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If anything - Star Wars copied Battlestar Galactica

posted 9 years ago by slackline70
14 replies | jump to latest

From the start, the original Battlestar Galactica was fighting an uphill battle. Many dismissed it as a Star Wars rip-off (George Lucas even sued), the cost of pre-CGI special effects was crippling - especially for a weekly TV series, and what was originally intended to be a series of TV movies was rushed into production as a weekly series at the insistence of the network.

And the result - while it had its moments - frankly wasn't always pretty. The special effects - while impressive for a 70s TV show - had to be used over and over again to minimize costs. The scripts were uneven to say the least, and some of the stories felt like a high-school term paper that had been put off until the night before. To be blunt, it really isn't all that surprising it only lasted a single season.

For all its shortcomings, however, the original series had flashes of brilliance - and at least in my opinion is probably the most influential sci fi series ever.

First, while it might not have invented the dystopian sci fi genre - it arguably did invent the ENTERTAINING dystopian sci fi genre. Think about it - until Battlestar Galactica, all dystopian sci fi films (Logan's Run, Soylent Green, A Boy and His Dog, even Lucas's earlier sci fi effort THX 1138) were all depressing, preachy movies that seemed to mostly care about making us feel ashamed of ourselves as a race. Battlestar Galactica - despite its premise of machines pushing humanity to the edge of extinction - wanted nothing more than to entertain us. And while it might have only done that for a single season, it paved the way for Heavy Metal, Mad Max, The Terminator franchise, and many other dystopian films that are also ripping good yarns. In this new breed of movies, the future may have been bleak - but it also made a hell of a good backdrop for fast-paced action and adventure.

Second, it introduced the concept of the story arc to science fiction. Before Battlestar Galactica, story arcs were pretty much confined to daytime soap operas. The original Star Trek may have had better writing overall, but each episode was entirely self-contained and had nothing in the way of ongoing drama and intrigue. Battlestar Galactica on the other hand presented itself as an ongoing struggle to survive and stay one step ahead of the Cylon empire. And while this may not have entirely worked for the original Battlestar Galactica during its run, it was undeniably gutsy for the show to test pilot a formula that would become the driving force of sci fi series such as Lost and the 2006 Battlestar Galactica reboot.

Finally, while George Lucas may have sued on the grounds the show was copying Star Wars - it's hard not to notice he himself seemed to have borrowed at least few pages from Battlestar Galactica for the Star Wars sequels. Believe it or not, Star Wars was originally supposed to be a stand-alone movie - with an implicit assumption that the empire was destroyed along with the Death Star at the end of the first movie. Sure, the success of the first Star Wars movie guaranteed there would be sequels - but would they have continued the same story-line of the rebellion vs. the empire were it not for Battlestar Galactica? Would the first sequel have had the wonderful plot-twist of Darth Vader turning out to be Luke's father?

And the most popular Star Wars character - Han Solo - actually seems to have borrowed heavily from the most popular Battlestar Galactica character - Starbuck - rather than the other way around. While both Han and Starbuck were the resident bad boys of their universes from the start - Starbuck was the first to be presented as a nearly invincible pilot and ladies' man. Again, think about it - in the original Star Wars, we actually saw next to nothing of Han's super-human piloting abilities that were so prominent in the sequels. Really all he did was pull the hyperspace lever. And he wasn't exactly a lady-killer in the first movie either; constantly getting blown off and insulted by a less-than-charmed Leia. If anything, Luke seemed to a lot closer to getting into (his sister, just not at the time) Leia's pants than Han. Along comes Battlestar Galactica - with its hotshot lady-killer pilot Starbuck. Then all of a sudden Han becomes the clear winner of Leia's hand starting with Empire.

I noticed that Lucas didn't complain at all when the Battlestar Galactica reboot came out. Kinda wonder if he had come around to realizing how much he and the rest of sci fi owes to the original series.

[–] MuMu2525 9 years ago

I grade your paper an "F". You really need to brush up on your sci-fi history and get more of your facts right.

[–] Blueghost 9 years ago

I just checked his posting history, and it feels like he may be trolling.

[–] slackline70 8 years ago

Good lord you're a doofus.

[–] dpcole7 9 years ago

Wasn't John Dykstra behind Star Wars' effects as well as BSG's and Buck Roger's? Lucas didn't tell Dykstra how to make the effects, right? (the lawsuit was lost anyway, so whatever details were presented they proved Lucas was overstepping any legitimate claim...)

Lucas' contributions were terrific, but a lot of franchises do seem to copy aspects of one another where it's deemed that such copying would benefit. That's part of creativity in general. Innovation. Lucas, Larson, Nation, and scores of others have all shaped, improved, copied, etc in the craft all these years...

[–] krypton_son 9 years ago

Star Wars was always supposed to be a mulit-film series, Lucas filmed it kind of closed ended since he wasn't sure if it would generate enough money to be able to have a sequel, but that was always the plan. And how did Han Solo copy Starbuck? Han came first, it's not like his character changed in the later movies and became more Starbuckish.

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dies ist meine unterschrift

[–] grendelkhan 9 years ago

Han does copy Starbuck; but, not this Starbuck. One of the influences of Star Wars, especially in the visual design of Han's costume and parts of his personality, was a comic book feature, titled Cody Starbuck, by Howard Chaykin. It was published in a comic book, called Star*Reach, which was intended to be a middle ground between regular comics and the underground ones. It allowed more mature storytelling; but, had a more serious bent than the more satirical undergrounds. Cody Starbuck was a space pirate, who fights a galactic empire, with vampiric legions. It was this comic that led to George Lucas requesting Howard Chaykin as the artist on Marvel Comics' Star Wars comic adaptation.

