Galactica 1980



In the face of a massive letter-writing campaign in response to the cancellation of the original Battlestar Galactica in 1979, ABC network executives decided to Retool the series into a less expensive spinoff, and so Galactica was resurrected as Galactica 1980. Because both Dirk Benedict and Richard Hatch declined to return to the new series, it was set thirty years after the conclusion of Galactica, with an older Boxey (now called "Troy") as a substitute for Apollo, and a new character named "Lt. Dillon" as an ersatz Starbuck.

It is 1980, and the Galactica and its fleet of 220 civilian ships have finally discovered Earth, only to find that its people are not as scientifically advanced as the refugees -- the planet can neither defend itself against the Cylons nor help the Galactica as originally hoped. Therefore, teams of Colonial warriors are covertly sent to the planet to work incognito with various members of the scientific community, hoping to advance Earth's technology.

Commander Adama, on the advice of Doctor Zee, a teenage prodigy serving as his adviser, dispatches Captain Troy, who is the adopted son of Adama's own son Apollo, and Lieutenant Dillon to North America, where they become entangled with TV journalist Jamie Hamilton. After an initial, epic Time Travel adventure to Nazi Germany in the 1940s (to stop rebel Galactican Commander Xavier from changing the future to improve Earth's technology level), the three friends devise ways to help Earth's scientists and outwit the Cylons in the present day. Meanwhile, Adama sends a group of children from the Galactica fleet (the "Super Scouts") to Earth in order to begin the process of integrating with the population. However, due to differences in gravity and physiology, the children must deal with the fact they have nearly super-human powers on Earth.

Galactica 1980 proved grossly unpopular and was canceled after less than a dozen episodes. To this day, fans of the original series prefer to treat Galactica 1980 as though it had never existed, and official novels and comics based on the original series continuity ignore it.


