Greatest salesman ever
First he mines the Star Wars craze to sell the 1978 version of Battlestar Galactica. The original, an excellent example of how lame 1970s television could be, combined metal robots, wooden actors and leaden dialogue to produce one season of sci-fi camp that included an episode where a human pilot had a high-noon showdown with a fast-draw robot.
It didn’t last long, but it didn’t have to:
The intrepid Lawson manages to convince Universal Studios to greenlight Galactica 1980, which featured a few of the actors from the original series and a two-part episode in which the Galactica crew had to save Wolfman Jack from the Cylons.
Link added to original because frankly I couldn’t believe it either.
At that point, the premise should have been deader than The Star Wars Holiday Special. But no:
But wait! Come 2003, and we find humans and Cylons duking it out once again, over on the Sci-Fi Channel, in what is going to become one of the best and best-reviewed shows on television, and certainly a high-water mark for that network.
That series has now run its course. Are we done with Larson and Galactica? You’d have to be out of your frakkin’ mind to think so:
Larson the Magnificent is at it again! He’s in talks with Universal Studios, his old friends, about a big-screen version of Battlestar Galactica! This new version will not have anything in common with the re-imagined Sci-Fi Channel version, but will draw from the original series idea.
All this supports the case for the Four Preps (!) as major cultural influence: the very same Glen A. Larson was a member, and so was the late Ed Cobb, who went on to write iconic tunes like “Dirty Water” and “Tainted Love.”
CT »
3 March 2009 · 1:02 pm
So, to keep a neat parallel from the ’70s intact, you’re saying that this new, latter-day version would have the crew save Opie & Anthony from the Cyclons?