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Funny thing about the cable company, if you don’t pay them, you don’t get cable. T’is the season to be broke and all the other fa-la-la crap but moving forward at least I have Hulu. Now, with the tons of movies that I have there are times I just want to watch crappy scifi. Why do I torture myself? But I must as a scifi fan I must take the good and then take the bad and there you have the Facts of Life, sorry wrong show and topic. Seriously, I need to watch and learn from past mistakes. I could not have though of a better example than Galactica 1980. If you were a fan of the original series, boy were you in a shock when they tried to pawn this as good as the original; not even close. I am not going to go into the details about the different levels of suck-dom but there are somethings I wanted to bring to your attention.
One of the first things that surprised me was to see Robert Reed, Mr. Brady playing a scientist. I remembered from many documentaries where he play the role of Mike Brady and how miserable he was acting on a show that was beneath him as an acting caliber. Okay, I understand his pov but at the end of the day, he was a memorable TV dad that I grew up with. Zoom from the Brady Bunch to this series and wow, if the Mike Brady role was beneath him than the role of Dr. Donald Mortinson is the crud underneath his shoe after stepping on dog crap on a hot August day. Seriously, I understand there are personal principles we try to uphold but if actors have to eat, I guess principles go out the door. In any case, there was a scene that was prior to this shot above where to the two Far Out Space Nuts – Capt. Troy and Lt. Dillon where trying to reach Dr. Mortinson. There was a computer where the professor had a formula he was working on the monitor. Troy and Dillon thought it best to leave the Doctor a message by improving the formula with future space technology knowledge. Wow, where did I see this before? Oh, yes… this was a ripoff from The Day the Earth Stood Still. Fine, if you are going to ripoff from a movie, I guess you couldn’t have picked a better one since this was well before the recent remake with Keanu.
Another thing about this shot, puzzled me at first. The actress in this shot looked vaguely familiar. She seemed quite perky and I don’t mean her personality either. So, like any other warm-blooded lustful man would do, I went to the Intertubeywebs and looked on IMDB.COM. (No promo plug but it does come in handy for moments such as this.) The actress in question was Pamela Susan Shoop. She has done other bit parts in other scifi show like Buck Rogers but then I found my answer. Susan was in Halloween II (not the Rob Zombie remake crap) and played the role of Karen. I remembered her because of the nudie scene she did. Thank you IMDB.COM. (If you want to see her in all her glory, you can find it yourself. I can’t do the all the work.)
Lastly, if you were drawn to the re-imagined BSG series, we were treated to a new Cylon humanoid model, 12 models and countless copies. Brilliant move on the producers part to step the show up to a higher level than the previous Galactica. But, wait a minute…. WHAT THE FRAK is that in the picture off to the right? They are FRAKKIN’ Cylon Humanoids. For the sake of saving money for the 1980 show and not having as many Cylon Centurion suits, they create these conehead suits. They spoke about bringing down the humans as if they hadn’t looked in the mirror lately. Frak me!
Yes, this was painful to watch but as I said before you have to take the good with the bad. After watching this crap, you will come to appreciate a better quality of scifi tv series like Firefly, Farscape, and BSG. Do yourself a favor, if you haven’t seen it, watch it the show on my blog and then go to Hulu for the remaining episodes for this one and one season.
The Monster Scifi Show 