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Flamingo Girl
May 10th, 2003, 04:50 PM
Apollo is chosen by the Ship of Lights/Beings of Light to perform a mission to save the planet Terra (discussed in "Greetings from Earth") from the Terran faction, the Eastern Alliance.

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.

Guest starring Melody Anderson as Brenda Maxwell, Peter D. MacLean as President Arends, Edward Mulhare as John, Nehemiah Persoff as the Eastern Alliance Leader, Logan Ramsey as Moore, Ken Swoffard as Gen. Maxwell, Sidney Clute as Stone, Ken Lynch as Dr. Horning, and Jordan Rhodes as Brace.

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

Senmut
July 12th, 2003, 12:50 PM
personally, I liked this one. The idea that someone out there is taking care of the universe, and sometimes enlists the help of imperfect people, is soooooo Biblical. No wonder the "critics" hated it!

skippercollecto
July 13th, 2003, 12:34 PM
Very little of the regular cast is in this episode, just Apollo, Starbuck, Adama and (I think, because I haven't watched it in a while), Boomer and Tigh. I know that by this time, Maren Jensen and Noah Hathaway had been "let go" (for want of a better term), and since the episode doesn't involve John Colicos, he's not in it either. But where were Sheba, Cassiopeia and any of the numerous semi-regulars? You can't give me the argument that the studio was cutting costs, because Anne Lockhart and Laurette Spang would still appear in "Hand of God," along with a number of extras, and some of the semi-regulars were still seen or mentioned by name in the last five or so episodes.
This was always my least-favorite episode of the series, and this lack of cast members is one of the reasons why. So have any of you ever heard or read what happened to the rest of the actors the week this was filmed?
Mary

kingfish
July 13th, 2003, 12:55 PM
Jolly and Omega were in the episode from what I remember about it. I agree as to Sheba and Cassiopeia. If BG was given a second season Hathaway would have returned for a few episodes. The WORST decision was the idea of killing off Sheba. Also Colicos wasn't coming back for season 2 as well as a few other greats including Tigh. I believe that BG was going to be done on a smaller budget via G-1980.

shiningstar
August 19th, 2003, 06:18 PM
I really didn't like this episode. I think it could have
been better written and some of the lines .......had
me groaning ...........as Kingfish said the
"Oh AMNESIA .........." "Amnesia that's a pretty line."
that was in THIS episode and not the other one.

I think the writing for these TWO episodes involving the
"ALLIANCES" left MUCH to be desired.

originalsinner
September 19th, 2003, 08:54 PM
Very interresting episode, kind of like watching a "Quantom leap episode Al is John and Apollo is Sam, The closest thing we get to earth on BSG!

Doctor Salik
November 5th, 2003, 01:25 PM
I don't like this one. Far too much talk and very tiresome to watch. All the action is done in dialoge scenes.
Two interesting points:
1. The producers did a good job in creating Terra. Clothes and props make for a good "missing link" between Galactica standards and Earth.
2. In the prison they have force fields... Wait a minute! Forcefield technology? That's way above what the Colonials can do! Maybe they could use that technology to give the landing bay much needed shields against those crashing raiders.

originalsinner
January 6th, 2004, 03:14 PM
Terra unifroms found on the Galactica Mini!

shiningstar
January 11th, 2004, 07:02 PM
Doctor Salik I was wandering why they didn't do that myself.

shiningstar
January 11th, 2004, 07:04 PM
So much for Moore's "ORIGINALITY" ........huh?

I wander if he shopped ebay?

ViperTech
January 16th, 2004, 10:08 PM
Not one of my favorites, but at least we get to see the Galactica show her stuff, even if the effects are weak.

I wish they showed more of Apollo's speech to the Prosidium.
At least mention of the regular struggles of the Colonials would have made the scene more interesting.

WARDAGGIT73
February 14th, 2004, 11:14 AM
***

It's nice to see the Sentient beings back after the 'War of the Gods' episodes, loved the locations once again, even though the resolution is bit pat...

shiningstar
March 4th, 2004, 04:12 PM
***

It's nice to see the Sentient beings back after the 'War of the Gods' episodes, loved the locations once again, even though the resolution is bit pat...

