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Flamingo Girl
May 10th, 2003, 04:47 PM
An alien spacecraft is discovered by Starbuck and Apollo on patrol. It contains six human fugitives in suspended animation--possibly from the planet Earth. Tension amongst the fleet at the prospects of brethren from Earth rises. In time, the humans are revealed to be from Terra, a Colonial-like world. They are journeying to Paradeen (a nearby colony world) to escape the threat of the Eastern Alliance, a Terran faction with a ruthlessness akin to the Cylons. Starbuck, Cassiopeia and Apollo finish the journey with the Terrans, hoping to find clues to the location of Earth. But the Eastern Alliance pursues the ship to Paradeen, where more troubles ensue.


Series stars; Richard Hatch as Apollo, Dirk Benedict as Starbuck, Herb Jefferson Jr. as Boomer, Lorne Greene as Adama, Terry Carter as Colonel Tigh, Maren Jensen as Athena, Tony Swartz as Jolly, Laurette Spang as Cassiopia, Noah Hathaway as Boxey, Sarah Rush as Rigel, David Greenan as Omega, Anne Lockhart as Sheba, Jack Stauffer as Bojay, Larry Manetti as Giles, Ed Begley, Jr. as Greenbean, and John Colicos as Baltar.

Ray Bolger as Vector, Randolph Mantooth as Michael, Kelly Harmon as Sarah, Murray Matheson as Geller, Lesley Woods as Aggie Moreland, Frank Marth as Josh Moreland, Curt Lowens as Krebbs, Lloyd Bochner as Commandant Leiter, Bobby Van as Hector, Gary Vinson as Doyle, Alex Rodine as Lanceman, Lester Fletcher as Donner, Michelle Larson as Charity, Gillian Greene as Melanie, Eric Larson as Todd, Kimberly Woodward as Loma, David Larson as Walker, Donald Mantooth as the medtech, and Ron Kelly as Reese.

(Thanks to Michael Faries Battlestar Galactica.com (http://www.battlestargalactica.com/about/index.html ))

kingfish
July 10th, 2003, 12:55 PM
This one is perhaps the worst one ever made. The Eastern Alliance couldn't fight their way out of a paper bag. The ship the Earthlings/Terrans were on was from Buck Rogers In The 25TH Century. This episode was the beginning of the end of a great concept. Hector and Vector at least knew the difference between the genders however. I also noticed that this 2 hour episode had the opening narration by Patrick Macnee included in it. Larson was hoping for a spin-off series.

skippercollecto
July 23rd, 2003, 12:45 PM
There is an unidentified voice in this episode that perhaps one of you can identify. When the Terrans' ship begins to enter Paradeen's atmosphere, its computer and the computer on the ground begin to communicate with each other. The one computer voice (I think it's the ship's) states a phrase that includes the term "lunar par avion.")
Whose voice does this belong to? I know where I've heard it before--it's the voice of the narrator and various aliens in Lost in Space. However, I know the voice does not belong to either Jonathan Harris or Bob May. Do any of you know who recorded this brief line?

Mary

Charybdis
August 14th, 2003, 10:11 AM
When checking over the systems on the Terran ship, Dr. Salik says that the instruments have strange symbols and language that they have never seen before...yet, when they open the cases, Michael comes out and immediately starts talking English to them!!!!!

shiningstar
August 14th, 2003, 06:29 PM
I really didn't like this episode as much as I liked the others.
And I GROANED .........when the girl said ........OH AMnesia......
and apollo said ......something like "Amnesia what a pretty name."

kingfish
August 15th, 2003, 12:17 PM
Originally posted by shiningstar
I really didn't like this episode as much as I liked the others.
And I GROANED .........when the girl said ........OH AMnesia......
and apollo said ......something like "Amnesia what a pretty name."


That was not in this episode but the one titled Experiment In Terra.

shiningstar
August 19th, 2003, 06:14 PM
I didn't like that one either ........those two episodes were
so bad ........that I still even to this day get them mixed up.

Thanks for clearing up my mixup Kingfish.

