History Series / BattlestarGalactica1978

* CalifornisDoubling: The portion of the Capital city of Caprica where the Cylons attack in the opening of the pilot, was filmed at the (then brand new) City Hall and Public Library complex in downtown Long Beach, California.

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%% ZeroContextExample entries are not allowed on wiki pages. All such entries have been commented out. Add context to the entries before uncommenting them.

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* CaliforniaDoubling: The opening of the series pilot, showing the Cylons attacking the home world of Caprica, was filmed at the City Hall/Main Public Library complex in Long Beach.

* TemptingFate: In "Murder on the Rising Star", Cassiopeia mentions during a Triad game that Starbuck and his rival Ortega are gonna kill each other if their fierce rivalry keeps up. Ortega is killed, alright, but it wasn't Starbuck that did it. [[spoiler:It was Karybdis, who went by an alias Pallon during his time in the fleet.]]

* SpaceJews: 12 Tribes, driven from their homeland and searching for the missing, legendary 13th Tribe? How can it ''not'' be? (though the allusion to a 13th Tribe is based on Mormon theology, rather than Jewish).

* WaveMotionGun: The "Gun on Ice Planet Zero" from the episode of the same name, which the Cylons were using to blow any ships out of the sky (and space). Luckily, it was destroyed before it could do the same thing to the Galactica (and the rest of the fleet for that matter).

%%* AncientAstronauts

%%* TheBattlestar: TropeNamer

%%* FictionalSport: Triad.

%%* MacGuffinLocation: Earth

%%* RobotWar

* ComicBookAdaptation: MarvelComics published an adaptation of the original TV movie, and then (unusually for most comics based on TV series) went on to adapt some of the early episodes as well before branching into original stories (the comic ran for nearly two years, outliving the TV series). Dynamite Comics later published comics based on the classic series alongside its adaptations of the remake.

%%* ApocalypseHow

%%* BlackBestFriend: Lt. Boomer and Colonel Tigh.

%%* TheCaptain: Adama

%%* CatchPhrase: "By your command."

* DeathRay: blasters, which shot a quick, invisible beam of energy. Much like real, laser pistol-like devices. As part of the lawsuit settlement with [=LucasFilm=], BG was prohibited from showing hand weapons that shot visible bolts on-screen. The space combat scenes were not so limited, for whatever reason. Thus ironically making BG's hand-lasers more realistic than Lucas's blaster weapons.

%%* EnemyMine: In "The Return of Starbuck".
* EverybodyIsSingle: Apollo gets married in the second plot, and still spends most of the season a widower; his father is also a widower (common in the Fleet, one assumes), and every one else is not married.

%%* FighterLaunchingSequence

%%* KillerRobot: The Cylon Centurions.

%%* ThePromisedLand: Earth

%%* RoboSpeak

%%* SpaceOpera

%%* ThereIsAnother: The battlestar Pegasus.
%%* TonightSomeoneDies: Jane Seymour, in the second episode.

%%* WaveMotionGun: "The Gun on Ice Planet Zero".

* ImperialStormtrooperMarksmanshipAcademy: You'd think intelligent computers would be better shots.

%%* OnlyOneName

** Some of the completed effects from ''Galactica'' were used in the B-movie ''SpaceMutiny''.

** Footage of the 'Agro-Ships' was recycled footage of the forest-carrying freighters from SilentRunning (which was originally done by a effects man who also worked on this show).

http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/37869/seen-as-or-seeing-ascyc

* AristocratsAreEvil: Almost any Sire or Siress is of high-brow low-moral character, and both of the Counts (Baltar and Iblis) are pure Evil.
** The Sires who aren't evil are useless or obstructive, with roughly two exceptions, both Siresses.

* CallARabbitASmeerp: They don't have dogs, they have ''daggits''.

* Calvinball: the card game Pyramid and the sport Triad.

* DeathRay: blasters, anyone?
** I think they were more like laser pistols, which were shockingly scientifically realistic in the sense that they shot a quick, invisible beam of energy. Much like real, laser pistol-like devices.
*** As part of the lawsuit settlement with [=LucasFilm=], BG was prohibited from showing hand weapons that shot visible bolts on-screen. The space combat scenes were not so limited, for whatever reason. Thus ironically making BG's hand-lasers more realistic than Lucas's blaster weapons.
* DemotedToExtra: Athena ends up getting this treatment. She starts out as a BridgeBunny, but is only sometimes shown on the bridge after the pilot. Then she's used as part of a triangle with Starbuck and Cassiopeia, but that plot is dropped fast. The only time after this she's given any significant screen time is when she's one of the characters trapped in the fire during "Fire In Space." Late season, she spends her time, apparently, as a school teacher.
** This was reportedly due to the producers lack of interest in coaching Maren Jensen, who was at that time an inexperienced actress. Cassiopeia was developed to take Athena's place as a frontline female character.

