Slashdot Mirror
Battlestar Galactica Creator Glen A. Larson Dead At 77
schwit1 writes Glen A. Larson, the wildly successful television writer-producer whose enviable track record includes 'Six Million Dollar Man', Quincy M.E., Magnum, P.I., Battlestar Galactica, Knight Rider and The Fall Guy, has died. He was 77.
From the article: Battlestar Galactica lasted just one season on ABC from 1978-79, yet the show had an astronomical impact. Starring Lorne Greene and Richard Hatch as leaders of a homeless fleet wandering through space, featuring special effects supervised by Star Wars’ John Dykstra and influenced by Larson’s Mormon beliefs, Battlestar premiered as a top 10 show and finished the year in the top 25. But it was axed after 24 episodes because, Larson said, each episode cost “well over” $1 million.
Nice spelling there, bub.
Pillor me if you want, but every show this man touched eventually got cancelled or became garbage. Long live Glen Larson!!!
Seriously, a basic typo on the title of a news make it to the front page ? I'm all for giving /. a chance wrt. the poor quality of article and the associated criticizes, but this is pushing it a bit far...
Somehow, I doubt that the poster meant "Creato" in the italian sense, being the past tense of for Cresco, or to "produce, create, bring forth"...
Thirty four characters live here.
That's probably the downfall of the show, scifi ages so quickly. Probably why Lucas kept futzing with his own creation after release.
And those are 70s shows. Even something like late-80s/early-90s TNG sucks and not just from the 1960s-ish storylines. Just the lighting and everything is terrible and the effects, especially that Q-web.
We're going to think 90s shows are safe, until our kids, weaned on 8k and occulus rift 4.0 (8k, 3d, and who knows what else) shoot down our illusions and tell us how shit even 1080p looks.
Slashdot Editing: Dead At 0.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
it seems like more and more old people are dying in hang gliding accidents these days.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Like yahren. And felgercarb,
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...
Part of his legacy is the LED "scanning" back and forth light display used in the Cylon "Eye" and KITT/KARR forward sensor arrays are now referred to as "Larson Scanners". Even though a bit dated, they still look cool when used in the right context.
I believe that one stylistic mistake made with both Knight Rider 2000 and the Knight Rider television series reboot was the use of the wrong type of car for KITT to use as a base platform. When the new TV series was on it's way I always pictured a blue LED Larson Scanner on a 2003 series Trans AM. I even thought about putting one together for myself, before the gas price crunch hit in the early 2000s. to misquote Douglas Adams: "Though his TV series', the 1980s and the Pontiac Trans Am are all history, It is comforting to reflect that they are all in some small way commemorated by the fact that EvilMadScientist Laboratories sells a Larson scanner kit you can build." (Just don't put one on a Ford Mustang or a Station wagon, because it screams "DON'T DATE ME!")
http://shop.evilmadscientist.com/productsmenu/tinykitlist/152-scanner?qh=YToxOntpOjA7czo2OiJsYXJzb24iO30%3D
Doing my rock'n'roll duty for the title.
this is seriously sad news. I grew up on Glen A. Larson shows. Particularly BSG (two words: Laurette Spang. With her almost entirely off-the-shoulder wardrobe) and Knight Rider (it was the car. And the hot, hot Bonnie and April).
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
I never liked the creato peoples, this creato was no different
RA and GAL. RIP to both of 'em. :(
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
way beyond the Red Line into uncharted space. His work will not be forgotten.
SO SAY WE ALL!
Weird, I say. And now we find that Joseph Smith, the cult's originating "prophet" had over 40 wives, a number of whom were 14-15 year-olds. Sounds like a nice man (sarcasm).
and i will miss him.
So say we all
Grew up on, and enjoyed a lot of his shows -- BUT I always found the religious aspect of both BSGs (the original and reboot) a bit weird and distracting. I guess knowing now about his Mormonism it makes sense, and he's certainly allowed to write what he wants -- but the heavy handed religiosity really felt shoehorned in a futuristic show imo.
'The unexamined life is not worth living' - Socrates
Personally, I am repelled by Mormonism. I will leave it at that because my intent is not to discuss a religious cult. Feel free to plug-in any other belief system and any other TV or movie show title to suit your own bigotries/preferences/tastes/beliefs.
I enjoyed the original BSG back when it originally aired. It was, at that time, the best special effects to ever hit TV and with a network and budget that provided a large cast, bit sets, and famous actors. Yeah, the writing was hit-and-miss as was some of the acting, but compared toeverything else on TV??? not really so bad. Some characters were good, others not, some actors did better than others with the material they were given. Same thing with UFO, Space 1999, and Trek. Let's face it: in Trek there were better episodes (city on the edge of forever) while others stank (space hippies, anyone?). If you enjoy science fiction then you have to live with two basic facts: [1] the entertainment industry is NOT populated with SciFi people and does not "get it", so they will ruin everything to some degree saving money by dropping plot elements, trying to broaden demographics with wunderkind characters (wesley? boxee? will robinson?) and babes (wilma deering, maya, athena, etc), and [2] few episodes will be written by serious scifi authors. If you like the scifi genre and you want to get it from pop culture, you're gonna have to accept it watered-down and very flawed so you're either gonna get angry and frustrated or learn to take it for what it is.