"PAT"? It's downright PREDICTABLE. :(

Although like you I was glad to see the Sentient beings back again.

launchcruiser7
March 18th, 2004, 01:20 PM
best of the what if shows how did they servie the cylons did adamma leave techs and tools to bui;ld vipers and weopons if they had warships could they fight the cylonsjust a thought launch station falcon out here :cylon: :muffit: :beer: :superholy :wings: :halo:

Bombadil
April 2nd, 2004, 09:07 PM
personally, I liked this one. The idea that someone out there is taking care of the universe, and sometimes enlists the help of imperfect people, is soooooo Biblical. No wonder the "critics" hated it!
Exactly. Science fiction was supposed to be secular and materialistic, and the religious content of BG violated that understanding.

Which was one of the reasons I liked it so much.
:)

Eric Paddon
April 2nd, 2004, 09:18 PM
Exactly. Science fiction was supposed to be secular and materialistic, and the religious content of BG violated that understanding.

Which was one of the reasons I liked it so much.
:)

I find myself in the position of agreeing on the philosophical point of the episode, but for me I'm still faced with the troubling fact that the episode, especially as part of the story arc that's gone on, just doesn't work IMO.

Eric Paddon
April 6th, 2004, 10:44 AM
BTW, did anyone notice how at the beginning of the episode when it cuts inside the escaped Alliance destroyer there's just a tight shot of the crewman addressing Leiter, but we never see or hear Leiter? They were clearly determined to do anything that would avoid having to pay Lloyd Bochner for another episode! (which I assume is what they would have had to do if they'd shot an extra scene and dropped it into that bit in EIT).

Senmut
April 8th, 2004, 01:44 AM
Bean counters. Gotta love 'em!

BRG
September 26th, 2004, 01:25 PM
Not a great episode. 2 out of 5.

While not as bad as the other 'Terra' episode, I would rate this as the second weakest episode of the series. It just didn't work for me I'm afraid. :/:

The 'Quantum Leap' similarity hit me as well, but I thought Apollo was a wee bit slow comeing to terms with the situation on the planet. John did explain quite clearly what the deal was, but Apollo kept acting weird in front of people and ended up in a cell. It reminded me of 'The lost Warrior', where Apollo's failure to put two and two together fast enough cost bootes his life.
But we did get to see the Galactica in action, we learned more about the Beings of Lights, and those all white uniforms are pretty cool!
BRG

PS- It really bugged me that I knew Brenda's face from somewhere, but couldn't place it. So I checked the IMDB, and there was the answer! Actress Melody Anderson had played Dale Arden in the 1980 film version of 'Flash Gordon'. The fact that she was blond in this episode but brunette in Flash had confused BRG! :duck: :LOL:

Charybdis
September 27th, 2004, 09:10 AM
Oh man, ever since I saw Flash Gordon in 1980, I have been in love with Melody Anderson. THe fact that she appeared in Galactica before that is icing on the cake. I don't really like her character in this episode, but she was just looking out for Apollo. I guess we can forgive her for that. After all, she does make up for it by taking Starbuck back out to his viper and she does believe after that...

Fragmentary
January 2nd, 2005, 04:53 PM
Gah!
I hate this episode. By far, my least favorite one.
The main reason is what it does to the set up in War of the Gods. The Beings of Light are so mysterious and bigger than life there. Their technology is completely different than anything else we saw in Galactica, their motives were enigmatic, and their legacy with Iblis was truly of mythic proportions. Then we see them again here, and all of that is stripped away and they are reduced down to the light and kitschy John character. The scale that they were operating on was watered down to a stock brink-of-war-paranoia story so common on TV then.
Apollo sums up my feelings on this episode with his expression when John leads him down the ridiculous spiral staircase inexplicably located on the Ship of Light. He can’t believe what he’s seeing and I couldn’t either.
Groan…

Eric Paddon
January 2nd, 2005, 05:49 PM
No argument from me on this being the worst episode of the series, but the real problem is the whole Terra storyline arc which makes the string of three episodes starting with Greetings From Earth through this one the low point.

Senmut
January 2nd, 2005, 09:50 PM
Am I the only one who liiked this one?????????????????

justjackrandom
January 3rd, 2005, 02:32 PM
Am I the only one who liiked this one?????????????????

It is certainly not at the top of my list, but it contains a great deal of information about Colonial technology, as well as showing that some serious scientific thought went into writing some of the episodes. I these reasons I tend to rank it higher than a lot of fans, and have watched it a number of times. It has grown on me with each viewing...