* HeterosexualLifePartners: Apollo and Starbuck - Not only do they often fly together, but they're also on the same Triad Team.

** Hey, you try to shoot when your eye is constantly darting back and forth!
*** It's their own fault. They should make more efficient eyes.
** And then they went and subverted it with Red-Eye, a damaged Cylon who's not only a deadly shot, but he actually stops his eye scanning when he's targeting. So, guys, why is the damaged and malfunctioning Cylon so much more deadly that the fully operational ones?
*** Partly because he's immune to the local "pnuemos," compressed air guns, and partly because he has machine speed draw.
**** Actually, ''only'' because he's immune to the local guns. He usually spends so long targeting before he draws that he gets shot...and receives yet another small dent in his armor plating and then puts a laser blast through his opponent. (That's how he was destroyed, since this time he was up against a Colonial Warrior, armed with a weapon designed to destroy Cylons with a single hit. This may explain why they miss so much: They know they'll always lose if they take long enough for their aiming system to lock on.)

* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Starbuck
** More like a LoveableRogue. He's a pretty likeable guy when you aren't annoyed at one of his irresponsible schemes.

* SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale: The writers simply didn't understand the difference between a system or a galaxy. Made worse by the fact that only the ''Galactica'' has FTL.
** Even worse, the ''Galactica'' only has L, without the FT.

* SpaceWestern
** In one episode, Apollo had a ''walk-down gunfight'' with a rogue Cylon.

* StockFootage: The special effects were based on optically overlaying stock footage (spacecraft, explosions, and so on), and several completed scenes were used more than once.

* ContractualImmortality. For example, in fighter battle Cylon raiders will be exploding left right and centre, but we can be pretty sure all the familiar Viper pilots are coming home safe.

* AncientAstronauts
* ApocalypseHow
* AppliedPhlebotinum: Applied quite generously, in fact

* TheBattlestar: TropeNamer
* BigBad: The Cylons' Imperious Leader, both the first and second one.
* BlackBestFriend: Lt. Boomer and Colonel Tigh.

* TheCaptain: Adama

* CatchPhrase: "By your command."

* ClipShow

* ComingInHot: TropeNamer

* CoolSpaceship: The Battlestar Galactica.
** The Vipers and the Cylon Raiders, as well.

* DaddysGirl: Sheba.

* DevilInPlainSight: Count Iblis

* EnemyMine: In "The Return of Starbuck".

* ExplosionsInSpace

* FictionalSport: Triad.
* FighterLaunchingSequence
* {{Forgiveness}}

* KillerRobot: The Cylon Centurions.
* LadyOfWar: Sheba. Also, [[spoiler:Apollo's short-lived wife, Serina.]]

* MacGuffinLocation: Earth
* MisanthropeSupreme: Baltar
* {{Mooks}}
* NotableOriginalMusic
* NobleMaleRoguishMale: Apollo and Starbuck.

* OnlyOneName
* PardonMyKlingon
* PhotoprotoneutronTorpedo: Pulsar cannons.
* PlanetOfHats

* {{Precursors}}: The Lords of Kobol.

* ThePromisedLand: Earth
* ReadingsAreOffTheScale

* RobotBuddy: Muffet, Cy
* RoboSpeak
* RobotWar
* RoadTripEpisode: Type 3 trips appeared in several episodes.

* SpaceBasedWeaponHasCutoffRange

* SpaceIsMagic

* SpaceOpera

* StrawCivilian: Sire Uri and the Quorum of the Twelve.

* SupernaturalAid: The Seraphs and their Silver-Crystal Cityship.
* TechnoBabble

* ThereIsAnother: The battlestar Pegasus.
* TonightSomeoneDies: Jane Seymour, in the second episode.

* WaveMotionGun: "The Gun on Ice Planet Zero".

