[Prince Xizor]

Originally posted by SpaceBadger:
Try to look at it without 23+ years of hindsight. When Star Wars first came out, one of the best things about it for us kids (I was 14) was the special effects - the ships in space, the bLaster bolts, the light-sabres - all a quantum leap beyond what we were used to seeing in Star Trek re-runs on late night TV, or on Space: 1999. These were pretty much the only referents we had, and without VCRs we did not have the opportunity to study them in detail, we could only try and catch them when they happened to show up on TV.

From that point of view, yes, Battlestar Galactica certainly did a pretty good impression of Star Wars. The ships had a similar look to them; the appearance of ships in space, and ship combat, was very similar; and I think the hand-weapon effects were similar, too.

I didn't get to see Galactica much, only when I was over at the home of someone who lived in town and had cable TV, as it was on a network that we could not recieve by broadcast (ABC, maybe?), but I remember thinking back then that it would be so cool to be able to watch it regularly, like getting Star Wars on TV. (I watched Star Wars three times the summer it came out, then did not get to see it again in any form until Empire Strikes Back came out several years later; did not see the original Star Wars again until it was shown on TV about the time that Jedi came out, I think. My kids have them all on VHS and watch them whenever they get a notion, and think nothing of it.)

So anyway, yeah, I understand exactly what Xizor was saying, and agree with him.

SpaceBadger

Thanks, SpaceBadger! Couldn't have explained myself any better than that.

Of course when A New Hope was first released in 1977, I was only a year old. The first Star Wars film I saw in theaters was Return of the Jedi in '83. The previous two I saw at my neighbor's house; she babysat for my brothers and I, and happened to have a VCR (my parents didn't get one until the mid-80s). So I was pretty young when first watching Star Wars, Galactica, and I also remember a show called Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (which has re-aired on-and-off on Sci-Fi). And at that age, you're too young to really understand the story. You just wait for the scenes with starfighter dogfights and bLaster bolts darting across the screen. Naturally you perceive obvious similarities between Star Wars and Galactica: Cylon centurions resemble Imperial Stormtroopers (and their mechanical appearance distinguishes them as the "bad guys", as opposed to the "good guys" who are mainly human in appearance); similar weapons and ships; the Cylons and Imperials always tend to outnumber the "good guys", who more than make up for it through heroics; and so on. The Last point you find in any fantasy epic, but Star Wars and Galactica were my first exposure to this kind of thing. Which is probably why even today I prefer space fantasy over the Harry Potter / Lord of the Rings varieties.