It's obvious that whatever material was in the original Aadama's Ark was greatly altered to resemble Star Wars and the visuals definitely were. However, the similarities were mostly in the visuals, as the stories went off in another direction. If you want to cry rip-off, then Alistair McLean and Irwin Allen have greater claim.

Fortunately, Ah keep mah feathers numbered for just such an emergency!

[–] Blueghost 9 years ago

Like the others said, BSG was conceived of after Star Wars. Written, produced and shot after Star Wars.

BSG was somewhat entertaining, but was aimed at a younger audience, which is why the stories are a little simpler, and also seemed to borrow somewhat from Judeo-Christian mythology.

The "story arc" is an unfortunate device that's been around as long as serialized stories have been told. It's an attractive story telling device, and it does seem to garnish a lot of viewers and followers, but I would argue that it makes for inferior story telling.

George Lucas sued because the vipers loosely resembled X-wings, the Cylons were an obvious riff on his Imperial Stormtroopers, and just the overall setting in space using mythology to tell a story.

I don't think his reasons nor his lawyers' basis for suing is unfounded at all, but I do think that Glenn Larson and his people were clever enough to mask their obvious inspiration, which was George Lucas's Star Wars movie.

You might want to do a little research before posting.

[–] Samclyde2 9 years ago

It was ruled that although the hardware in Star Wars and BSG were similar, the stories were actually very different, and that both had a right to exist.

And what about the claim that Glen Larsen conceived BSG in the late 1960s as "Adam's Ark"?

[–] Blueghost 9 years ago

Even so, how do you mitigate that with storm troopers and cylons? I men, did Larson come up with Cylons before Lucas's Stormtroopers?

Larson may very well have come up with concept in the late 60s, but the visual styhlings of BSG do appear to borrow from Lucas's Star Wars.

[–] rycki1138 9 years ago

The cylons in Larson's book were organic beings and not the robotic beings shown in the TV series. They were made as robots because the costumes were more cost efficient than making costumes making them look like living beings.

I don't know what they have to say. It makes no difference anyway. Whatever it is, I'm against it.

[–] avortac4 (3752) 2 years ago

"They were made as robots because the costumes were more cost efficient than making costumes making them look like living beings."

Uh, what?

The actors are ALREADY living beings, they don't need costumes to make them LOOK like living beings. How can it be more cost-effective to create those always-polished robotic costumes together with functional, moving red light and vocoder sound effects compared to just slapping some outfit on some actors?

None of this makes any sense.

[–] avortac4 (3752) 2 years ago

"BSG was somewhat entertaining, but was aimed at a younger audience, which is why the stories are a little simpler, and also seemed to borrow somewhat from Judeo-Christian mythology."

Yeah, because 'younger audience' always instantly spells 'Judeo-Christian mythology'.

WHAT?

Am I in some kind of parallel universe, where no one is allowed ot make any sense?

What the F are you talking about? Kids don't care about 'Judeo-Christian mythology', they just want lasers and robots and PEW PEW BANG BANG SWOOSH spaceships and more robots! What the heck are you smoking?

[–] residentevil6901 8 years ago

The funny thing is Larson was known for stealing ideas for most of his shows, James Gardner punched him in the face one day on the lot for stealing ideas from The Rockford Files. Larson was Mormon too and if you watch Galactica you can see the similarities with that religion like the quorum of the 12 apostles etc. Lucas wrote Star Wars in 1973

[–] avortac4 (3752) 2 years ago

That's not how anything happened, though.

Lucas came to the other people with some kind of massive 'treatment', and they realized it's too big to be made into a movie, so they decided that the MIDDLE part of it could work as three movies.

In this way, it was "originally meant as a trilogy", but only very loosely. They just wanted to make a 'space serial-like movie', just like Spielberg did later with Raiders of the Lost Ark, that copied the old 'adventure serials'.

Heck, even the famous Star Wars text-scroll is 'borrowed' from those serials.

However, Lucas worked and edited the script a lot, constantly reworking and 'improving it'. Darth Vader wasn't originally Luke's father, and even the other characters had extreme changeovers. It was a very complicated process, he didn't just sit down one evening and write the thing.

It's questionable where he even got the 'treatment' in the first place, knowing his 'expertise', my guess is that he bought it from someone.

So, based on all this, after the success of the movies, Lucas probably planned to try to make the whole treatment into more movies, which is why he named the movies so weirdly as IV, V and VI instead of I, II and III (though originally the subtitle 'A New Hope' and 'Episode IV' weren't even part of the name, it was just 'Star Wars')

I remember reading about a nine-part movie series - the next movies were going to be 'Clone Wars', which would mean episodes VII, VIII and IX, and then we would get I, II and III. Everyone expected them to be as good as the already existing movies.

However, later the episodes VII, VIII and IX were scrapped, and now it was only going to be a six-parter.

MUCH, much later, they started making the episodes I-III that are weirdly called 'prequels' (still not sure if this term is correct or not, as they're supposedly legitimate episode numbers, not an afterthought), and people were excited - to say the least.

So your story doesn't come from reality.