I used to watch this show when I was a kid - they started to run it when I was 8 or 9, back in 1981 or 1982 - and I loved it! Along with "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century", it was my favorite show. The special effects were amazing (for that time), the stories were engaging and the characters were the stuff of legends - I wanted to be like Starbuck when I grew up! I used to dream of flying a viper and even built a makeshift one myself. Unlike other science fiction TV shows, this one aged very well and is still very watchable. I bought the DVD set four years ago and had quite a good time re-watching this true classic. Recommended for all lovers of good science fiction. They don't make them like this one anymore. P.S.: I also watched the 2004 remake of this series, and even though it was an amazing show, it had very little to do with the original. It was darker and violent, certainly not something a kid of 8 or 9 could watch - like I watched the original when I was that age. If I had to chose between the two, I would chose the original.

The Original 1978 Battlestar Galactica TV Series has copped a panning compared to the vastly superior 2004 "gritty reboot".To rate the original series fairly you need to understand not what it is like now, but what it was like then.In 1978 we had never seen anything like it. We had "Star Wars" the year before, but that was just 2 hours and 15 minutes in a cinema, and it was three years until the next one.Battlestar Galactica offered us the same thing on TV every week. Girls didn't much care, but boys went crazy. Battles in space, every week! What's not to like?After an impressive opening the show took a dive. Apparently intent on attracting a family viewing, they de-emphasized war-in-space and started copying other shows. The Dirty Dozen... in space. High Noon... in space. Murder She Wrote... in space.Adults weren't fooled and didn't watch anyway. Half-way through "The Living Legend" offered some respite, but Kids wondered what happened to their space opera.Towards the end they switched back to science fiction. We got a string of very good shows such as "War of the Gods", "Experiment on Terra" and "Greetings from Earth". This was good sci-fi and what we'd wanted to watch all along. But by then the ratings had fallen and although still good, not enough to justify the show's huge budget. After just one season the show was axed.The acting wasn't up to much, but I doubt kids noticed or cared. Lorne Greene made a great Adama; a warmer and more loving fatherly figure than the reboot's Edward James Olmos (awesome, but in a different way). They replayed the same special effects shots every week, but they were spectacular nonetheless. The production design was camp, but in the 70's people wanted mindless escapism. They didn't want the gritty realism we see in today's sci-fi dramas.One thing teenager boys were heartbroken over was the disappearance of Maren Jensen as Adama's daughter Athena. We never forgave Starbuck for dumping her for Laurette Spang's character of Cassiopea. Why? Why? Why?As I rate shows on IMDb I realize the futility of a ratings system. It depends on who is watching, and when they were watching it. I'll try anyway:A kid in 1978: 8 / 10. An adult in 1978: 5 / 10. A kid in 2013: 4 / 10. An adult in 2013: 2 / 10. An adult watching only the better episodes in 2013: 8 / 10.Unless you're in nostalgia mode and really want to watch everything I recommend you only watch the better episodes: 1-5, 12-13, 15-16, 19-20, 22-24.

