Sunday, February 12, 2006

TV show - "Battlestar Galactica - Greetings from Earth" (1979) **

The weakest of the two-part episodes, although it starts promisingly with the Galactica intercepting a ship carrying a family in a state of suspension. This is followed, however, by an unpleasant section where the Galactica's military officers (Adama, etc) who want to let the family be are off set against the Council of the twelve and the civilian police officers who want to open them - we are left in no doubt that the forces of military are in the right compared to those annoying civilian representatives, and this is extremely uncomfortable to watch. It also ruins the potential dramatic complexity of the arguments (because we soon are told which way we should think). 

The ship lands on a planet and the Galacticans get involved against a bunch of nasty humans, the Eastern Alliance, who dress up as Nazis and fly in a ship that looks like a WW2 submarine set. The Eastern Alliance are technologically very far behind the Galacticans, making them an unscary threat. 

Some good scenes among the deserted buildings and I didn't mind Hector and Vector, but not good. Some unintentional humour: another widowed mother cracks onto Apollo (making it three after "Saga of a Star World" and "The Young Warrior"), even to the point where she tries to sabotage his plane to get him to stay on the planet, and Apollo gets Cassiopea to slut it up to a man (Randy Mantooth, who comes across as a poor man's Richard Hatch) in order to make said widowed mum jealous - Cassiopea is right into it, leading one to suspect her and Starbuck might end up having to have an open relationship if it was to have any chance of success! Athena never appeared in any other episode - no real loss, she was a stunner but she couldn't act.

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