In the face of a massive write-in campaign, the executives decided to ReTool the series into a less expensive spinoff, and so ''Galactica'' was promptly resurrected as '''''Galactica 1980''''', starring an older Boxey (now "Troy") as a [[SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute substitute for]] Apollo. The Galactica and its fleet finally reached Earth, only to be forced to pass it by to lead the Cylons away. Meanwhile, Troy and his wingman Dillon were left on Earth (soon joined by the "Super Scouts", a group of Colonial children stranded by accident), on a mission to uplift Earth science to Colonial standards while maintaining a {{Masquerade}} to avoid drawing Cylon attention. This revival proved grossly unpopular and was cancelled after only a handful of episodes. To this day, fans of the original series [[FanonDiscontinuity prefer to treat]] ''[[FanonDiscontinuity Galactica 1980]]'' [[FanonDiscontinuity as though it had never existed]], and novels and comics based on the original series continuity [[CanonDiscontinuity ignore it.]]

----
!!''Galactica 1980'' provides examples of the following tropes:

* AliensStealCable: How Dr. Zee finds out about Earth cultures.
* ArmorPiercingQuestion: In one episode, a Cylon states that their goal and purpose is to organize the entire universe. Another character asks what they'll do after that. The Cylon hesitates and finally admits that no one has ever asked that question.
* BackForTheFinale: [[spoiler: Starbuck, in a rather sad {{flashback}} episode.]]
* BenevolentAlienInvasion: Galactica's plan for [[spoiler:bringing Earth up to their level of technology.]]
* BigApplesauce: In the episode "The Night the Cylons Landed".
* CanonDisContinuity: For the continuation comics and novels, at least.
* ChekhovsGun: It turns out microwave ovens can really scramble a cylons circuitry.
* CoolBike: Troy and Dillon were given motorcycles to blend in to Earth society, with a few extra features like converting into mini-aircraft.
* CultureClash: Invokes FridgeLogic since Dr. Zee is monitoring Earth's transmissions.
* HumanAliens
* InnocentAliens: Played straight ''and'' averted.
* IntrepidReporter: Jamie Hamilton, who becomes the Colonials' SecretKeeper during the first storyline.
* InvisibilityCloak: Dr. Zee created a short-duration unit for the teams sent to Earth to use in emergencies.
* NewSuperPower: In ''Galactica 1980'', we discover that the artificial gravity they've been living with in the fleet is several times the surface gravity of Earth; so, when they land on Earth, they can jump several meters in the air.
** Which is pretty amazing, considering we've seen crew members wrestle and/or drop things in the original series, and they didn't seem to fall any faster than they would on Earth.
* PlotHole: The last episode of the first season (The Hand of God) had a final scene in which it is revealed that the unusual transmissions that the Galactica observatory was picking up were [[spoiler: the transmissions from the 1969 Apollo moon landing]]. However, Galactica 1980 (which we are led to assume is set in 1980) is said to be set thirty years after the events of the first season. This is impossible to reconcile unless the colonial Yahren was ridiculously short, or the fleet had to take an insanely roundabout course, equivalent to Seattle to Vancouver (a day trip if you go up the coast) by way of Los Angeles, Mexico City, New Orleans, New York, Toronto, and Whitehorse.
* StoryboardingTheApocalypse: Dr. Zee demonstrates the need for the fleet to pass Earth by in the first episode with a computer simulation of an attack on Los Angeles (made using StockFootage from the movie ''Earthquake''). The footage was heavily featured in the commercials for the series premiere.
* TeenGenius: Dr. Zee.
* TheyLookLikeUsNow: Cylon human-form infiltrators appeared on this show decades before the "Skinjobs" in [[Series/BattlestarGalactica2003 the new series]].
* TimeTravel: Xavier makes a HeelTurn to implement his alternative to Adama and Zee's plan travel back to UsefulNotes/WorldWarII Germany to induce StupidJetpackHitler.
* YouLookFamiliar: In the pilot [[Series/TheBradyBunch Mike Brady]] is reunited with Cousin Oliver.

[[Recap/BattlestarGalacticaClassic Now has a Recap page]]

* ContractualImmortality. For example, in fighter battle Cyclon raiders will be exploding left right and centre, but we can be pretty sure all the familiar Viper pilots are coming home safe.

* ContractualImmortality

(For the 2004 series, see ''Series/BattlestarGalacticaReimagined''.)

* TheyLookLikeUsNow: Cylon human-form infiltrators appeared on this show decades before the "Skinjobs" in [[Series/BattlestarGalacticaReimagined the new series]].

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