Having enjoyed the recent reimagining of Battlestar Galatica I was discussing it with a colleague when he brought up the original and I realised that I had not seen it for several decades and, even then, it was fragmented in my memory. I decided to watch it again and I was quite surprised by how much I remember some of the episodes and how I don't think I had ever seen some of the others. Anyway, this was reason enough to watch it from the start to the end – a decision made easier by the fact that it was only one season long before it got cancelled.To get the comparisons out of the way, watching both leaves me in little doubt that those that trash the remake and praise the original are probably heavily influenced by protective nostalgia when they say that, because there are few ways that this is the case. Indeed the ways that the original is "better" than the remake relates to qualities that I didn't like in the original and that the remake didn't try and have (namely a swashbuckling comedy and the clumsy aim at the family/kiddie viewing sector). With that more or less done I can concentrate on judging the original Battlestar Galatica on its own terms and not against something else. This produces a mixed feeling that I struggle to reconcile because at times this series is awful and at others times it is actually quite engaging and offers potential (that it admittedly doesn't manage to deliver on) but mostly it is a mixed bag.The split is not total but the series does seem to go through phases where it is silly and for kids and then also more dramatic stuff that could have been a solid backbone for more. Sadly it gets into the silly stuff first. While Apollo and Starbuck were always going to be the lead characters, the first half of the season makes it their show, with a weekly "theme park" style story where we have planets that are like the Wild West or like Medieval times etc etc. Annoyingly all these stories seem to involve the Cylons – who are either already on these planets or are using these planets as a trap for the Galatica. This bugged me because it felt like the Cylons were so far ahead all the time that the struggle to watch the survivors shouldn't be this hard and it minimised their presence as a real tangible threat because they were always a handful of robots laying a trap, not a race hunting another to extension. None of it is helped by the overuse of that child and also that bl00dy robot dog thing.Happily things get a bit more "serious" in the second half of the series, where the approach appears to be more towards action and plot rather than the kiddie theme park approach. It doesn't really pull this off though. The Cylons drop off the map for many episodes while the Eastern Alliance comes into it, but then that thread isn't done particularly well either. That said though it did generally make for a much better series than the first half had been – but it is still not that great. It is the contentment with the basics that hurt it, because nothing really convinces and nothing really engages or builds. The Cylons don't menace like they should, the human fleet doesn't feel like it is more than a handful of people, many, many threads are left with unsatisfying endings (and I mean mi-series, not just cause it got cancelled) while other threads just "stop" without a thought for the viewer, as if to say "well, that's that episode filled". The Pegasus episodes along with the Eastern Alliance and other specifics do offer a more grown up thread/feel that could be expanded like the remake did to great success but this never happens and it retains a very fragmented and unsatisfying feel.There is much to enjoy about it despite this. The effects are limited but the designs are great, with the centurions, the base stars, the vipers or the Galatica herself being iconic and memorable. The comic swagger it has also works well, with Starbuck benefiting from this with some nice moments in the action. Such things as these combined with the better aspects of the second half of the series do combine to make it a solid enough piece of TV sci-fi but the "downsides" do limit it a lot and make it less than it could have been. The mix of aims, the lack of consistency in the central plot (escaping genocide) and in the tone (is it for kids, it is for adults, is it a comedy, is it all worthy and heavy??) are too big to overcome and, as a whole series it is not that great when you sit now and watch it with as little "warm nostalgic glow" as you can muster. Has good episodes and bad episodes but too many fall somewhere in the middle, showing a potential that frustratingly it never really seems to realise or do anything with.

I didn't catch this in its first run. I'm not really certain why: I was seven at the time,getting drawn into anything SciFi(well,OK,mostly "Buck Rogers",but I was becoming familiar with "Star Trek" and "Star Wars",too),and this show had anything and everything that Sci-Fi was supposed to have:space ships of every kind,lasers,droids,warp engines,planetary systems,galaxies,humanity versus menacing technology and/or aliens,etc.What I DO know is that when this show was off the air for a little over a year,I ran across this in syndication(one season on the air and syndication! I never knew that could happen before)on a Kansas City independent TV station(back when those existed)and I was intrigued. A year or two later,and that same station re-ran the shows on Saturday afternoons and I was hooked. Never mind the cheesy,superficial dialog,or semi-pretentious character motivations or plot lines,this show had a compelling story(i.e. rag-tag group of survivors from a distant planet inhabited by HUMANS,who escaped annihilation from a group of overdeveloped droids,seeking an outreaching,possibly mythic land of relative peoples...wait for it...EARTH!),a regal theme song(Thank you Los Angeles Philharmonic!)and a fertile though line for the show's run(see the last part of the first quality). A largely handsome cast(among them Richard Hatch,Dirk Benedict,Terry Carter,Laurette Spang,Sarah Rush,Maren Jensen,Herb Jefferson jr.)headed by none other than Lorne Greene are able to make the action move along with the swiftness necessary of any good action-adventure series. I'd wondered,for some years after I'd first watched this,why the show had only one season's worth of shows(also,how come a handful of eps where the said group of humans actually make it TO Earth is somehow MIA)when it seemed to have great reception AND managed to secure a cult history of fan following. Then I ran across a 2000 SciFi network 'behind the Series" documentary about the show,and it gave me all I needed to know. The show,despite its very strong ratings and reasonably good reception,simply ran out of money to continue producing their episodes which,for their day,were quite high tech. Plus,the network,ABC,didn't seem to be particularly willing to bankroll anything Science fiction,so minus backing,the show's producers had to fold,re-configuring briefly with "Galactica 1980" before completely dissolving.In short,a fantastic little sci-fi project whose aspirations were pretty high for its time. The series that was re-imagined for SciFi network six years ago has plenty of advantages that this show didn't have(I still have yet to see it,but I hear it's very good),but this one lays out great groundwork. If I run across these shows again,I think I just might give it another look.