JJR

skippercollecto
April 3rd, 2005, 11:24 AM
There is a small sequence in the novelization of this episode that explains more of who John (Edward Mulhare) is. In the scene where he first meets Apollo, Apollo asks him something along the lines of "What should I call you?"
The angel thinks about it for a moment, and then answers, "John. Is that the sort of name you're familiar with?"
Apollo answers no.
John then nods and says something like, "Oh, yes, I keep forgetting where I am. It's a very common name on Terra."

I swear that at least one of the times I saw the telemovie that I heard this conversation take place on the show. Yet it's not on the DVD, and it's not in the deleted scenes. Does anyone else remember this conversation being on TV?
Mary

SpyOne
April 3rd, 2005, 01:07 PM
The "It is a very common name on Terra" part sounds familiar.
Could be I'm mistaken, or that could be a memory from the original airing.

Tabitha
September 9th, 2005, 10:16 AM
I think that they were running out of ideas by this time. Thats the problem with the entire BSG concept, its exciting if you plan to have frequent battles and lots of spaceship smashing, but its hard to have much else because the cylons would be shooting you all the time if you dared to make planetfall, and that is the biggest problem with the new series as well. They need to find a reasoning that the cylons wouldnt be able to track them, but maybe they meet cylon pickets from time to time. If the cylons are really able to follow (a rather straight course) so easily, and they seemed to be able to find them every time they needed to, then the series writers would eventually have to deal with the fact that the heros cannot go to a planet, and if they did, there couldnt be humans there because the cylons would kill them too. If a planet can defend against the cylons, then likely most of the fleet would choose to remain there, as opposed to risking their childrens lives going on to a planet that theres no guarantee exists. Before anyone starts to think Im NOT a fan, I am, but Im also honest and realistic enough to recognise the basic flaw in the series concept.

tabbi

Dawg
September 9th, 2005, 12:54 PM
I've got to disagree, tabbi. Experiment in Terra (indeed, the entire Terra arc), together with episodes like Take the Celestra and Murder on the Rising Star, do represent the low point in storytelling for the series. But it does not mean the ideas weren't there.

If you are familiar with how BSG came to be, back in 1978, you'd know that a weekly series is NOT what Larson & Co. set out to do. BSG was to be a series of 2-hour TV movies, spread out over the season - not an hour every week. It was ABC who rushed it into production as a weekly series, and they had no one-hour story lines or scripts made up. The writers had to scramble - so you literally had the actors being handed their lines moments before they went before the cameras - inconsistencies between episodes - and episodes delivered to the network mere hours before they were to air.

With pressure like that, you'll get aluminum cowboy hats and Russian spies.

But you'll also get work like Hand of God, Living Legend, War of the Gods....

The possibilities of that universe - the one that Larson and his team created - are virtually endless. New enemies, new places, new phenomenon, all the things that make science fiction so great, and tales of the human condition so compelling were - and are - available to be told. There were obvious aspects that were never touched upon in the episodes that were created that following seasons would have delved into. The characters would have been deepened, built upon.

Running out of ideas? They'd barely scratched the surface.

I am
Dawg
:warrior:

Tabitha
September 9th, 2005, 02:17 PM
Well, you may be right about the possible ideas, but I was saying I think the writers were out of ideas. We must all make sure, and take very special care that we remember that writers for series are very often the farthest out of touch with the very series they write for. Proof? Well, Enterprise! Makes one wonder if the writers had ever actually watched Star Trek before. There are other even easier examples, but thats the latest. Just because you and I can think of a bizillion ideas, doesnt mean some fat cat hollywood writer can, he might be more interested in the person handing him his martini.

tabbi

Dawg
September 9th, 2005, 04:16 PM
Comparing Star Trek to BSG really isn't a fair comparison. For one thing, ST got studio support where BSG was ignored since Day One. ST ran for what, 18 years, straight, in one form or another? The fact the last "leadership" team seemed to go out of their way to contradict canon (not unlike a certain other "leadership" team) is actually beside the point.

Manny Coto proved there was life in the franchise when he got the reins in Enterprise's last season - the worst episodes of the final season (including that lousy ending ep) were the result of the Killer B's direct influence.

Give a writer a rich universe to work in (like BSG), and the time to work in it (which they did not have), and you'll get good stories for years on end.

I am
Dawg
:warrior:

peter noble
September 9th, 2005, 05:05 PM
EIT isn't the best episode of BSG, but it's a long way from being the worst.

And Dawg mentioned the word "arc" in his reply, so BSG was doing arcs way before it was the "in" thing.