Oscar
December 16th, 2003, 04:37 AM
I really liked the elements of the story that take place on the Galactica, although it that part is obviously padded out with a lot of fluff. The second part where they go to Paradine is an absulte disaster, an appallingly bad, confused mess.

Domiano
December 16th, 2003, 04:50 AM
We can lay blame everywhere on both of those episodes. I believe it was crunch time and some scripts were good in concept and when filming began due to the shooting schedule things got botched. After Murder on The Rising Star things became really chaotic and unperdictable. I agree that the ship and some of the settings were later used in Buck Rogers.

Darth Marley
December 21st, 2003, 06:34 AM
I saw this episode over the summer.
Brings back memories.Not all of them good.

This episode,IMO, really set the stage for G80.
The silliness factor of H & V has me in hysterical convulsions.
Not even Crow T Robot and Tom Servo include these droids in their prayers.A break that at least Twiki got.

shiningstar
January 11th, 2004, 06:59 PM
Me too Domiano.

spot778
January 29th, 2004, 10:52 AM
It had two great things for me.

1) Ralph Mantooth : coming home from school and watching Emergency right after Star Trek was the norm.

2)The city sequences were shot in MONTREAL, CANADA !!!!!

WARDAGGIT73
February 14th, 2004, 10:18 AM
***

The VAcant city scenes with Hector and Starbuck is amazing, the Eastern Alliance are silly Villains, and it seems a bit lightweight in the end, but it has enjoyable moments, Part ! is slightly better on story, but part 2 have those amazing city scapes....

warhammerdriver
March 2nd, 2004, 06:50 PM
MONTREAL, CANADA

Pity we gave that city back to the Brits after the War of 1812. :D

shiningstar
March 3rd, 2004, 05:25 PM
There is an unidentified voice in this episode that perhaps one of you can identify. When the Terrans' ship begins to enter Paradeen's atmosphere, its computer and the computer on the ground begin to communicate with each other. The one computer voice (I think it's the ship's) states a phrase that includes the term "lunar par avion.")
Whose voice does this belong to? I know where I've heard it before--it's the voice of the narrator and various aliens in Lost in Space. However, I know the voice does not belong to either Jonathan Harris or Bob May. Do any of you know who recorded this brief line?

Mary

The narrater as stated above was Patrick MCnee. The same one
who played Count Iblis.

At least I think it was. :wtf: I'm not sure.

launchcruiser7
March 18th, 2004, 01:31 PM
hector ?vector dance 50 people on planet star destoryers but nothing on fleet long range scaners the worst two parter of the bunch sould have been a single more about the western side navy interceptors or larger ships no defensive ring around there star by are they in for a supise when 5 baseships show up even if they have mthe over 1000 destoryers they claim other bad shows had acting or great geust stars like warriors deer skin skirt or patols eyes of starbuckin last one id show a freind about battlestar :thumbsup: :warrior: :cool: :salute: launchcruiserhawkeye ready for deployment

skippercollecto
March 22nd, 2004, 06:55 PM
You learn the name of another one of Boxey's classmates in one of the deleted scenes on the DVD. In one scene, Athena looks down to her left and addresses a boy as "Cyril." If you go back and watch the actual episode, there are several shots of the entire classroom, and you will see in the front row, to Athena's left, is a little boy with very blond hair. This is Cyril, but he is uncredited in the listings.

skippercollecto
March 22nd, 2004, 06:57 PM
In the closing credits, there is an actor named Lester Fletcher listed as playing a character named "Donner." Which one was he in the episode? No one is called by that name in any of the scenes of the episode.

