So Say We All

by Mark A. Altman

  The Cylon costumes, worn only by stuntmen on the series, were designed for individuals who were six feet tall. The boots Dorleac designed had extra-thick soles and contained lifts inside the shoe to provide additional height. The bodysuit itself was made out of a corded vinyl that was then slatted on very heavy buckram, a coarse cotton cloth stiffened with glue, so that the costume wouldn’t give. The final touch on the costume was the forbidding metallic armor that covered the head, neck, and chest. These pieces were vacuum-formed from a lightweight plastic, chromed, and then attached to the bodysuit with a metallic silver tape manufactured by 3M.

  ROB KLEIN

  The Cylon suits were entirely made of fiberglass at first for the pilot by Apogee, but were destroyed beyond repair during filming because there were no stunt-grade pieces of Cylon armor made. Eventually, Universal took over the fabrication of the Cylon suits and used vacuum-formed plastic, which was chrome-plated using the same process as the original fiberglass pieces. There are only a few examples of the fiberglass pilot-made Cylon parts that survive to this day. The Cylon eyes were powered using a movie-camera battery belt. Apogee disguised them by making chrome squares that fit over the battery cells on the outside of the belt.

  STEVEN SIMAK

  Galactica’s first season provided few clues as to the origin or society of the Cylon Empire. Except for a vague reference to the fact that they were once living beings overrun by their own technology, costume designer Jean-Pierre Dorleac had very little to go on when visualizing the series’ chief antagonist. Based on his reading of the script, the designer had two pieces of information—the Cylons were once reptilian and they were now machines. Although the chrome gave the Cylons a stunningly sinister look, it did create complications for the cinematographers working on the series.

  JEAN-PIERRE DORLEAC

  The reflections were terrible for the cameraman. It was very hard to light them, but this had been discussed. Glen was very specific in what he wanted and he knew of the problem and still insisted that they be high chrome. They were aware coming in the door; it wasn’t something that surprised anybody by any means. It just was a difficult situation for lighting.

  The difficulty was to avoid seeing the reflections of the camera and crew in the highly reflective Cylon armor when doing close-ups. Director of photography H. John Penner used lenses and clever camera placement to resolve the problem.

  H. JOHN PENNER

  (director of photography, Battlestar Galactica)

  I usually used the stage lens and a 5:1 zoom. If I wanted a close-up angle on the Cylons, I would just get a little further away and change the angle a tiny bit.

  WINRICH KOLBE

  (associate producer, Battlestar Galactica)

  That was a pain in the ass. Originally, we wanted to have them in shiny reflective garb, but during the pilot that would really interfere with all the optical work that we had to do, because it picked up every glint of reflection, and not only that, but every time they were coming into camera you could see the camera in their armor, so there were major discussions as to what we could do. We all liked the original shiny, very glossy surface, and then we had to tone it down because it was prohibitive and we just didn’t have the time and money to shoot them from the angle where you wouldn’t see the reflection. We did endless tests and finally found the right compromise.

  ROD HOLCOMB

  (director, “The Lost Warrior”)

  There was a little bit of overlighting, because they had to kind of even it out with the reflections. They did this with cross-lighting, single lights, and stuff, even though that’s what they were doing outside. You never saw me take the Cylon [Red Eye] off the front steps in my episode. Those guys were just blind inside. They actually had to go as slow as they did, not because they just couldn’t move, but because of the reflectivity. You couldn’t get up really close. You had to be back and you had people, extras in the background, hiding things and stuff like that. So it took a little time to shoot.

  CHRISTIAN I. NYBY II

  They could kind of see where their feet were but that was about it, so the poor guys would fall over all the time.

  JEAN-PIERRE DORLEAC

  The first day we shot the Cylons on horseback on Carillon, the Cylons kept falling off the horses because they couldn’t see where they were going. It was really very funny. Despite repeated attempts, removing the horses and having the Cylons advance on foot ultimately solved the problem.

  CHRISTIAN I. NYBY II

  Generally, you would get everything working and then two of them would fall flat on their face, because they couldn’t see where their feet were going. So that was always a problem. Eventually we would get a few of them that could actually work in the suit pretty well, and those were the ones that played the Cylons most often.

  JACK GILL

  (stunt double, Battlestar Galactica)

  The only reason they stuck us in the Cylon suits was that they already had us on salary to double the leads, so it was cheaper for them to also put us in the Cylon suit while we were on set anyway. Most of the guys that were in the Cylon suits were really big guys. The tall guys were mostly background extras and weren’t allowed to do stunts. Every now and then they’d bring in two or three really big stunt guys, but sometimes you had ten to twelve Cylons, of which a bunch had to be killed or blown up. That’s why they put us in a suit and had us wear lifts.

  I did Cylon suits like fifteen to twenty times I was on the series. Every time I did, that suit pinched the crap out of me. When you fell down there was always a shard that would pierce down in my armpit or somewhere else. It really was a very uncomfortable suit.

  The problem with playing a Cylon was that you couldn’t put your hands down when you fell. You had to fall straight to your chest. It sucked, because if you did put your hands down, the director would come over and say, “No, no, no. You’ve got to remember that you are a robot and you have to fall like a robot would fall. You can’t put your hands out.” So you’d fall face-flat to the ground with no protection and all the plastic breaking.

  SCOTT MANTZ

  What I loved about Galactica at the time, the thing that really struck me, was the Cylons, the way the Cylons sounded. When they talked, I couldn’t get enough of it. I loved hearing them talk. When you first hear their voices in the gas cloud when Apollo and Zac are ambushed, I just thought, “Wow, that’s so cool.”