EIT is also rumoured to have given Ronald Reagan the idea for the Strategic Defence Initiative too! ;)

Wildcard
October 25th, 2006, 11:58 AM
yeah this ep defintly had a unneccasrily high cheese content, but it also still gives me two WTF tech moments....1) the Galactica moves at THE speed of light w/o any of the relativistic effects that Einsteinian physics tell us should happen :blink: . I know of no other race in all the multiverse that can do this.

2) the Galactica deployed a shield that absorbed (w/o to much effort btw) hundreds if not thousands of nuclear warhead strikes in the 10-20 MT range!

skippercollecto
January 28th, 2009, 05:01 PM
Apollo, upon seeing Brenda's apartment, asks her, "Does everyone get one of these?" He is clearly impressed, but why?

Do you think he's just comparing her place to the cramped quarters everyone in the fleet now lives in, and not about his parents' home/his own apartment or house, on Caprica? Or did Capricans not have large residences, for whatever reason? I've always thought the ruins of Adama's home in Saga seemed to be an outline of a house that didn't look very big.

Mary

Athene
February 1st, 2009, 04:30 PM
Apollo, upon seeing Brenda's apartment, asks her, "Does everyone get one of these?" He is clearly impressed, but why?

Do you think he's just comparing her place to the cramped quarters everyone in the fleet now lives in, and not about his parents' home/his own apartment or house, on Caprica? Or did Capricans not have large residences, for whatever reason? I've always thought the ruins of Adama's home in Saga seemed to be an outline of a house that didn't look very big.

Mary
I think he's probably comparing the size of the place to the quarters on the Galactica.
This episode is later on in the series.

jewels
February 23rd, 2009, 08:05 PM
This is the one that was written for Dirk's Starbuck and last minute switched to Richard's Apollo with little if any dialogue changes. If you listen closely, you can hear where lines were more suited to Dirk's timing and character.

I think the space in Brenda's place (it was HUGE) was the reason for his query. This is actually the 1 hr episode I plunk in the DVD player the most as a default. I think because the Galactica rescues this "younger" world from it's own extinction. I also love the mythos of the Ships of Lights and this gives a brief dose of that.

I think John didn't send the real Charlie because they weren't able to intervene to the level of springing him from prison and because they were out of time. (They didn't spring Apollo, either.) They knew the EA was perched to attack within that day or two.

skippercollecto
June 18th, 2010, 07:44 PM
What was Brenda driving?
Have any of you ever determined what kind of vehicle it was that Brenda was driving when she picked up Apollo? On the front of it you could see very Earth-like-looking windshield wipers. Was it the landram built for the series, or just a souped up Earthling car?

Ramses
June 18th, 2010, 09:23 PM
There is a small sequence in the novelization of this episode that explains more of who John (Edward Mulhare) is. In the scene where he first meets Apollo, Apollo asks him something along the lines of "What should I call you?"
The angel thinks about it for a moment, and then answers, "John. Is that the sort of name you're familiar with?"
Apollo answers no.
John then nods and says something like, "Oh, yes, I keep forgetting where I am. It's a very common name on Terra."

I swear that at least one of the times I saw the telemovie that I heard this conversation take place on the show. Yet it's not on the DVD, and it's not in the deleted scenes. Does anyone else remember this conversation being on TV?
Mary



I remember that line from the show. I also thought maybe that really was earth.

Croft2018
March 27th, 2020, 04:49 PM
John (Edward Mulhare) of The Ship of Lights engages Apollo to go on a secret mission to aide the planet Terra and help them from falling victim to the Eastern Alliance. Terra is another in the group of planets along with Lunar 7 and Paradeen that are seemingly in the same sphere of influence the Eastern Alliance and their unnamed opposers.

A lumpy, rushed episode with a surfeit of ideas that seems to be influenced by Star Trek's A Taste of Armageddon ... a little bit. Sadly, it really needed two episodes or a feature-length timeslot ala Greetings from Earth to do justice to them all. What we have is a big change of pace for this series and Mulhare, Melody Anderson, Ken Swoford, Logan Ransey and Nimiah Persoff are all good value with Richard Hatch and Dirk Benedict taking centre chair in the regulars, particularly Hatch.

Eric Paddon
August 10th, 2020, 11:44 PM
Nehemiah Persoff incredibly is still with us, having just turned 101 years old.

My favorite performance of his was the "Judgment Night" episode of "The Twilight Zone" which also had Patrick MacNee in a small part.

Senmut
August 13th, 2020, 03:06 PM
He was good as an Holocaust-survivor Rabbi in an ep of Magnum P.I.