Mary

skippercollecto
March 23rd, 2004, 04:22 AM
Much has been discussed about this episode being Maren Jensen's last appearance in the series--that she'd been fired, that she wanted to return to modeling, the other actors weren't aware that she wasn't part of the series anymore, etc. But what I've never seen discussion of is that this was also Noah Hathaway's last appearance. When I've been to conventions, the other actors haven't brought up the subject, and I didn't hear much of Noah's talk at Galacticon so I don't know what he himself had to say.
Any comments?

skippercollecto
March 23rd, 2004, 06:04 PM
In the scene where Lunar Shuttle Avion (Michael's ship) is about to land on Paradeen, a computer on the ground communicates with the ship's computer. This voice is very familiar, yet I don't know the name of the man who provides it. Do any of you know?
The voice says, "Paradeen Control Center to Lunar Shuttle Avion." It's the same voice that announces the arrival of aliens on numerous episodes of "Lost in Space." I am sure that some of you out there who are "Lost in Space" fans will be able to identify whose voice this is, but I don't think it is either Jonathan Harris or Bob May.

Mary

Eric Paddon
March 24th, 2004, 01:17 AM
I just sat through more than one viewing of this episode to do one of my usual fanfic adaptations, and time and again I keep marveling at how this episode, along with the others in the Terra Trilogy, suffer from an appalling case of poor writing structure. It wasn't until I watched the scenes slowly and had to back up again and again to do the adapting that I finally realized the big problem. Larson is credited as sole writer of this episode, along with EIT, and I think it is very obvious that he never had his script looked over by McDonnell and Carlson or someone else to polish it up. As Executive Producer, I think Larson likely had leeway to let his scripts be done without major fine-tuning and it really shows in both GFE and EIT.

Case in point is the whole pointless sidebar matter of the Morelands. They're introduced late in the game to be a red herring for two minutes about how destroyed the vipers, then they conveniently serve as a way for everyone to get out of the city fast. Then, there's the peculiar jump of going from this distant city to Apollo and Starbuck sliding down off the rooftops to take out these Alliance guards without so much as a single scene or line of them explaining what their plan is going to be! A little less time of Starbuck and Hector yakking as they wandered through Expo 67s ruins and a little more development of this point would have been welcome.

And another gripe of mine writing wise in the first half when it seems like everyone on the Galactica and the Fleet keeps referring to the Terrans as "children" as though it's an entire gorup of them. Hello? Didn't they see Michael the fully-grown male? Count the number of times the word "children" and "babies" are uttered in part one some time and how often they're used in a wrong context when referring to the entire group and you'll see what I mean.

But if the writing is poor what really sabotages the episode is the abysmal acting of Kelly Harmon, especially regarding her attempts to get Apollo to stay and her flat delivery when she confesses to sabotaging the vipers. If you want to know why she had to earn her living in Tic Tac commercials, those scenes are it!

Larson I think was so desperate to do something different from what had become the Galactica norm that he just didn't stop to think about whether this was a quality way of doing it. That alone is why I think most people tend not to think highly of the Terra Trilogy. Not only is it such a radical departure, but it isn't executed well at all.

Senmut
March 30th, 2004, 11:30 PM
Actually, I liked the EIT eps. They showed that BSg could do more than slug it out with the Cylons this week. Could it have been better? Hell yeah, but then so could alot of things. These eps are actually quite good, and far outshine TMW.

Eric Paddon
March 31st, 2004, 12:10 AM
It isn't the fact that Galactica departed from the norm with the Terra trilogy, it's the poor writing. And the reason IMO why "Magnificent Warriors" is ultimately a better episode is because it's a single episode by itself and not part of a would-be attempt at a grandiose story arc the way the Terra trilogy is. Because the Terra trilogy was Galactica's boldest attempt at doing something like that over four hours worth of episodes, then IMO they have to be held to a higher standard of writing, certainly at least on the level of other big episodes like LPOTG, LL, WOTG etc.

Senmut
March 31st, 2004, 12:31 AM
It isn't the fact that Galactica departed from the norm with the Terra trilogy, it's the poor writing. And the reason IMO why "Magnificent Warriors" is ultimately a better episode is because it's a single episode by itself and not part of a would-be attempt at a grandiose story arc the way the Terra trilogy is. Because the Terra trilogy was Galactica's boldest attempt at doing something like that over four hours worth of episodes, then IMO they have to be held to a higher standard of writing, certainly at least on the level of other big episodes like LPOTG, LL, WOTG etc.

