Galactica 1980

After almost exactly 28 years, I was able to see this again. I think I'll wait at least 28 more before I watch it next time, if there is a next time. It was that bad. The '70s had its share of bad TV. This was worse than anything else I can remember. It made the original Battlestar Galactica and Larson's Buck Rogers look like high art. There was absolutely no redeeming value to this episode. To call the dialog trite or hackneyed would be flattery of the highest order. The "humor" was something that perhaps a second grader might find funny. And to tell us when a scene was supposed to be funny, they played "funny" music that even Benny Hill would have rejected. The actors seemed to know this was Z-grade as well. I can't remember the last time I saw so many bad performances. This was the second time Robbie Rist of "Cousin Oliver" (Brady Bunch) infamy could be accused of helping a series jump the shark. If Ted McGinley is the king of shark jumping, surely Rist is the crown prince. This was a sort-of-reunion with Robert Reed (they had no scenes together), and somehow the bad acting spread from Rist to Reed. The special effects were cheaper and far shoddier than in the original series, sometimes showing part of the mounts holding the models for filming.



Too bad this wasn't made today. It would have been put out of its misery within three episodes instead of ten. This was certainly the low point in Glen Larson's career.