Story Vs Special Effects
by Raymond Grant

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On September 17th, 1978, I sat glued to my TV screen for three hours in a state of rapture, blinking perhaps once every three to four minutes. Battlestar Galactica consumed my life for a year after that. Funny the way something like a TV show can affect a 12-year-old. Now, twenty years later, I've been reacquanting myself with the episodes through the newly available vhs tapes. I started with the pilot episode and was turned once again into that wide-eyed 12-year-old. However, many of the following episodes have lost their appeal. The reason for this, I feel, comes down to a case of story vs. special effects, and I'd like to explain this thought before a new Galactica movie or series starts, in the off chance that the powers that be may stumble across this. As a boy, I was completely blown away by the special effects. Yes, I loved the sets, the music, the cast, etc. But what really pulled me in where the spaceship battles. I remember my heart sinking when an episode called "War of the Gods" came on. No Cylons. No battles. No explosions. It was a low point of the series. And now that I've seen this episode on the Sci-Fi Channel, I realize it is in fact the high point. This was one of the few episodes that truly contained a speculative idea, that got beyond the effects and got into a story. Looking back, I realize there were too many episodes that merely consisted of bang-bang, shoot-'em-up special effects reels. The most famous example might be "The Living Legend," which I know is still popular among fans, but which doesn't appeal to me that greatly anymore because of it's lack of a true science fiction idea.

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The shows that I still enjoy to this day are the pilot, "Saga of a Star World," "The Long Patrol," "War of the Gods," and "Experiment in Terra." These contained science fiction ideas... speculative ideas. "The Magnificent Warriors" and "Lost Planet of the Gods," though less speculative, still entertained. What I'm trying to say is give me a great idea over a battle with the Cylons any day. Or perhaps give me a cylon battle that leads to something truly interesting, and that is more than an excuse to rerun the familiar exploding spaceship scenes that we have already seen countless times.

I think the makers of the show were beginning to understand this when the series went off the air, and now that it may be coming back -- whether to the small screen or the large -- I hope they remember the direction in which they were heading.

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