The thing I find truly dissapointing is NOT the flaws in Hollywood's presentation of scifi, but rather the more-recent development that so many people seem to want to hate any piece or art or literature becuase they disagree with some aspect of the beliefs of the creator of the work. I would find Hemingway to be a drunken lout, but I can enjoy his books. I would not embrace picasso's world view, but I can enjoy his art. As I indicated earlier, I reject Mormonism, but could enjoy BSG. I found many of Rodeberry's views to be ignorant and foolish, but I can enjoy Trek. I simply do not comprehend the warped idea that if you disagree with Larson you must dislike BSG, or if you think Rodenberry was a troll, you must reject Trek, or if you disagree with Orson Scott Card you must boycott Enders Game, etc. Whatever became of of all that "open-mindedness" and "tolerance for other viewpoints" people used to insist on? EVERY creator of a work has personal views and NONE completelty avoid letting those views seep into their work; this is human and unavoidable. If creators of works all stripped their particular beliefs and world views from their works, those works would be bland and would never inspire thought/debate/conversation/re-examination/introspection. Literature and Art USED to be the very forums where humanity went to examine life and existence from many perspectives particularly those perspectives foreign to them. We used to call this being "educated" and "elightened".
"What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly - that is the first law of nature." - Voltaire
"I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it." - Voltaire
Dude, those guys have been criminals since Batman put on the Cape and Cowl.
Even Haruhi Suzumiya doesn't think they make sense. Just go watch her version of Watchmen meets Kingdom Come in peace.
So you really can't blame him for taking as many young aged wives as possible.
Mormon, Muslim, does anybody really care about the differences?
It's because you didn't pay your Slashdot bill. So shuddup!
Table-ized A.I.
Relax, Han did shoot first. Not a scoundrel though, just smart and tough.
The change is just revisionist propaganda, happens all the time as governments and corps grow old and corrupt.
Keep the faith!
I remember watching the episodes though got bored watching the same approaches and barrel rolls of colonial fighters. I remember seeing the racks of Tektronix test equipment. Front panels of that gear was real "space age" (though trying to find power switch the o-scopes was always a challenge, other controls were easy). I wonder if the company got extra business with so much of the gear "advertised."
When they did the remake, I found it amusing the only Battlestar that survived massive Cylon attack was Galactica because it was an old vintage ship (captained by an old guy with old school military thinking) with PDP-11 computers, Tektronix gear, Mocom-70 communications systems, etc. stuff that lack network systems so they were not hacked.
Getting back to Larson, I wonder what other ideas he had that never made it to the TV? Maybe they will find some story ideas, probably much better than typical remakes of decades old genres.
mfwright@batnet.com
Which is mostly a testament to how freakin' desperate we were for SF on the little screen in 1978.
I remember that the BSG episodes had such stupid stories that they never compensated for the good special effects. There were some really stupid episodes. Starbuck teaching kids to rhyme mission op instructions. (The plan never survives first contact with the enemy.) Some kind of bizarre western, or maybe more than one. The Eastern Empire. Glowing lights that appeared around space fighters. No show could survive such dumbness, even with a big budget. But Athena was the cutest thing on TV at that time.
Is that Dirk did seem to come around, because Katie Sackoff's character was one of the few decent ones in the whole BSG reboot.
I love the photo of Dirk and Katie smoking cigars in a Starbucks coffee shop. (Kudos to the manager who was smart enough to bend the rules and say, for this....we'll allow smoking.)
Should be a Chevy Camaro. Black or Midnight blue. And I'll go with your blue scannar.
What really gets me is the wardrobe and fashion. Star-trek was pretty much out-of-era. There were lots of weird outfits, but the uniforms weren't really tied to any era (and they weren't weird spandex space-suits either). Hairstyles were also not quite so era based, except for a few characters. The old BSG also seem very... blonde.
Stallone and Statham were OK.
Schwarzenigger I could do without.
Battlestar Galactica lasted just one season on ABC from 1978-79
We all want to forget Galactica '80, but it did happen. I don't remember much about it, because I was a kid then, other than Starbuck walking around in a white uniform. But I also remember that Cracked magazine had done a Galactica spoof a few months before, where at the end they find Earth and it's the 20th century. I was both shocked and amused that the TV people actually went and did that for real.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }