The Young Lords
Original Airdate: November 19, 1978
Writers: Don Bellisario, Frank Lupo and Paul Playdon.
Director: Don Bellisario.
Guest Cast: Charles Bloom (Kyle), Bruce Glover (Megan), Audrey Landers (Miri), Brigitte Muller (Ariadne).
After a battle with enemy fighters, Starbuck is forced to crash land on a planet under Cylon control and commanded by the cunning Spektor. Starbuck meets a group of child warriors who have been attacking the Cylon battalion that abducted their father. He leads the children on a raid to rescue their father and destroy the garrison.
To simulate Starbuck’s crash site, the life-sized Viper was attached to a crane and lowered to the edge of a swamp. The wings were removed, set near the hull, and the Viper was then dressed as if the vehicle had crashed there. Special care had to be taken to ensure that the Viper would not suffer any damage during the shoot. "We were concerned about it because when you're craning you're hanging from certain stress points," explains art director Richard James. "Those things weren't built in. It wasn't designed for that." Another concern was the possibility of water damage to the expensive prop, "That was one of the first things I brought up. We didn’t want to warp it. It's all made out of plywood. But we protected it and it survived."
The Cylons, however, were not so lucky. In a sequence that required a Cylon patrol to march through a swamp, a number of the costumes were drenched to the chest plate and suffered water damage. "They were all backed on buckram," recalls costume designer Jean-Pierre Dorleac, "and when buckram gets wet it loses its stiffness. They all got wet and the Cylons crawled out looking like glue."
Production difficulties aside, The Young Lords is remembered by many of the cast for one of Battlestar Galactica's most humorous anecdotes. Towards the end of episode, the script called for the children to launch a fiery assault on the Cylon garrison. The sequence had been staged so that a line of Cylons would march across the wall of the fortress and down a series of steps. "The first Cylon stumbled," remembers Benedict, "and it was like dominos. You had all the Cylons fall down these steps. It was terrifying and yet unbelievable. It was like a bowling alley or one of those fairs where you shoot ducks down. But nobody got hurt, so we laughed a long time about that."
Herb Jefferson Jr. also remembered the incident and adds, "They were all lying on the ground, scanners looking up in the air with little red dots going."