Each and every ep has to be held to the same standard of writing, regardless of its length. I did not see the Terra Trilogy as an attempt at anything, grandiose or otherwise, beyond the next step in the Fleet's journey, and maybe an indication they were on the right course for finding the 13th Tribe. The story took longer to tell because it was a longer story. Thankfully, some NitWerk suit didn't try and have it squished into an hour, and say it was good. ABC interfered enough as it was, and all those responsible should be exiled to the empty planet with Baltar!
Yes, the writing could have been different, and a bit better done, but so could nearly all of them. I still see this as superior to TMW, in almost every respect.

Eric Paddon
March 31st, 2004, 01:21 AM
Each and every ep has to be held to the same standard of writing, regardless of its length.

Not so. A one hour story is a completely different kind of episode from a storyline spread out over 4 hours, and in this case when the stakes get raised for something higher and not a more light-hearted fare like TMW or TLP, you have to bring some higher expectations and standards in, just like one would for a LPOTG versus TMW.


I did not see the Terra Trilogy as an attempt at anything, grandiose or otherwise, beyond the next step in the Fleet's journey, and maybe an indication they were on the right course for finding the 13th Tribe.

"Hand Of God" did that a lot better in just one hour than the Terra trilogy did in four, especially since we got this padded out build-up in GFE that was then utterly dismissed in one line at the end of EIT. That is simply bad pacing when writing a story.

Yes, the writing could have been different, and a bit better done, but so could nearly all of them. I still see this as superior to TMW, in almost every respect.

"A bit" better would be an understatement. GFE was in need of a *major* re-write in terms of pacing and plotting, not to mention a serious need of recasting in most of its guest performers. At the very least, Larson should have allowed McDonnell and Carlson, his paid story editors, a crack at fixing it, or co-writing the whole story arc with Bellisario.

default
April 1st, 2004, 04:09 PM
hector ?vector dance 50 people on planet star destoryers but nothing on fleet long range scaners the worst two parter of the bunch sould have been a single more about the western side navy interceptors or larger ships no defensive ring around there star by are they in for a supise when 5 baseships show up even if they have mthe over 1000 destoryers they claim other bad shows had acting or great geust stars like warriors deer skin skirt or patols eyes of starbuckin last one id show a freind about battlestar :thumbsup: :warrior: :cool: :salute: launchcruiserhawkeye ready for deployment
how many fighters on a launchcruiser just want to know :salute:

Bombadil
April 2nd, 2004, 08:55 PM
There may have been serious flaws with the Terra episodes, but there were some good moments, too. I loved when they were piloting the captured Eastern Alliance Destroyer to the Galactica, and it slowly dawned on their defiant prisoner just how big the Galactica was. That was priceless!
:D

Crewmember
April 22nd, 2004, 12:33 PM
Were there plans to keep Terra in the series if it had continued?

Eric Paddon
April 22nd, 2004, 02:37 PM
I don't believe so. Not unless Larson was using the Terra episodes as a pilot for another kind of show altogether.

Senmut
September 17th, 2004, 11:48 PM
Were there plans to keep Terra in the series if it had continued?

Eric's right. It doesn't seem likely, since John tells Apollo that "this is not the end of your journey." They keep going, eventually finding the BaseShip which must be well beyond Terra. I think it was just a morsel of info as to where the 13th Tribe had passed, and that they were on the right track.

BRG
September 26th, 2004, 09:12 AM
This was poor. :thumbdown 1 out of 5.

For me, this episode started pretty well, but completely fell apart in the second half. I enjoyed the stuff on the Galactica. The finding of the 'Earthship', the problem with trying to safely remove them from the life tubes(I can't recall the correct term!), and the way opinion was split between those who thought they should be imidiatly removed from the tubes- led by Dr Welker, the ships scientest. And those who felt they should be freed to retuned to there original corse- led by Dr Salik, the ships CMO. This part of the episode was good, and George Murdoch was excellent as Dr Salik, probably his best episode.

