Lucky finally watches BSG: TOS! Heavy Drinking recommended!

Television, Movies Games and Books BSG-1978
#1

I have been wanting to watch the original Battlestar Galactica series for a while but have been putting it off. With this thread my goal is to watch one episode every week until I do. Anyone who wants to chime in is more than welcome to do so. I can already hear Old Timer saying “respect the classics son,” and with Pike chiming in “stop pissing on my childhood Lucky!” Do I have better things to do like studying for a test? You’re damn right I do, but I don’t want to!:smiley: Inspired by the robs post.
This week’s episode:

“Saga of a Star World”
(or… Starbuck is a man! Bug Aliens! The Cylons that couldn’t shoot straight!)

2:43 I like the look of the original battlestars and for some reason the theme song is giving me nostalgic memories of lighting my GI Joe action figures on fire.

3:55 WTF! Starbuck is a man (just kidding, I knew that)! Also in the scene with the council meeting with Adar, a person could probably make some interesting connections about how race and ethnicity were viewed at the times, i.e., the stereotypes in appearance and the white dude at the top of the food chain, if one was so inclined.

8:19 Good to see that even skilled viper pilots still need FIRE and TURBO stenciled in large friendly lettering on the throttle. It’s easy to forget.

9:51 Larry!!!

13:21 A more friendly Tigh. No utterances of “craaaap” though.

14:00 Go figure, you can’t trust Baltar, and president Adar is still an idiot.

17:00 Uh, Adar if you’ve been fighting the Cylon[z] for thousands of years (by the way interesting how they slip in out of “yahren” and “years”) don’t you think a Cylon fleet unexpectedly showing up might not be a good thing?

18:04 Well, in both series Starbuck kills Zak in a roundabout way due to negligence. Baltar runs. Had to be Larry—he always shoots down an Adama

21:25 Random Pilot: Hey starbuck, it’s dangerous around here!” [random pilot’s viper explodes] LOL

27:33 BOXEY!!! You looked a lot younger back then Boxey… Caprica looks cheesy as hell. Like someone took 70s architecture and dress and reinterpreted with some futuristic Egyptian themes.

33:00 Starbuck crash lands. I am not feeling particularly emotionally moved at the colonies bombardment yet. Well, except for when boxey’s dog died. He didn’t ask for any of this craaap.

39:12 Colonial Movers—it was a nice touch that RDM included this in the reimagining.

40:25 No question here, this Baltar is evil with a capital E.

48:00 huh. Not all the colonists speak the same language. This is actually a moving scene I thought, as Starbuck and Apollo talk to the refugees.

51:19 The rising Star—well it does look similar to the one Apollo and Starbuck shoot down in the other series.

1:00:00 intermission… to be continued. Ant aliens next week.

Frack count:0
Baltar’s self preservation kicks in:2
Hellaciouse beat downs with metal pipes:0
Larry Sightings: 2

Last thought for the first hour: it’s interesting how Commander Adama is both the military and political leader. Very smart move by RDM to essentially break this character into Bill Adama and Laura Roslin.

#2

Oh this is fun.

Isn’t Jane Seymour hot?

#3

Yup.

Baltar.

#4

Yeah. Those were very smart moves.

#5

51:19 The rising Star—well it does look similar to the one Apollo and Starbuck shoot down in the other series.

But…but…but that was the Olympic Carrier! I just watched that episode last night!

#6

wow, Lucky! I’m impressed! unfortunately the cheese gets cheesier from here.

#7

Just wait till he gets to “Fire in Space,” “The Gun on Ice Planet Zero” (or whatever it was called) or that whole Count Iblis arc. Cheese…with corn!

#8

I had the novelization of “Gun on Ice Planet Zero.” good story. bad script, bad acting, bad costumes, bad hair…

#9

Yup. The rising star is the prison ship in the new series if I am not mistaken, but in the TOS it looks just like the Olympic Carrier.

I had heard as much. That’s why I included heavy drinking recommended in the title. I can put up with the cheesier stuff—I just imagine I am on MST3K, and it does add unintentional humor to the show. I’ll be honest. I have had the series sitting on my shelf for about a year, and I have only seen “Saga of a Star World.” I figured it was time to make the plunge. By the way, what kind of a title is that? Unless I bumped my head on the ground during that particular class, don’t all planet have a star, which would make “star world” a bit redundant. And the Egyptian style helmets are freaking me out, but I will cover that and the ant aliens(!) next week.

#10

Don’t forget about the singer with two heads.

#11

Actually, the Rising Star is some sort of resort ship–apparently not as nice as Cloud Nine, but in Colonial Day, Ellen Tigh pulls some strings to get herself and the hub a couple days in a suite over there. I always remember the prison ship’s name because it’s rather…unfortunate: the Astral Queen.

Yay! Are you going to do a “By Your Command” count along with the “frak” count?

33:00 Starbuck crash lands. I am not feeling particularly emotionally moved at the colonies bombardment yet. Well, except for when boxey’s dog died. He didn’t ask for any of this craaap.

Whoa, TOS actually went darker than the new series on one point, killing a dog instead of saving Jake against all odds (and a food shortage)?

Thanks for posting your reactions, Lucky; I feel like I’m watching the show vicariously through you, thus saving me the trouble of actually enduring the cheese myself.

#12

The MST3K approach really helps once you get past the pilot and Lloyd Bridges as commander of the Pegasus (seriously, I thought those two were pretty good episodes). Other than that, and despite my reverence for all things old - such as myself - the best one can say is that TOS was better than BSG 1980 - and not as good as Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (starring Richard Basehart and David Hedison) - which I seem to be the only one to recall and routinely throw into the mix.

By the way, the devil is in the details, and my favorite cheesy detail from TOS is the fact that gravity from an unknown source appears to exert its pull on the rocket flame from the Vipers. (If only they had added smoke too.)

#13

Oh wow!! You rock Lucky!! This is a excellent idea. When the BSG 1/2 season 4 ended earlier this year, I pushed for the idea of a BSG:TOS rewatch. I thot it would be so fun to compare and poke fun at it. But I think the general feeling, voiced by ChuSeanDra was that it was too cheesy and unwatchable.
But I still like the idea.
Like a lot of over 40 GWCers I watched BSG TOS at the impressionable pre-teen age. But even though I do feel some deep nostalgia for it, I have NO problem making fun of it.
It’s available on Hulu I believe, correct?

#14

Yes it is.

#15

Can’t wait until you get to The Living Legend, Part I and II. The stuff with commander Cain and the Pegasus was some of my favorite the old show.

#16

See my post just above. Now, if they had wanted to made a good movie, they would have combined the pilot and The Living Legend instead of the Star Wars cantina rejects and The Mole People.

#17

It would have been great if the series had gone on longer and we could have seen the second return of the Pegasus.

#18

Commander of the Pegasus and father of The Dude. Wow. Lloyd Bridges had it all.

#19

Your wish is my command …der.

#20

Piss away. There’s more good stuff in there than people tend to remember, but there’s a lot of cheese as well.