Only in the last five years or so has "Battlestar Galactica" begun to emerge from the unfair stigma that was attached to it for so many years as a "Star Wars ripoff". Although a lot of people don't know this, based on what gets written by BG bashers in their histories of sci-fi TV, George Lucas's lawsuit against Universal was dismissed on all counts and found to be without merit. Indeed, considering how Lucas had "borrowed" from so many other genre stories of the past his lawsuit claiming Galactica stole from Star Wars was the biggest case of hypocrisy ever.
For me, "Galactica" continues to age well and is even better than it was when I first experienced it as a child in 1978. Unlike the Star Wars series, which increasingly came to be about FX at the expense of characters, BG's appeal has always lied in its characters. The characters of Apollo (Richard Hatch), Starbuck (Dirk Benedict), Adama (Lorne Greene), Sheba (Anne Lockhart) and even the wicked Baltar (John Colicos) were fascinating and multi-dimensional. And unlike Star Trek, there was a semblance of continuity and character development whereas the former was entirely self-contained from week to week with no development in the characters.
Was BG flawed? Certainly. But it also attracted a larger audience in its one year on ABC than any Star Trek series ever has in syndication. What can't be forgiven is ABC's quick dismissal of this show and then insulting the intelligence of us all by bringing it back in a bastardized version known as "Galactica 1980".
Hopefully, Galactica fans will one day get the last laugh if there is a successful revival with the original cast. It's a show that deserves another chance even more than Star Trek did.