But it was just awfull once they went planetside. Hector & Vector, WTF! :thumbdown Those two are the worst characters I have ever seen. I would honestly rather watch a 3 hour movie starin Jar Jar Binks & Wesley Crusher than sit through another 5 minutes with those two! I understand that the actors who played them were huge stars from Song & Dance- one othe them played the Scarecrow in 'The Wizard of Oz', but they just never worked. And I found it unbelievable that Sarah would wreck both Vipers just to keep Apollo on the planet.
The dead city was pretty cool, had a very spooky feel to it, but apart from that it was a disaster.

But I also loved the look on Leiter's face as they approched the Galactica. One great line popped into my head-" Thats no moon, thats a space station......"
Very cool! :cool:
BRG

Eric Paddon
June 25th, 2005, 10:22 PM
For those who've wondered about the Terran city location, here's a link to some pictures of Expo 67 in its prime (when Hector said the city was very beautiful!) The actual building they walked through was the US Pavilion.


http://naid.sppsr.ucla.edu/expo67/map-docs/unitedstates.htm

larocque6689
June 25th, 2005, 10:43 PM
This episode was - bar none - the worst episode of the entire series. Galactica tried and failed to come up with a new menace to replace the Cylons, the tin cans that Standards and Practices wouldn't let the writers shoot straight. It failed. The sorry Nazi/Soviet cliches of the Eastern Alliance don't date really well either, although they did resurrect "peace through strength" lines almost vertabim from an early draft of the Battlestar Galactica pilot into "Experiment in Terra".

Little kids are always a bad idea, even with Larson as their surname.

The "Young Lords" was silly but much more bearable than this. "Greetings from Earth" was probably the strongest indication yet that Galactica was devolving into something aimed just for the kids. I see ABC's hand all over this ("Hey, let's find Earth..."), as well as Larson, who was often all too willing to accede to the network's will.

It's been years since I've seen this episode, but I rate it lower than the entire Galactica 1980 series.

Senmut
June 26th, 2005, 04:19 AM
This episode was - bar none - the worst episode of the entire series. Galactica tried and failed to come up with a new menace to replace the Cylons, the tin cans that Standards and Practices wouldn't let the writers shoot straight. It failed. The sorry Nazi/Soviet cliches of the Eastern Alliance don't date really well either, although they did resurrect "peace through strength" lines almost vertabim from an early draft of the Battlestar Galactica pilot into "Experiment in Terra".

Little kids are always a bad idea, even with Larson as their surname.

The "Young Lords" was silly but much more bearable than this. "Greetings from Earth" was probably the strongest indication yet that Galactica was devolving into something aimed just for the kids. I see ABC's hand all over this ("Hey, let's find Earth..."), as well as Larson, who was often all too willing to accede to the network's will.

It's been years since I've seen this episode, but I rate it lower than the entire Galactica 1980 series.



TMW was worse. Absolutely.

skippercollecto
June 26th, 2005, 06:27 AM
I think I've finally identified the voice of Paradeen's computerized ground control--the man who says "Lunar Par Avian." I knew it was a Lost in Space voice, but I also knew that it wasn't Jonathan Harris. I believe it's the voice of Dick Tufeld, who was the voice of the Robot and was also the series narrator.
I've always wondered why he was hired to say just that one line! Perhaps Jonathan Harris suggested him?

Mary

Senmut
June 27th, 2005, 12:18 AM
Don't have that ep. Can you do an audio capture, or give a link?

bsg1fan1975
October 7th, 2005, 04:30 AM
this episode was cheesy but not as cheesy as Magnificent Warriors was.

Eric Paddon
October 7th, 2005, 09:39 AM
TMW is more tolerable from my standpoint because at least there isn't this pretension of being something bigger which GFE and the whole Terra trilogy suffers from.

Senmut
September 30th, 2006, 07:49 PM
Compared to Siress Beloby, the Terran refugee kids were Shakespearean masters. She really was just an awful idea. Especially the flowers bit. With apologies to the actress.

