destroyer, and way way longer than your average Starfleet ship. In fact I can't think of a bigger hero ship in live action science fiction at the time. The huge Valley Forge from Silent Running (which makes a cameo as part of the fleet) was apparently only half the length.
 

Now we're back in Adama's quarters. Again. I'm starting to wonder at this point if the guy ever leaves this room. Hey he's got the previous screencap as a picture on his wall! You know what I haven't seen in here though: a ceiling. It just occurred to me when I noticed that beam up above Tigh's head. They're useful to obscure the fact that there's nothing up there but a big hole with a lighting rig above it.

Adama's sharing his concerns about Carillon again, as he's discovered that their reports on this planet came from from an expedition by Baltar's people, and I guess he suspects that Baltar was a traitor. They've also discovered that the food here must all be being shipped in from off-world, which is interesting.

Down on Carillon, Apollo and Serina overhear Sire Uri discussing the possibility of destroying Galactica and their Vipers, and moving the entire human race into this casino where they could just live off the Ovions' charity for the rest of their lives. The idea being that the Cylons won't see them as a threat if they're entirely unarmed and helpless.

Apollo basically just hopes he's really drunk.

Unfortunately he's just as keen on the idea when he's sober and he puts his proposal before the council.

We get a little bit of their history here as we learn that the Colonials actually started the war with the Cylons. Or at least they stepped in to protect their neighbours from being enslaved. We also learn that the the colonies were founded by the Lords of Kobol, and that Adama's had just about enough of this shit. He tells the council that he holds anyone who takes this idea seriously in utter contempt and walks out. Just say no to pacifism!

I mean he's right, and the Cylons just massacred billions of them in a surprise attack right when they were about to make peace, but Uri's not the type to let a dumb idea go if it means he'll get to live in a casino. His plan is to present the option to the people at a celebration honouring the three pilots who led them here through the minefield. Of course they'll decide to stay if they're asked in the middle of a party!

Then we get a replay of the lift scene from earlier, except this time Cassiopeia's in the role of 'screaming woman'. Aww, but I like her!

The woman from earlier is also screaming though, as a gang of Ovions put her into their plastic hive. Which is a bit weird.

So the Ovions' sinister plan was to set up a resort above a tylium mine then lure humans to take a holiday there via an evil travel agency in order to file them away in drawers. And no one's been wondering why all these people have been disappearing? I mean obviously no one's going to be wondering now, as their worlds have been wiped out, but they had an advanced spacefaring civilisation a week ago!

Actually I suppose they were probably more concerned with their millennia-long war now that I think about it.

Cut to Starbuck chatting with one of the singers. Wait, is he seriously trying to hire her group? I thought he was joking earlier! Well, I hoped he was joking.

He claims that they're his meal ticket out of the military and now I'm even more confused. Is there anything outside the military? Could they just quit the fleet and go live on some other world away from he Cylons? Or is he just in deep denial about his entire society being eradicated?

They're really showing off this animatronic head here by the way. The extra eyes move and blink, and the second mouth moves as well. In fact it even comes with a second voice, which I suppose makes sense. Man, imagine the depth perception you'd have with four eyes. You could perceive all kinds of depths.
 

Oh no they forgot to take the star filter off the lens and now Galactica's landing bay has gone all disco too.

Tigh finds Adama sitting in a Viper cockpit and it turns out that they were both pilots themselves in the past (though their fighters weren't quite as advanced back then). Adama asks Tigh to climb into the fighter next to him so they can talk privately. Hey, why don't they just climb into the same fighter, I thought they were supposed to have two seats!

Adama's discovered that Sire Uri's people have bugged his quarters so this is the only way they'll get any privacy. He tells Tigh that he's pretty sure Carillon's a trap and the Cylons are just waiting for the right moment to strike. Right now only half their pilots are down on the planet, but when Apollo, Starbuck and Boomer get their Gold Clusters everyone will be down there, by order of the Council. Meanwhile their Vipers will all be up here, without anyone to fly them into battle or bring them down to their pilots.

