BG-13: Greetings From Earth

[Flamingo Girl]

An alien spacecraft is discovered by Starbuck and Apollo on patrol. It contains six human fugitives in suspended animation--possibly from the planet Earth. Tension amongst the fleet at the prospects of brethren from Earth rises. In time, the humans are revealed to be from Terra, a Colonial-like world. They are journeying to Paradeen (a nearby colony world) to escape the threat of the Eastern Alliance, a Terran faction with a ruthlessness akin to the Cylons. Starbuck, Cassiopeia and Apollo finish the journey with the Terrans, hoping to find clues to the location of Earth. But the Eastern Alliance pursues the ship to Paradeen, where more troubles ensue.


Series stars; Richard Hatch as Apollo, Dirk Benedict as Starbuck, Herb Jefferson Jr. as Boomer, Lorne Greene as Adama, Terry Carter as Colonel Tigh, Maren Jensen as Athena, Tony Swartz as Jolly, Laurette Spang as Cassiopia, Noah Hathaway as Boxey, Sarah Rush as Rigel, David Greenan as Omega, Anne Lockhart as Sheba, Jack Stauffer as Bojay, Larry Manetti as Giles, Ed Begley, Jr. as Greenbean, and John Colicos as Baltar.

Ray Bolger as Vector, Randolph Mantooth as Michael, Kelly Harmon as Sarah, Murray Matheson as Geller, Lesley Woods as Aggie Moreland, Frank Marth as Josh Moreland, Curt Lowens as Krebbs, Lloyd Bochner as Commandant Leiter, Bobby Van as Hector, Gary Vinson as Doyle, Alex Rodine as Lanceman, Lester Fletcher as Donner, Michelle Larson as Charity, Gillian Greene as Melanie, Eric Larson as Todd, Kimberly Woodward as Loma, David Larson as Walker, Donald Mantooth as the medtech, and Ron Kelly as Reese.

(Thanks to Michael Faries Battlestar Galactica.com)

[kingfish]

This one is perhaps the worst one ever made. The Eastern Alliance couldn't fight their way out of a paper bag. The ship the Earthlings/Terrans were on was from Buck Rogers In The 25TH Century. This episode was the beginning of the end of a great concept. Hector and Vector at least knew the difference between the genders however. I also noticed that this 2 hour episode had the opening narration by Patrick Macnee included in it. Larson was hoping for a spin-off series.

[skippercollecto]

There is an unidentified voice in this episode that perhaps one of you can identify. When the Terrans' ship begins to enter Paradeen's atmosphere, its computer and the computer on the ground begin to communicate with each other. The one computer voice (I think it's the ship's) states a phrase that includes the term "lunar par avion.")
Whose voice does this belong to? I know where I've heard it before--it's the voice of the narrator and various aliens in Lost in Space. However, I know the voice does not belong to either Jonathan Harris or Bob May. Do any of you know who recorded this brief line?

Mary

[Charybdis]

When checking over the systems on the Terran ship, Dr. Salik says that the instruments have strange symbols and language that they have never seen before...yet, when they open the cases, Michael comes out and immediately starts talking English to them!!!!!

[shiningstar]

I really didn't like this episode as much as I liked the others.
And I GROANED .........when the girl said ........OH AMnesia......
and apollo said ......something like "Amnesia what a pretty name."

[kingfish]

Originally posted by shiningstar
I really didn't like this episode as much as I liked the others.
And I GROANED .........when the girl said ........OH AMnesia......
and apollo said ......something like "Amnesia what a pretty name."

That was not in this episode but the one titled Experiment In Terra.

[shiningstar]

I didn't like that one either ........those two episodes were
so bad ........that I still even to this day get them mixed up.

Thanks for clearing up my mixup Kingfish.

[Oscar]

I really liked the elements of the story that take place on the Galactica, although it that part is obviously padded out with a lot of fluff. The second part where they go to Paradine is an absulte disaster, an appallingly bad, confused mess.

[Domiano]

We can lay blame everywhere on both of those episodes. I believe it was crunch time and some scripts were good in concept and when filming began due to the shooting schedule things got botched. After Murder on The Rising Star things became really chaotic and unperdictable. I agree that the ship and some of the settings were later used in Buck Rogers.

[Darth Marley]

I saw this episode over the summer.
Brings back memories.Not all of them good.

This episode,IMO, really set the stage for G80.
The silliness factor of H & V has me in hysterical convulsions.
Not even Crow T Robot and Tom Servo include these droids in their prayers.A break that at least Twiki got.

[shiningstar]

Me too Domiano.

It had two great things for me.

1) Ralph Mantooth : coming home from school and watching Emergency right after Star Trek was the norm.

2)The city sequences were shot in MONTREAL, CANADA !!!!!