Eric Paddon
September 30th, 2006, 07:54 PM
Just the sight of Brett Somers in her full-blown Match Game persona is what makes her presence so jarring in that episode. I've seen her in plenty of other shows where she's just fine, but in Galactica I half-expected to see Charles Nelson Reilly as her attendant. :)

Senmut
September 30th, 2006, 08:07 PM
Lords of Kobol save us!!!!

Lyra
October 20th, 2006, 10:06 PM
Indeed this two part episode did possess that Cheesy quality, but the one part I loved about it was at the end, when Apollo and Starbuck ,capture the Eastern Alliance guys, and fly their Terra ship back to the Galactica, (Since their vipers were unflyable).

The colonial warriors do a kind of "Crocodile Dundee" line, reminescent with Paul Hogan's,"THAT'S NOT A KNIFE....THIS IS A KNIFE"!, when the Alliance Commadant boasts that only the Eastern Alliance is the most powerful in all the Universe, and then that beautiful moment arrives, when they approach the Galactica, and Apollo and Starbuck say their lines with such delightful innuendo that the Commandant's ship was a measly piece of felgercarb running around space, compared to the magnificent Battlestar........NOW THAT'S A SHIP! AND FAR MORE POWERFUL!!!! Kudos! ;) :rotf: :LOL: :coolangel :beer:
:viper: :viper2: :viper: :viper2: :viper: :viper2: :viper: :viper2: :viper:
:colonial:

skippercollecto
November 9th, 2008, 01:55 PM
Do you think that Ray Bolger found it ironic that he went from playing a scarecrow to Hector, who is essentially a tin man?!

Athene
November 11th, 2008, 07:11 AM
Do you think that Ray Bolger found it ironic that he went from playing a scarecrow to Hector, who is essentially a tin man?!

I think he did. As I recall he was given the role of the tin man originally and wanted to play the scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz.

I also really like this episode. :)

cyfilon
November 2nd, 2010, 08:19 AM
This one is perhaps the worst one ever made. The Eastern Alliance couldn't fight their way out of a paper bag. The ship the Earthlings/Terrans were on was from Buck Rogers In The 25TH Century. This episode was the beginning of the end of a great concept. Hector and Vector at least knew the difference between the genders however. I also noticed that this 2 hour episode had the opening narration by Patrick Macnee included in it. Larson was hoping for a spin-off series. this was were starbuck was first shown as a girl maybe this was where they got the idea. ps they should have backtracked and gotten those raider's left out of fuel at living legand, and used hector/vector as the basis for suicide fighter's the cylon scanner's would pick them up as robot's not human just a thought.:thumbsup::smart:

Senmut
November 27th, 2010, 04:42 PM
I confess, I liked it. Although I would have toned down the bit with the robots, it was good.
I would have explored the particulars of why Terran society was seemingly more advanced in robotics than the Colonials. Perhaps prejudices stoked by the War? Would a Cylon have recognized H&V as "fellow machines"?

skippercollecto
January 18th, 2011, 02:38 PM
Was Greetings the only episode filmed on location? In all these yahrens of following Galactica, I don't ever remember any of the cast or crew mentioning it at a convention or reading an article in a magazine or on line about filming there. Are the structures still there? Have any of you visited the location? For that matter, did any of you go, or know someone who went, to Expo 67?

jewels
February 17th, 2011, 10:57 PM
The frame for the Buckminster Fuller dome still exists:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Biosph%C3%A8re

The exteriors in SOASW of Caprica were shot in Long Beach, IIRC, night scenes at Gamoray were at a college in SoCal, I think someone said near Northridge.

Senmut
May 11th, 2011, 10:40 PM
Just the sight of Brett Somers in her full-blown Match Game persona is what makes her presence so jarring in that episode. I've seen her in plenty of other shows where she's just fine, but in Galactica I half-expected to see Charles Nelson Reilly as her attendant. :)

Shakin' my head. Can't see why you liked her Belloby so much, yet can't stand a good ep like GFE.

