One of the first TV Shows I can ever say that I was passionate over was Battlestar Galactica. It is a simple story of people who have been driven from their own world and are seeking out the "mythical" planet called Earth. I was 11 years old when it first premiered. I am now 34 and I can still say it is one of my favorite shows of all time. That may seem strange to some, considering it was a series that lasted only one year and took place more than twenty years ago, but let's look at a few things:

1) The Characters - We had the all-knowing patriarch, Adama; the hero, Apollo, the "reluctant hero" Starbuck, the hooker-turned-medic Cassiopeia, two very different daughters of Commanders in Athena and Sheba; Boomer who was a pilot but dabbled in various electronics and communications; and the evil treacherous villain Baltar. Part of what I think has helped the show endure is that the actors seemed to put their heart and soul into these characters. Oftentimes it seemed that the actors knew more about their characters than the writers.

2) Great Stories - While every episode may not have been a memorable one, this is the first show that I can remember seeing the beginnings of a storyline arc in the one and only season. We start out with a tale of the ultimate betrayal and destruction of all that they know and we are shown true human resilience in that they dust themselves off and attempt to find a solution. The characters are portrayed fairly consistent, with exceptions in only one or two episodes. Most of the best episodes were written by Donald Bellesario who would go on to write Quantum Leap.

3) Religion - Glen Larson brought in much of his Mormon background to the religious aspect of this show, and the spirituality is something a follower of just about any religion can relate to.

4) Special Effects - The show premiered not too long after Star Wars and the first of the Star Trek movies. On a budget for a television show, they managed to produce quite a few well-executed effects. Sure, you'll see the same footage being reused from one episode to another, but taking into account what they had to work with, it's truly amazing. This was before CGI. Most of the effects are done with models, bluescreen, and painting the images onto the film after they were done shooting.

5) The Internet - Some of you are probably going "Huh? I didn't know the Internet was around then." Well, it wasn't. When ABC canceled the show after one season, many of the fans were left hanging. We had storyline we wanted to see developed, characters we wanted to know better, and gaps we wanted filled in. For myself, I began to write my own series of stories that filled this in for me. Fast-forward a few years and I come across websites such as www.kobol.com and discover that I am not the only one who is still a big fan of the show. There are websites devoted to other fan-fic (as I soon found out what I had been doing was called) from the series that adapted the episodes and that built on the characterizations that had begun so long ago.

The fan base for this show is still out there, and hungry for more, which has led to a constant stream of revival rumors for about the last five years. Richard (Apollo) Hatch even made a movie-style trailer to help promote his efforts to revive the series, and it has been well-received.

All in all, I'd say that a show that lasted only one season so long ago had a lot going for it, and still does. ABC made a big mistake letting it go!


© 2000 Patti Aliventi

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