This is quite possibly the worst TV series ever made. After Battlestar Galactica failed, ABC attempted a spinoff series using the premise of the Galactica finding Earth. With that concept in mind, they could have done anything! Instead, the decision was made to downgrade the viewing audience to 8-10 year-olds. In doing so, they committed three big mistakes:
1) It cost them the faithful viewers they already had.
2) The time-slot was inappropriate for such viewers, since most children would already be in bed.
3) Children who do watch TV science fiction wanted simple storylines with lots of action, which Galactica 1980 did not provide, thus alienating the ones who did tune in.
Compounding these problems was the loss of popular characters established in the previous series, moralizing scripts with thinly-veiled lectures on political correctness and environmentalism, and sloppy editing. There was also the problem (freuquently encountered in science fiction) of 'deus ex machina'; the god out of the machine--the idea that all problems can be solved with superior technology. This put the Galactican humans in the position of being moralizing gods trying to correct the wayward, Earth-bound humans. Either Executive Producer Glen Larson was unaware of this problem, or he didn't care about it, because nearly all scripts fell into this trap and never climbed out.
Universal has never released Galactica 1980 on either tape or DVD, and it's a good thing, because no one will buy or rent it. If you do, you'll be sorry! It is terrible!
1) It cost them the faithful viewers they already had.
2) The time-slot was inappropriate for such viewers, since most children would already be in bed.
3) Children who do watch TV science fiction wanted simple storylines with lots of action, which Galactica 1980 did not provide, thus alienating the ones who did tune in.
Compounding these problems was the loss of popular characters established in the previous series, moralizing scripts with thinly-veiled lectures on political correctness and environmentalism, and sloppy editing. There was also the problem (freuquently encountered in science fiction) of 'deus ex machina'; the god out of the machine--the idea that all problems can be solved with superior technology. This put the Galactican humans in the position of being moralizing gods trying to correct the wayward, Earth-bound humans. Either Executive Producer Glen Larson was unaware of this problem, or he didn't care about it, because nearly all scripts fell into this trap and never climbed out.
Universal has never released Galactica 1980 on either tape or DVD, and it's a good thing, because no one will buy or rent it. If you do, you'll be sorry! It is terrible!