***

The VAcant city scenes with Hector and Starbuck is amazing, the Eastern Alliance are silly Villains, and it seems a bit lightweight in the end, but it has enjoyable moments, Part ! is slightly better on story, but part 2 have those amazing city scapes....

[warhammerdriver]

Originally Posted by spot778

MONTREAL, CANADA

Pity we gave that city back to the Brits after the War of 1812.

[shiningstar]

Originally Posted by skippercollecto

There is an unidentified voice in this episode that perhaps one of you can identify. When the Terrans' ship begins to enter Paradeen's atmosphere, its computer and the computer on the ground begin to communicate with each other. The one computer voice (I think it's the ship's) states a phrase that includes the term "lunar par avion.")
Whose voice does this belong to? I know where I've heard it before--it's the voice of the narrator and various aliens in Lost in Space. However, I know the voice does not belong to either Jonathan Harris or Bob May. Do any of you know who recorded this brief line?

Mary

The narrater as stated above was Patrick MCnee. The same one
who played Count Iblis.

At least I think it was. I'm not sure.

[launchcruiser7]

hector ?vector dance 50 people on planet star destoryers but nothing on fleet long range scaners the worst two parter of the bunch sould have been a single more about the western side navy interceptors or larger ships no defensive ring around there star by are they in for a supise when 5 baseships show up even if they have mthe over 1000 destoryers they claim other bad shows had acting or great geust stars like warriors deer skin skirt or patols eyes of starbuckin last one id show a freind about battlestar launchcruiserhawkeye ready for deployment

[skippercollecto]

You learn the name of another one of Boxey's classmates in one of the deleted scenes on the DVD. In one scene, Athena looks down to her left and addresses a boy as "Cyril." If you go back and watch the actual episode, there are several shots of the entire classroom, and you will see in the front row, to Athena's left, is a little boy with very blond hair. This is Cyril, but he is uncredited in the listings.

[skippercollecto]

In the closing credits, there is an actor named Lester Fletcher listed as playing a character named "Donner." Which one was he in the episode? No one is called by that name in any of the scenes of the episode.

Mary

[skippercollecto]

Much has been discussed about this episode being Maren Jensen's last appearance in the series--that she'd been fired, that she wanted to return to modeling, the other actors weren't aware that she wasn't part of the series anymore, etc. But what I've never seen discussion of is that this was also Noah Hathaway's last appearance. When I've been to conventions, the other actors haven't brought up the subject, and I didn't hear much of Noah's talk at Galacticon so I don't know what he himself had to say.
Any comments?

[skippercollecto]

In the scene where Lunar Shuttle Avion (Michael's ship) is about to land on Paradeen, a computer on the ground communicates with the ship's computer. This voice is very familiar, yet I don't know the name of the man who provides it. Do any of you know?
The voice says, "Paradeen Control Center to Lunar Shuttle Avion." It's the same voice that announces the arrival of aliens on numerous episodes of "Lost in Space." I am sure that some of you out there who are "Lost in Space" fans will be able to identify whose voice this is, but I don't think it is either Jonathan Harris or Bob May.

Mary

[Eric Paddon]

I just sat through more than one viewing of this episode to do one of my usual fanfic adaptations, and time and again I keep marveling at how this episode, along with the others in the Terra Trilogy, suffer from an appalling case of poor writing structure. It wasn't until I watched the scenes slowly and had to back up again and again to do the adapting that I finally realized the big problem. Larson is credited as sole writer of this episode, along with EIT, and I think it is very obvious that he never had his script looked over by McDonnell and Carlson or someone else to polish it up. As Executive Producer, I think Larson likely had leeway to let his scripts be done without major fine-tuning and it really shows in both GFE and EIT.

Case in point is the whole pointless sidebar matter of the Morelands. They're introduced late in the game to be a red herring for two minutes about how destroyed the vipers, then they conveniently serve as a way for everyone to get out of the city fast. Then, there's the peculiar jump of going from this distant city to Apollo and Starbuck sliding down off the rooftops to take out these Alliance guards without so much as a single scene or line of them explaining what their plan is going to be! A little less time of Starbuck and Hector yakking as they wandered through Expo 67s ruins and a little more development of this point would have been welcome.

And another gripe of mine writing wise in the first half when it seems like everyone on the Galactica and the Fleet keeps referring to the Terrans as "children" as though it's an entire gorup of them. Hello? Didn't they see Michael the fully-grown male? Count the number of times the word "children" and "babies" are uttered in part one some time and how often they're used in a wrong context when referring to the entire group and you'll see what I mean.

But if the writing is poor what really sabotages the episode is the abysmal acting of Kelly Harmon, especially regarding her attempts to get Apollo to stay and her flat delivery when she confesses to sabotaging the vipers. If you want to know why she had to earn her living in Tic Tac commercials, those scenes are it!