So Adama's plan is for Tigh to collect pilot uniforms and recruit Galactica crewmembers to wear them at the party. That way they can secretly keep some pilots behind to start moving Vipers down to the planet, where the rest of the pilots are.

I figured that Tigh would use his authority as the ship's XO to get hold of the uniforms, but nope he's sneaking around and stealing them from sleeping pilots! Well, he was until Starbook and Boomer caught him in the act. Tigh goes on a rant to them about how this is an inspection and then storms off, leaving the two of them assuming that the pressure must be getting to him. It's actually a pretty good scene I reckon, due to how relaxed and natural Starbook and Boomer's reaction is.

Tigh's played by an actor called Terry Carter, who was actually originally cast as Boomer. That plan was ruined when he broke his ankle in a roller skating accident and they had to give the role to Herbert Jefferson, Jr. instead. Fortunately the role of Tigh hadn't been cast yet, so the actor got a promotion to colonel. I read that his left leg was in a cast during the filming of the movie, but if that's true they did a really good job of hiding it.

Anyway they fill the party with fake pilots and Sire Uri is completely fooled. Starbuck, Boomer and Apollo aren't however, as they're seeing strangers dressed like they're in their squadron. Boomer stays behind while Starbuck and Apollo go to investigate.

In the lower levels Starbuck and Apollo discover the horrible truth: the Ovions are working with the Cylons! I guess the Cylons can co-exist with other people peacefully after all! Or more likely they've been enslaved.

Starbuck suddenly wants to go on a suicide mission to blow the place up and stop the Cylons getting tylium but Apollo points out that the entire human race is above them and they'd get blown up too. Besides, he's not about to lose another pilot like he lost Zac.

Just then Boxey comes out of a lift looking for Muffit and they've got no choice but to start shooting. Well I suppose they could've let the Centurion cut Boxey's head off, no one would've known, but then they'd be missing out on watching him run off again, yelling "Muffit! Muffit!" The kid is a problem.

They come across people cocooned in the walls, some of them still alive, some of them nothing more than bones at this point. Starbuck realises that the Ovions are living off the guests, and I guess that creature with the red eyes on the top right is supposed to be a baby Ovion? It's not really clear what it's deal is.

It's clear that some of the victims are still moving though, so the two Colonial warriors spring into action...

...and save Cassiopeia from being put in a drawer. They don't even bother checking on anyone else.

Cassiopeia was apparently supposed to die here, back when this was intended to be the start of a miniseries. When BSG became a full TV series she got promoted from bug food to series regular, so that worked out pretty well for her. I've read that Serina was supposed to die as well, from that contaminated food, so this could've actually been a much bleaker story.

I love that inferno in the background by the way. That's the tylium in the walls catching fire from their stray laser shots.

At this point the Cylons are ready to spring their trap and we get to see a basestar launching Cylon Raiders. I love these old model shots, but it's got me wondering what this would look like with modern colour correction and compositing.

I'm also wondering if any Cylon fighters ever accidentally fly back to their basestar and try to land upside down. I mean how can you even tell which way is up with that thing?

The heroes also run into Boomer, so I guess the party upstairs is basically ruined now. Everyone who was supposed to be getting an award has disappeared.

I love this shot, even though it's insane. As far as I can tell they actually built this bridge for real in front of an absolutely massive screen which the background painting was projected onto. Then they started setting off sparks while a chimpanzee in a robot dog costume and a bunch of stuntmen who could barely see made their way across.

There are no visible lasers coming from their guns in this by the way (because Star Wars had them and they didn't want to piss off George Lucas... even though that ended up happening anyway), which might explain why everyone standing in the open on this bridge isn't dead yet. Though there is a huge lens flare at end of the barrel when they pull the trigger.

See, the gun really lights up.

