TV show - "Battlestar Galatica - The Guns on Ice Planet Zero" (1978) ***

Really top notch two-part episode because of its strong story. OK they rip off Dirty Dozen and The Guns of Navarone but since they're both great movies who really cares? Baltar has forced the Galactica into the path of an ice planet with a big ray gun, so Apollo leads a team of demolitions experts (mostly convicts from convict ship) to blow it up. This episode has production values to die for - lots of snow and spaceships - it must have cost a fortune. Main debit - although there are a number of really rich, interesting characters and situations, because a lot of the action takes place on the ice planet the characters wear face masks or hoods and it is hard to see their face, so you miss a lot of the emotion (it's sometimes hard to tell who is who during the arguments - this is particularly a problem in the scenes where the convicts argue amongst themselves). The novelisation of this episode in fact works better because it doesn't have this problem - also it fleshes out the characters of the convicts a bit more (Croft (Roy Thiennes), a really interesting character was later used in a few of the BG novels not based on the TV series). Solid action, with a fine performance from Dan O'Herlihy and the cute notion of a lot of cloned Britt Eklands.