A bunch of shiny round things about a search for a shining beacon called Earth? Count me in. Though my somewhat jaded adulthood has made me question at times whether or not Battlestar Galactica was even remotely original or engaging in any way, there's something about just watching the show that makes all of that skepticism melt away. For its time - 1978, only a year and a few months after a little movie called Star Wars raised the bar on what science fiction should look like in a motion picture medium - Battlestar Galactica was the pinnacle of television SF in the 70s to many viewers. Its effects alone stole the crown from Space: 1999, Blake's 7 and Doctor Who, and it reeled fans of literary SF in with the ambitious promise - one not always paid off - of an over-arching storyline spanning the entire series.

And how could you go wrong with this cast? Lorne Greene as the compassionate, no-nonsense patriarchal leader of the fleet, winsome Richard Hatch as the sensitive-but-tough Captain Apollo, rascally Dirk Benedict as that vaguely Han-Solo-esque scoundrel flying ace Starbuck, Terry Carter as the perpetually-concerned Colonel Tigh, John Colicos as the double-crossing Baltar, and, for cryin' out loud, the queen of made-for-TV movies herself, Jane Seymour. And they had daggits. Who among us, growing up and watching Battlestar Galactica, didn't want a robotic daggit? Fetch that, K-9.

This 6-DVD set, four discs of which are double-sided (oy vey, don't get me started on the potential scratch hazards of double-sided DVDs - I had to get a replacement for the sixth disc), collects the original 3-hour pilot movie (in its TV form, not the edited-down theatrical form, though that's available separately) and all of the first season's hour-long episodes. With the subtitle of "the complete epic series," it's easy to see that the ill-fated, ill-conceived, allegedly-lower-budget Galactica: 1980 series is not considered official - by Universal Studios (until they quietly get around to releasing that), by Glen Larson, and by just about every self-respecting fan out there. Hence, this, the first season of Galactica, is it. Added to sweeten the pot are several featurettes examining the ideas behind the show, the making of the music, the how-did-they-do-that wonder of the 1970s that was the aforementioned robo-daggit (the answer: it was a trained monkey in a suit!), and a fond look back with the series stars. Hatch, Benedict and Herbert "Boomer" Jefferson Jr. provide a lively, very informative and very funny commentary for the pilot movie, talking about the audition process, the series' always-uncertain future and constant retooling (I had forgotten that Maren Jensen and Noah Hathaway vanished for the last several episodes of the season), and more. Every time Hatch breathes a word about trying to revive Galactica, his two fellow alumni descend upon him like wolves, heckling him good-naturedly. (Benedict later shows his true colors though: he gets ribbed for fessing up to owning a full set of the Galactica trading cards. Lucky dog!) And despite it all, they're ready for that reunion by the end of the show. There's no end of praise for co-stars, especially Lorne Greene, and there's also much discussion of the show being both a relic of its time, and going against the grain for its time. And they're right, it really is both.

The menus are a simple, standardized affair, applying a nice "shine-through-stained glass" effect to a montage of some of the show's better space battle and character scenes. In a way, I'm glad this was done with the menu, instead of what I had expected (I figured CGI Vipers and Cylon raiders were a sure bet). However, where the visual quality of the shows themselves are concerned, time has not been kind. No clean-up has been attempted on the "space exterior" scenes, and as those pieces of film were reused relentlessly as stock footage in future episodes, they wind up looking like relentlessly-reused film - surprisingly fuzzy and glaring in many cases. The live-action footage from the soundstages, paradoxically, is crisp, clear and clean. So don't expect any miracles of remastering here.

And the stories? They have their highs and their lows. They show off too many hallmarks and clichès of 1970s TV to keep count of. And behind it all, there is an intriguing backstory - Glen Larson did work some of this out in his head beforehand, and it works in quite a few places. I was surprised to be reminded of this so forcefully, especially when so many assumed that Galactica and its Glen Larsons Productions stablemate, Buck Rogers In The 25th Century, were the targets of J. Michael Straczynski's steadfast "no cute kids or robots!" mantra when Babylon 5 was in production - and yet, here Galactica is, paving the way for SF TV story arcs, albeit very, very clumsily.

Where it really starts falling apart at the seams is in the last third of the season, when the Cylons abruptly disappear because it was literally too expensive to assemble more costumes and shoot any new optical shots of their ships. This is when stuff like Fire In Space kicked in, in which stock-footage Cylon ships mounted a kamikaze raid on the Galactica, portions of which then proceeded to burn out of control - not unlike, oh, say, footage borrowed from the Universal-owned movie The Towering Inferno. The rot really sets in with the two-hour Greetings From Earth, where some money was spent, but it's easy to see that some changes were being made, and a new, less expensive adversary introduced in the jackbooted, stock-Nazi-uniformed Eastern Alliance - Greetings almost smacks of being a "second pilot," trying to push the show in a different direction and hoping no one will notice. A mere two episodes later, in the Bellisario-penned Experiment In Terra, the space Nazis turn into nuke-launching space Soviets - and Bellisario lays out the basic premise of Quantum Leap, with Richard Hatch filling the function later performed by Scott Bakula. That's right, Leapers - an episode of Battlestar Galactica was the prototype for Quantum Leap. We finally get the Cylons back in the season finale...but of course by then, it was too little, and a few "centons" too late.

In retrospect, I still like Blake's 7 and Doctor Who better. And I still think that, Larson's elaborate background work aside, Galactica was still a shameless cash-in on Star Wars mania. But Battlestar Galactica is, for the most part, still better than I remember it - and this box set is a nice reminder of the happy slot this show held in my fond childhood memories. Oh, and one last word - the design of the box itself is beyond merely cool, but it's very bulky in terms of shelf space. Is it worth it? Heck yeah. I'm so glad the miniseries remake is coming out - because I'm grateful it inspired Universal to get off their butts, cash in and release the original.

Reviewed by Earl Green
theLogBook.com webmaster / editor-in-chief