The heroes make their way up to the casino level and Apollo tells all the Colonials there to make their way to the exits. Sire Uri objects... but then retracts his objection when he sees the killer robots coming out of the elevator.

So now there's a proper shoot out going on here, with the Cylon Centurions marching forward like Terminators, blasting any civilians they see. Meanwhile Cylon fighters are closing in on the fleet. This would be a really good time for Uri to say "How could I have been so completely wrong? I have led the entire human race to ruin," and then explode like his predecessor.

Fortunately Jolly rolls up in a landram, blasting the Cylons with its laser turret (which does have visible beams). I haven't had much reason to write about Jolly yet, he's just been there in the background, but now he's a big damn hero.

I just hope they brought enough landrams for everyone, as they made it sound like the entire human race needs evacuating right now. Well, except for all the pilots who didn't go to the party.

We also get to witness some vicious robot violence as Muffit Two bites a Cylon's knee. Man, they gave a drone that can bite through a Terminator's leg to a little kid?

The trouble with Muffit is that whenever it does anything Boxey's right behind him yelling "Muffit! Muffit! Muffit! Muffit! Muffit! Where's Muffit? We can't leave without Muffit! Muffit! Muffit!" In fact all Boxey does in this entire film is yell about a dog and run into danger; he's an astoundingly terrible character.

I really like these landrams though. I'm sure they're just a modified snowmobile or whatever, but they really look the part.

There's something about this shot that doesn't quite look right however. Maybe it's the lack of headlights. I suppose it was probably shot day for night.

Wow, I love this shot but it's messing with my head. The Viper in the foreground is definitely real and the one behind it definitely looks like part of the painted background, but there are people standing behind it! Actors aren't allowed to wander around inside paintings.

Okay, I looked it up and they had two Vipers. One was a proper full mock-up that actors could get into, the other was a 2D cutout!

Anyway, they're ready to get their birds in the air and go save the fleet. Though the sad thing about them launching their Vipers from the planet is that I don't get to see those same few shots them flying through the launch tube for the 200th time.

Wow, they really don't have any Vipers in the air to protect the fleet?

I assumed the point of secretly pulling the pilots from the party was to have someone ready to launch when the Cylons sprung their trap, but it seems like they've been busy moving all their fighters to the planet. The pilots could've just flown a third of the Vipers down or whatever, took a shuttle back up, and then waited for the Cylons. Though I suppose they needed to be on the planet to drive the landrams for the evacuation.

Anyway what's important is that the Cylon Raiders are here, the Vipers are not, and the fleet is taking a hammering. It's fortunate that these cargo ships take longer to explode than fighters do.

Oh, turns out I wasn't spared from reused effects after all!

It does kind of spoil the space battle a bit when I can spot familiar clips. I expected that the series would keep reusing VFX footage shot for the movie but didn't think they'd start doing it before the film was over! The Star Trek series used a lot of stock miniature shots as well, but they didn't stand out so much because the shots were less distinctive.
 

The Galactica bridge crew are surprised when the next incoming squadron turns out to be their own. Well, except for Adama and Tigh, who joke about how the pilots must have violated orders to skip the party.

Here's a question though: if all the pilots we know are from Blue Squadron, why do they have an orange stripe on their fins?

The Vipers effortlessly wipe out the Cylon Raiders and Adama orders them all home, but Apollo and Starbuck didn't get to "violate orders" with all the others earlier, so now they're doing it for real!

Apollo tries to get a very confused Starbuck to play along and pretend to be the pilots of Red and Blue Squadrons, while he plays the role of Green and Yellow. Together they make it sound like an overwhelming force is on its way to wipe out the Imperious Leader's basestar. The Cylons decide to pull closer to the planet to hide.

The Cylons figure out the ruse when only two Vipers appear on their scanners and they open fire in this very fake looking shot of a model hanging over a real landscape. They should've gotten some of the effects crew to drive all the way out there with the miniature and film it on location!

