Battlestar Galactica (original series)

Although I've been a fan of Battlestar Galactica since the show started in 1978, and owned both the Marvel comics adaptation and the novelization, I'd somehow never, despite umpteen attempts, seen the pilot all the way through. I'd always, no matter how I'd schedule things, come in at exactly the same point at which I first started watching in 1978: Starbuck and Boomer getting drafted by Apollo to help check for solium leaks, with the threat of lending them out to Beta Company. (Can't think why I didn't watch from the beginning, back in 1978 when it originally aired; dim memories of coming home late from a friend's house, and yelling "What time is it?") Finally, my apartment mate, out of the blue, mentioned yesterday afternoon that he had the pilot on videotape: would I like to...? I was half convinced that the tape would glitch, and take me back to the solium leak scene, but no: after thirty years' wait, I was finally seeing it, straight from the beginning.

-Geez, the opening narration is by the guy who did both the voice of Imperious Leader and Count Iblis? I have a bad feeling about this...

-Huh, I'd always thought that the opening theme was by John Williams, but no: Stu Phillips, doing a damn good imitation of Williams' style.

-Wow, could those opening credits that zoom straight at the camera and go out of focus be a little more 70s in their execution? I thought not.

-Zak! I'd forgotten about Zak *sigh*.

- Wow, Dirk Benedict really does have All the Charm Ever; on his own TV-scale terms, he's the equivalent of Cary Grant (only more loveable rogue, with less polish.)

-Lew Ayres! Casting Ayres as the President of the Council of the Twelve who refuses to call an alert was pointed casting on someone's part.

-Hey, is that one of the old ships from Silent Running in the fleet? (Also, a nice gag: a label on one ship reading "COLONIAL MOVERS: WE MOVE ANYWHERE")

...and then we're back to the solium leak scene, and thence to the casino with the two-faced women and the insect thingies; the Galactica Circle of Life is now complete.

(Hey, Baltar- how'd you talk your way out of that one?)

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The complete Buck Rogers in the 25th Century series- $10! (Worth buying, if only for the episode with the Vorvon, and his Unibrow of the Damned.)

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Via theweaselking, someone who wrote a paper on the possibility of civilizations in an accretion disk; reminds me somewhat, in broadest terms only, of Larry Niven's Integral Trees environment.

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Random thought, occasioned by a digression in a post earlier today: for all that Hollywood is All About the Biopics at times, there are certain figures who are so distinct in their talents and personalities, it's almost impossible to imagine another human being portraying them (for all that we're just fine with, say, the fact that T. E. Lawrence was played by an actor who was a full foot taller.) Orson Welles is one obvious candidate: it took two people (Vincent D'Inofrio and the voice of Maurice LaMarche) to do a reasonably convincing impression of the man with Ed Wood; Angus McFayden had some of the young Welles' roguish style in The Cradle Will Rock, but was unable to simulate Welles' outsize physical presence- and, of course, That Voice. (I have no plans to see Me and Orson Welles, but based on the trailer I've seen, Christian McKay faces much the same issue.) Erich von Stroheim is another example; yet another, Cary Grant. It might be possible to say, force George Clooney to get rid of the goofy mannerisms he tends to affect for the Coen brothers, and demonstrate the control of the screen he shows at times- but even then, he'd be only an afterimage of the real thing. (The living actor most able to simulate Grant's sheer suavity would probably be Denzel Washington.)

Who are some others who spring to mind for you, and why?