 * Aliens Speaking English: The survivors of the Twelve Colonies inexplicably speak late 20th Century North American English.
 * Aliens Steal Cable: How Dr. Zee finds out about Earth cultures.
 * Always Night: Had several episodes filmed completely at night for no apparent reason. The real reason is probably scheduling difficulties related to Executive Meddling.
 * And Then What?: In the final (and probably best) episode, Starbuck strikes up a conversation with a Centurion after they are both stranded on a deserted planet. At some point, "Cy" (the Centurion) mentions that "perfection" is the ultimate aim of the Cylon Empire. When Starbuck asks what's next after that, he admits that they didn't put much thought to it.
 * Annual Title
 * Apocalypse Wow: Starts with a computer simulation of one, and goes downhill from there.
 * Armor-Piercing Question: In one episode, a Cylon states that their goal and purpose is to organize the entire universe. Another character asks what they'll do after that. The Cylon hesitates and finally admits that no one has ever asked that question.
 * Back for the Finale:
 * Baseball Episode: One episode had a baseball game that is critical to the plot.
 * Benevolent Alien Invasion: Galactica's plan for
 * Big Applesauce: In the episode, "The Night the Cylons Landed".
 * The Big Board: In one episode, some of the Colonial Warriors on Earth find a scientist's chalkboard with various formulas on it. One of them writes information on the chalkboard that will improve the scientist's knowledge (disposing of nuclear waste?).
 * The Bus Came Back: Dirk Benedict's Starbuck character reappearing in one episode.
 * Canon Discontinuity: For the continuation comics and novels, at least.
 * Culture Clash: Invokes Fridge Logic since Dr. Zee is monitoring Earth's transmissions.
 * Cut Short: After only ten episodes.
 * Failure Is the Only Option: Averted for the basic goal of the original series -- played absolutely straight in that Earth isn't the expected savior and even if the series had lasted more than 10 episodes would never be allowed to be.
 * Flying Car: Or rather, flying motorcycles.
 * For Halloween I Am Going as Myself:
 * The crew finally reaches Earth on Halloween, so everyone assumes they're regular humans despite their unusual clothes.
 * In the episode "The Night the Cylons Landed", the Centurion was mistaken for a guy in a Halloween costume.
 * Giving Radio to the Romans: Commander Xavier's plan to advance Earth to a state where they could help against the Cylons involved using Time Travel to give advanced technology to the Nazis.
 * Godwin's Law of Time Travel: In play during the pilot.
 * Human Aliens: The Colonials, of course.
 * In a Single Bound: One of the powers gained when Colonials visit "low-gravity" Earth.
 * Innocent Aliens: Played straight and averted.
 * Kids and Cute Robots: Galactica 1980 continues in the footsteps of its predecessor here.  While the original Muffet may be long gone its absence is more than made up for by the "super scouts".
 * Motive Decay: The episode "Space Croppers" begins with the Galactica's fleet being attacked by the Cylons. The Cylons destroy the fleet's food supplies. Boy genius Dr. Zee comes up with a plan to send Troy and Dillon down to Earth to get some supplies. Troy and Dillon pick a farm at random and soon find out that the farmer is having problems with the local growers' association. Instead of picking another farmer to get supplies from, the motive decays into helping this farmer out with his problems and the rest of the episode revolves more around helping a farmer than it does about getting food for Galactica.
 * New Super Power: In the first episode, we discover that the artificial gravity they've been living with in the fleet is several times the surface gravity of Earth; so, when they land on Earth, they can jump several meters in the air.
 * Which is pretty amazing, considering we've seen crew members wrestle and/or drop things in the original series, and they didn't seem to fall any faster than they would on Earth.
 * Plot Hole: Caused by the Time Skip between Galactica and Galactica 1980:  the original series ended with a video transmission being picked up by the Galactica from the Apollo moon landing, meaning that the original series would have to have taken place sometime after 1969 by Earth's calendar (and probably many years after, given light-speed propagation of radio waves). A thirty-year journey would mean that the Colonial Fleet could not have possibly reached Earth until 1999 at the earliest, rather than in 1980 -- and that assumes some kind of magic let them receive the Apollo signals at essentially the same moment they were sent.
 * Another, mentioned over on the WMG page: with time travel available to them, why didn't they go back to prevent the Cylon attack on the Colonies in the first place?  Even just a couple Vipers and a data archive with 30 years of technological innovations -- including time travel itself -- sent back 40 years would be enough to give humanity a fighting chance.
 * Retool: Forced by Executive Meddling.  It was originally planned out as a tense adult drama based around a "time war" concept explored in short arcs of two or three episodes at a shot, but nervous executives invoked Viewers are Morons and the Sci Fi Ghetto, and demanded the show be dumbed down to what they thought was the only audience it would have -- kids.  One part of the Retool was not because of the executives, though -- the Time Skip was applied to explain new leads after Dirk Benedict and Richard Hatch declined to return to the new series.
 * Robot Buddy: Cy, Starbuck's Cylon companion in "The Return of Starbuck".
 * Storyboarding the Apocalypse: The first episode gives us simulation what a Cylon invasion of Earth would look like. For some reason promotional material for the movie that was made from that opener seemed to draw almost exclusively from this attack.
 * Stupid Jetpack Hitler: After the Galactica arrived at Earth in 1980 one character wanted to use time travel to go back a few decades so that Earth could get a technological head start on building up defenses for the inevitable day when the Cylons arrived. After Adama et al rejected his idea out of hand he stole a timeship and tried to do it anyway... by giving advanced technological help to the Nazis in 1944. (Good idea, really poor implementation.) Our heroes foiled him, and then the series forgot about time-travel entirely.
 * Super Strength: Another power gained when Colonials visit "low-gravity" Earth.
 * Teen Genius: Dr. Zee.
 * They Look Like Us Now: Cylon human-form infiltrators appeared on this show decades before the "Skinjobs" in the new series.
 * Time Skip: Galactica 1980 is set thirty years after the events of Battlestar Galactica.
 * Time Travel: Involved the first episodes, where Troy and Dillon must travel back to Nazi Germany to prevent a rogue member of the Fleet from giving the Nazis advanced technologies, the better to make "modern" Earth capable of defending against the Cylons.
 * Weaponized Car: Those flying motorcycles?  Laden with weapons, too.
 * What the Hell, Hero?: In one episode, Dillon and Troy don't mind passing stolen money off to honest people, but draw the line at giving money to thieves. In this episode, they are approached by thugs in Central Park. One of them demands that Dillon and Troy give the thugs all of their money. They respond that they can't do that because the money they have is stolen and that this would implicate the thugs in grand larceny. The money actually is stolen, but the problem with this is that Dillon and Troy have been spending that stolen money freely prior to this point. They'd bought camping supplies, paid for meals, bought airline tickets, and paid for taxi rides and every one of these transactions were with honest, law-abiding citizens. What the hell, hero?
 * Whole-Plot Reference: Like its predecessor, Galactica 1980 managed to indulge in this during its brief run:  "The Return of Starbuck" bears a striking resemblance to Enemy Mine, which had first appeared in short story format in 1979.