Though hang on, the Cylon basestar ducked behind the planet to hide from the Colonial's sensors, so how did Apollo and Starbuck manage to find it so quickly? Anyway it doesn't really matter if they found it or not; they just needed it to be too close to the planet to escape when the tylium ignited.

Damn, that looks kind of... dramatic. All this because Starbuck missed a few shots with his handgun and set fire to the cave wall earlier!

The basestar is hit by electricity for some reason and explodes. Then the whole planet blows up as well! Man, I hope they got all the civilians off the planet in time. And those singers Starbuck likes. It's a bit harsh to wipe out an entire world, but I suppose it was only a mining outpost, not their homeworld. Plus there's symmetry, with how the movie started with the destruction of the colonies.

That's pretty much it now. There's one final bit of narration from Adama and the film's over:

"Fleeing from the Cylon tyranny, the last battlestar, Galactica, leads a ragtag fugitive fleet on a lonely quest - a shining planet known as Earth."

Oh hang on, this is different. I think this is the first time I've ever been given a proper epilogue to write about! It's already pretty depressing, as right after they destroyed that one basestar we see they've got at least three more of them.

In fact we see a new Imperious Leader as well... and he's a reptile man in a robe and an afro dubbed by Patrick Macnee just like the last one.

Even Baltar's back, even though he'd been taken away for public execution earlier.

The original plan was for Baltar to be killed in the movie (man they planned to kill a lot of characters), but he won a stay of execution by being a fun villain to watch. This epilogue scene was apparently directed by Glen Larson himself and involves the new Imperious Leader telling Baltar that he's been spared because he can think like a human and knows what the Colonials will do next.

Though it's hard to really take Imperious Leader at his word, as he also claims that the Cylons really are going to make a truce with the humans this time. Oh and it turns out that he probably is a robot, as he mentions that his predecessor had programming.

Then we get to see another kind of robot...

He's a dude with a light-up transparent head and two Cylon eyes called Lucifer. I'm expecting he's not entirely trustworthy either. Plus he looks like he's gotten lost on his way to the set of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. He looks like he got lost on his way to a Christmas tree. The movie started by showing off its cutting edge model effects and bridge set, and now we're on the other end of the scale. What makes it worse is that the iconic Centurion design is right there in the same shot.

Wow, I've only just noticed that the Centurions have a bit of a gut. Well, these two do anyway. They must not get as much exercise as the ones running around on planets. Anyway that's it, the movie's over now.


CONCLUSION

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I have a question: whose star world is this a saga of? We do see a bit of Caprica, but the characters don't hang around there for long. Is it a saga about Carillon? Or did the writer just want a title that sounded close to Star Wars?

People have accused the series of being a lot like Star Wars in general (like George Lucas for instance) and I can see where they were coming from. They were coming from 1978, where people's science fiction choices were a lot more limited and Star Wars had only just been released the previous year. Obviously there are some similarities between the two movies, but this isn't a farm boy's hero's journey, it's about an aircraft carrier protecting a wagon train of refugees fleeing their homes.

One of the most obvious similarities is the look of the space battles, because they got concept art from Ralph McQuarrie and then hired John Dykstra and his ILM friends to do the effects! These aren't just Star Wars-level visuals in a TV series, these are practically just Star Wars visuals, like they're from a sequel where TIE fighters went out of fashion (and TIE fighter pilots got way too into disco). The familiarity of the effects shots did actually bother me a little to be honest. Not the familiarity from looking like Star Wars, that's actually great, I mean the familiarity from them reusing the same shots over and over. I mean they did what they could with the budget, but it's hard not to notice.

I was pretty sure I'd seen this movie before but it turns out I'd only seen the first third. For some reason I didn't go any further than that the first time around, and I have a theory why that might be the case: it gets kind of dull in the middle. I was surprised that the series was actually dealing with the consequences of gathering a lot of people, cramming them onto commercial vessels, and launching them into deep space, with starvation and dehydration being real issues. It actually shows people being ostracised for religious reasons, and the haves in first class withholding food from the have-nots living in storage containers. So that's good... but it wasn't really holding my attention. The movie loses its momentum and becomes less a story, more a series of events and conversations that happen in chronological order.

