Battlestar Galactica is an American science fiction television series, created by Glen A. Larson, that began the Battlestar Galactica franchise. Starring Lorne Greene, Richard Hatch and Dirk Benedict, it ran for one season in 1978–79. After cancellation, its story was briefly continued in 1980 as Galactica 1980 with Adama, Lieutenant Boomer (now a colonel) and Boxey (now called Troy) being the only continuing characters. Books have been written continuing the stories.
The series was remade in 2003, beginning with a three-hour mini-series followed by a weekly series which ran from 2004 to 2009. A feature film remake was also planned, to have been directed by Bryan Singer with production input from original series creator Glen A.
Larson.However, Larson died in 2014, and the movie has yet to go into production.
Narrations and theme music
The show begins with a narration, spoken by Patrick Macnee:
There are those who believe...that life here began out there, far across the Universe...with tribes of humans...who may have been the forefathers of the Egyptians...or the Toltecs...or the Mayans...that they may have been the architects of the Great Pyramids...or the lost civilizations of Lemuria...or Atlantis.
Some believe that there may yet be brothers of man...who even now fight to survive--somewhere beyond the heavens!The short version of the narration, also spoken by Macnee:
(The theatrical version of the pilot ends with "far, far away amongst the stars.")
During the narration, the viewer sees scenes of nebulae and other celestial phenomena. Macnee provided the character voice of the Cylons' Imperious Leader throughout the series, and even appeared on-screen as Count Iblis in "War of the Gods", a two-part episode which originally aired in January 1979. The narration is followed by images of the Galactica, thecolonial fleet, and other scenes. The Battlestar Galactica theme plays prominently, an orchestral piece with an emphasis on brass instruments. This was composed by Stu Phillipsand Glen A. Larson.
The show closes with narration by Lorne Greene:
Fleeing from the Cylon tyranny, the last battlestar, Galactica, leads a rag-tag fugitive fleet on a lonely quest...a shining planet known as Earth.
Language
While primarily English, the Colonial language was written to include several fictional words that differentiated its culture from those of Earth, most notably time units and expletives. The words were roughly equivalent to their English counterparts, and the minor technical differences in meaning were suggestive to the viewer. Colonial distance and time units were incompletely explained, but appear to have been primarily in a decimal format.
Time units included millicenton (approximately equivalent to one second), centon (minute), centar (hour), cycle (day), secton (week), quatron (unknown, perhaps 1/4 yahren), sectar (month), yahren (Colonial year), centuron (Colonial century).
Distance units were metron (meter) and micron (second of time when used in a countdown, but also a distance unit, possibly a kilometer.)
Expletives included "frack", also spelled "frak" (interjection), "felgercarb" (noun), and "golmonging", also spelled "gall-monging" (adjective). These words avoided US FCC guidelines on the use of profanities and the associated fines.
Other terms included daggit (a dog-like animal indigenous to one of the colonies), ducat (ticket), pyramid (card game), cubit (unit of currency represented by rectangular coins), triad (a full-contact ball and goal game similar to basketball), and lupus (a wolf-like animal indigenous to another of the colonies).
Figures of speech There were a number of these used in the series, such as "daggit dribble", a term used to condemn falsehood, and "daggit-meat", used as an expression of contempt.
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