Apolloisall
November 18th, 2011, 03:06 PM
GFE was guilty of poor pacing more than anything else. It would have made a tolerable, maybe even good ep at 1hr, but I'll tell ya, I really can't sit through the whole thing. It's the ONLY Galactice ep I don't watch enthusiastically. Even EIT is cool as far as I'm concerned (Amnesia line & all).

Now actually, I never watch the broadcast GFE episode at all- I watch the Kerin version instead! :thumbsup::salute:

skippercollecto
August 26th, 2013, 02:42 PM
Adama says that "Terra" is Gemonese for "Earth." Here on Earth, "Terra" is Latin for "Earth." So is Gemonese the same as Latin?!

Senmut
August 26th, 2013, 08:43 PM
Sic. :D


Given the obvious similarities in Colonial and Earth cultures, it would appear that the root language at least evolved in the same basic direction.

Croft2018
March 24th, 2020, 06:44 AM
Starbuck and Apollo find a starship with a family in cryogenic freeze on board and bring it aboard the Galactica. It would seem they're humans from a unknown, nearby human civilisation on a plant called Lunar 7. They are refugees from the Eastern Alliance; the planet is held sway to two opposing power blocs who're at war.

It's found that the humans can't survive in the heavier atmosphere on the Galactica so Apollo, Starbuck and Cassiopeia flee the Galactica with them to escape Quorum of Twelve interference. They take them to their destination, the plant Paradeen which is a long uninhabited colony of Lunar 7 in the hope of finding the location of Earth. Meanwhile, an Eastern Alliance destroyer is on the way.

This is the only other feature length episode and was broadcast as a special; a big deal to us kiddies back in '79. However, it's all a bit half-arsed with too many subplots that take up time away from the main story to little impact. The politicking of the Quorum members led by Geller (Murray Matheson) is crass and simplistic, the subplot with Sarah (Kelly Harmon) fancying Apollo, the two robot caretakers Hector (Bobby Van) and Vector (Ray Bolger) and their comedy relief ... all annoy and distract.

It's all very watchable but lumpy and uneven.

Charybdis
March 25th, 2020, 09:43 AM
I remember about this episode that the first part is some of the best stuff Galactica had done. Moving, gripping, with real questions about humanity, etc.

The second half? oh boy...

Eric Paddon
March 25th, 2020, 07:17 PM
Part 1 could have used a little bit of dialogue polishing (and Hatch could have toned it down a bit) but it was holding together. The second half though is a jumble of stuff that just goes nowhere. Even in the context of a subsequent "arc" there is no dramatic payoff of any kind that justifies the episode being the only one in the series after Saga that was originally aired as a two hour movie and not two parts originally.

Combine it also with the fact that Hatch's performance gets worse, the fact that Mantooth and Harmon give not very good performances and it's even more lethal.

Senmut
March 25th, 2020, 09:11 PM
Personally, I thought Harmon was fine. Mantooth as well. I have never seen the problem with it.

Eric Paddon
March 26th, 2020, 05:14 PM
The script is still poorly written. The entire scene with Starbuck and Hector, shot on location in Montreal at the ruins of Expo 67 comes off more as something that ultimately doesn't do much to advance the plotline. The real big problem of the script is that there's far too much tease and not enough proper revelation of the whole Terra backstory so that consequently, the Eastern Alliance isn't revealed to us as a big threatening menace. They're talked about in sinister terms but then show up for a too quick scene where they get very easily disposed of. Granted, this was to lead into a larger arc in the next two stories but even there the connecting points weren't done well. Doing this episode as a fanfic adaptation was something that ultimately required a massive overhaul I felt to put some semblance of coherence that's just lacking.

Croft2018
November 18th, 2020, 02:49 PM
I think it might be interesting to have a series of graphic novel adaptations of the TV episodes incorporating deleted scenes, early concepts and flesh them all out with a new guiding hand towards world building and making it all hang together better.

Senmut
November 18th, 2020, 04:40 PM
Bravo! That would be great!