Larson I think was so desperate to do something different from what had become the Galactica norm that he just didn't stop to think about whether this was a quality way of doing it. That alone is why I think most people tend not to think highly of the Terra Trilogy. Not only is it such a radical departure, but it isn't executed well at all.

[Senmut]

Actually, I liked the EIT eps. They showed that BSg could do more than slug it out with the Cylons this week. Could it have been better? Hell yeah, but then so could alot of things. These eps are actually quite good, and far outshine TMW.

[Eric Paddon]

It isn't the fact that Galactica departed from the norm with the Terra trilogy, it's the poor writing. And the reason IMO why "Magnificent Warriors" is ultimately a better episode is because it's a single episode by itself and not part of a would-be attempt at a grandiose story arc the way the Terra trilogy is. Because the Terra trilogy was Galactica's boldest attempt at doing something like that over four hours worth of episodes, then IMO they have to be held to a higher standard of writing, certainly at least on the level of other big episodes like LPOTG, LL, WOTG etc.

[Senmut]

Originally Posted by Eric Paddon

It isn't the fact that Galactica departed from the norm with the Terra trilogy, it's the poor writing. And the reason IMO why "Magnificent Warriors" is ultimately a better episode is because it's a single episode by itself and not part of a would-be attempt at a grandiose story arc the way the Terra trilogy is. Because the Terra trilogy was Galactica's boldest attempt at doing something like that over four hours worth of episodes, then IMO they have to be held to a higher standard of writing, certainly at least on the level of other big episodes like LPOTG, LL, WOTG etc.

Each and every ep has to be held to the same standard of writing, regardless of its length. I did not see the Terra Trilogy as an attempt at anything, grandiose or otherwise, beyond the next step in the Fleet's journey, and maybe an indication they were on the right course for finding the 13th Tribe. The story took longer to tell because it was a longer story. Thankfully, some NitWerk suit didn't try and have it squished into an hour, and say it was good. ABC interfered enough as it was, and all those responsible should be exiled to the empty planet with Baltar!
Yes, the writing could have been different, and a bit better done, but so could nearly all of them. I still see this as superior to TMW, in almost every respect.

[Eric Paddon]

Originally Posted by Senmut

Each and every ep has to be held to the same standard of writing, regardless of its length.

Not so. A one hour story is a completely different kind of episode from a storyline spread out over 4 hours, and in this case when the stakes get raised for something higher and not a more light-hearted fare like TMW or TLP, you have to bring some higher expectations and standards in, just like one would for a LPOTG versus TMW.

Originally Posted by Senmut

I did not see the Terra Trilogy as an attempt at anything, grandiose or otherwise, beyond the next step in the Fleet's journey, and maybe an indication they were on the right course for finding the 13th Tribe.

"Hand Of God" did that a lot better in just one hour than the Terra trilogy did in four, especially since we got this padded out build-up in GFE that was then utterly dismissed in one line at the end of EIT. That is simply bad pacing when writing a story.

Originally Posted by Senmut

Yes, the writing could have been different, and a bit better done, but so could nearly all of them. I still see this as superior to TMW, in almost every respect.

"A bit" better would be an understatement. GFE was in need of a *major* re-write in terms of pacing and plotting, not to mention a serious need of recasting in most of its guest performers. At the very least, Larson should have allowed McDonnell and Carlson, his paid story editors, a crack at fixing it, or co-writing the whole story arc with Bellisario.

Originally Posted by launchcruiser7

hector ?vector dance 50 people on planet star destoryers but nothing on fleet long range scaners the worst two parter of the bunch sould have been a single more about the western side navy interceptors or larger ships no defensive ring around there star by are they in for a supise when 5 baseships show up even if they have mthe over 1000 destoryers they claim other bad shows had acting or great geust stars like warriors deer skin skirt or patols eyes of starbuckin last one id show a freind about battlestar launchcruiserhawkeye ready for deployment

how many fighters on a launchcruiser just want to know

There may have been serious flaws with the Terra episodes, but there were some good moments, too. I loved when they were piloting the captured Eastern Alliance Destroyer to the Galactica, and it slowly dawned on their defiant prisoner just how big the Galactica was. That was priceless!

Were there plans to keep Terra in the series if it had continued?

[Eric Paddon]

I don't believe so. Not unless Larson was using the Terra episodes as a pilot for another kind of show altogether.

[Senmut]

Originally Posted by Crewmember

Were there plans to keep Terra in the series if it had continued?

Eric's right. It doesn't seem likely, since John tells Apollo that "this is not the end of your journey." They keep going, eventually finding the BaseShip which must be well beyond Terra. I think it was just a morsel of info as to where the 13th Tribe had passed, and that they were on the right track.