I expected the movie to start fairly serious and then get incredibly campy in the second half, and that was kind of true. The alien casino wasn't as goofy as I expected though. In fact the idea that the travellers would visit the land of the lotus-eaters and be tempted to abandon their quest for a life of luxury fits the mythological side of the concept pretty well. I think my issue with it isn't that the crew go from dealing with food and fuel issues straight into 70s sci-fi weirdness, it's that the universe isn't well defined enough for us to understand how weird it is. The premise of the series, the last of humanity making a desperate journey to a new home, makes you think that they're basically alone in the universe, killer robots aside. But then they go to an alien outpost which implies this is actually a crowded galaxy with plenty of other civilisations. In fact Starbuck's thinking of abandoning the fleet to go get rich managing a vocal group. It really threw me off. Plus it spends forever building the mystery of what's going on there when we're already in the last third of a movie.

On the positive side, the actors pretty much nail their roles and I thought they were all very likeable. I don't know what we're supposed to think about Starbuck at this point, he seems to be an experiment to see what happens if they pair a really charismatic actor with a character who's a bit of a dick. But any time he was in a scene with Apollo or Boomer he was great. Plus I liked like how the characters weren't perfect. Well okay Apollo is kind of perfect, but even Adama kind of has to pull himself back together as a leader over the course of the movie. When Caprica was attacked he basically abandoned his post to check on his wife. He didn't stand up to Sire Uri as much as he could've. In fact he arguably could've prevented the Cylon trap if he'd been more persuasive with his arguments than Baltar was. His flaws make him a more believable character and Lorne Greene is able to sell his depression and doubt while still making him a commander you'd want to follow. Though Adama's literally named after the Hebrew word for 'Earth', so he was basically born for this job.

Adama's great, Tigh's great. Cassiopeia's great, the woman running Galactica's communications was great, I liked basically everyone. Well, almost everyone. All I could think of whenever Boxey was on screen was writer J. Michael Straczynski's ban on cute kids appearing on Babylon 5. To be fair it's hard to think of much of anything when someone's yelling "MUFFIT, MUFFIT, MUFFIT, MUFFIT!" while running off into whatever direction the danger is. And putting a chimpanzee into a robot costume just isn't right. Don't do that.

Baltar was a good villain too. He's an incredibly shallow moustache twirler, selling out 12 planets just because he wants one for himself, but John Colicos nails it. Though it's hard to say that his role in humanity's annihilation was all that crucial. The plan seems to have been: step 1 - trick humanity into bringing all its ships into one place, step 2 - attack everyone and everywhere simultaneously with overwhelming force. They destroyed all the battlestars without even needing a single baseship, and probably would've gotten Galactica as well if it hadn't driven away to try to singlehandedly save Caprica without any fighter squadrons. All the trap achieved was to get the battlestars to delay launching fighters for five minutes. I suppose that must have been enough. I'm just glad they didn't kill Baltar off in the final version, as his role in the story feels very incomplete.

Saga of a Star World is a bit of a mixed bag really. Sometimes it's all action, sometimes it was boring me to tears, sometimes it's about Lorne Greene or John Colicos stealing the screen, sometimes it's about a kid chasing a chimp dressed up as a dog. I don't think it holds together all that great as a movie, but some of the individual scenes do hold up and I think I probably would've carried on watching the series back in 1978, if I'd been born. Maybe I'll keep watching it now, I'm not sure yet.

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NEXT EPISODE

Next on Sci-Fi Adventures, it's Babylon 5's Meditations on the Abyss.

Okay I'm done writing about Battlestar Galactica for now. It's your turn. Let me know what you think about this epic conclusion and the movie overall.