HOW DO YOU BECOME A FAN OF A TV SHOW THAT AIRED (AND CANCELLED) BEFORE YOU WERE BORN?
By Mike Romero

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The answer is... I don't exactly know. Nevertheless, this is exactly what happened to me.

When I was younger, my older brother would occasionally go into a spiel about some show called Battlestar Galactica (BSG) on occasion. He even had the complete set of BSG bed sheets. Of course at that time, none of it made any sense or had any impact on me. My first personal experience with anything BSG was the first episode of Galactica 1980. This was about ten years ago, and (fortunately, some of my fellow BSG fans have told me) I don't remember much of it.

Over the next decade, I didn't see too many references to Battlestar Galactica, except for when the toys made a brief resurgence and Richard Hatch's "Battlestar Galactica: Armageddon" originally came out. I stumbled across the novelization of the original BSG move, read it, and thought it was all right. Then around Christmas of 1998, the Sci-Fi Channel ran what they called a "Battlestar Galacti-thon." I caught about seven hours of vintage BSG including such episodes as "Gun on Ice Planet Zero," "The Living Legend," and "The Hand of God." In addition to the actual content of the episodes, the thing that stuck with me the most was the theme music. Over the course of the next few months, I wrung every tidbit off of the Internet I could find on BSG, and soon joined such Role-Play organizations as Battlestar MUSH and Battlestar Helios.

I soon began to develop my own characters within the universe of BSG, Fallon and Talon, two brothers separated by the destruction of the Colonies, each thinking the other dead but both survived to serve their respective fleets as Warriors. Though I'd gradually become a fan of the show during the course of those months, the final clincher for me was reading Richard Hatch's "Battlestar Galactica: Armageddon" when I happened to stumble across it in paperback. From then on, I was a hopeless Battlestar Galactica fan.

This past summer when the Sci Fi Channel ran all of the original BSG episodes, I watched and taped every one. Every once and a while, I ask how a seventeen year old like myself could have stumbled onto this show that premiered and was cancelled before I was even born, nevertheless become a die-hard fan of it. To this day, I have yet to find a reasonable answer to this question. What this does tell me however is that Battlestar Galactica will indeed come back, and when it does, it will be a huge hit, capturing the imagination of the original fan and "youngsters" like myself alike. I am also doing my part in increasing the scope of BSG fandom as I am compelled to answer when one of my friends at school hears me talking about the show and asks "What's a Viper?" and other such questions.

I have great faith that the efforts of Mr. Hatch will pay off in such a manner that will bring BSG back into the spotlight where it belongs, and keep it there for years to come. In the meantime, I will watch the internet, television, and newspapers for the smallest tidbit concerning when Battlestar Galactica finally makes its return.

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