  STEVEN SIMAK

  Dialogue for the Cylon Centurions was never actually spoken on set, but recorded later by actors in postproduction. Using a device called a vocoder, sound effects artist Peter Berkos mixed the actors’ voices with mechanical and electrical sounds to create the robotic Cylon tongue.

  PETER BERKOS

  (sound effects editor, Battlestar Galactica)

  The vocoder’s purpose is to disguise sounds. There are twenty-seven combinations that take a sound and change it. It creates a mixture of sound and dialogue. In fact, we [also] did that with the daggit, Muffit. We fed mechanical dog sounds into the vocoder and an actual dog barking, and we came out with the toy-dog barks.

  The Cylon Imperious Leader, built for a then-exorbitant $50,000 and yet ultimately kept in the shadows, was envisioned as a reptilian creature with a cobra head. Dorleac was responsible for the costume, while Carlo Rambaldi, the man responsible for bringing E.T. to life, designed and built the head itself.

  JEAN-PIERRE DORLEAC

  Glen told me he wanted him to be reptilian, but still very imposing. He wanted him to be somewhat inscrutable, so we built a frame and put a huge cloak over it. The hood was a piece that was cast out of wire and sculpted. Scales were individually attached to both the cloak and hood. The costume was then coated with resin and metallic effects to provide an unearthly quality. It was a very involved costume, but there wasn’t any costume on the show that wasn’t to some extent.

  For the voice of the Imperious Leader, the Cylon ruler, Berkos once again relied on the vocoder. Initially, Larson’s instruction to the sou
nd editor was to create “the most evil voice in the world.” With that in mind, Berkos sought out actor Lou Ferrigno (TV’s Incredible Hulk).

  PETER BERKOS

  He had a deep, resonant, good clear voice and so we had him record the dialogue. Then I got the sound of a cobra hissing and we sent the cobra hiss and the dialogue through the vocoder. These two sounds intermixed so that when you finally heard the voice, it had the distinct hiss of a cobra, as if the cobra was talking. Once we got that into the picture, Glen thought that it was almost too frightening and he wanted to go in a different direction. He was a little worried because we gave him too much of what he wanted, so instead we got Patrick Macnee.

  RICHARD JAMES

  We didn’t have a lot of information—certainly no development of who the Imperious Leader was other than the fact that he was evil. It was one of those cases where less was more. It’s kind of like Satan speaking from hell. How are you going to define the location graphically? You keep it in the dark, put a strong light over him, and again we went for that speaking from on high. Also, money was an issue. There was not a lot of money spent on that set, because he was going to be seated, so there was no need. They also had that red laser beam for the Cylon eye, so I reinforced it into the set.

  In the theatrical version of “Saga of a Star World,” the Cylon Imperious Leader executes the traitorous Baltar (John Colicos). A similar fate was planned for the television premiere, when it was decided that the character would make a good recurring villain and Colicos was granted a merciful reprieve.

  GLEN A. LARSON

  He was just such a good heavy. I don’t recall if the pressure came from the network or what, but they simply liked him. When you’re earning your sustenance from the network you certainly do keep an open eye to what they like, and if they like something and you don’t dislike it, then you don’t have a fight. I certainly liked Colicos. He had come out of Anne of the Thousand Days not too long before that, and he was high on my list of very fine actors. I always believe you want the strongest heavies you can get. It certainly validates your heroes.

  JOHN COLICOS

  (actor, “Count Baltar”)

  When he sells out to the Cylons you could read all kinds of little connotations—moles in secret service agencies and things like that. Yet he was fighting for his own, warped, integrity. One doesn’t know why, because we never got that far. But that was the line in which I wanted to go. For him to say I am not wrong; I am not destroying the human race, I am trying to survive. It’s a survival story in a strange kind of way. I’m the Benedict Arnold of the distant future, a kind of galactic Judas. Baltar is the fallen angel, and you can carry that through all the religions you want to think about. He’s the ultimate Judas, the betrayer of mankind.

  SCOTT MANTZ

  He was brilliant. I knew him as Baltar before I knew him as Kor [in Star Trek]. Here’s this guy who sold out the human race so he could lead the Cylons. What an asshole. But he was the perfect dastardly, mustache-twirling villain that you love to hate. John Colicos chewed the scenery among the best of them, and he played the role perfectly. He was so over-the-top, but he was over-the-top in all of the right ways.

  JOHN COLICOS

  There was an episode that Vince Edwards directed [“The Living Legend”] in which he said he wanted to get me down off that bloody chair. Of course, they polished the floor so tremendously that I nearly fell on my ass. But I welcomed anything that got me off climbing that ladder, because it was difficult to have a dynamic performance when you are rooted literally to one spot.

  It was more than two decades earlier that Colicos first starred with Lorne Greene in Hamlet for the Canadian Broadcasting Company, with Colicos as the Danish prince and Greene as King Claudius.

  JOHN COLICOS

  That was before Lorne became a hero in Bonanza and I discovered that villains, like blondes, have more fun. Inevitably we both wound up in Hollywood, where we renewed our friendship. But by then, the die was cast. Lorne was a Western father figure. I was on the side of evil and injustice.

  ROBERT FEERO

  (actor, “Bora”)

  John was one of the funniest. I socialized with him quite often, after the shows, became pretty good friends with him. He was probably a genius. His wit, and knowledge, was vast, and he was a greatly entertaining fellow.

  JOHN COLICOS

  I went to a science fiction convention and they asked me one very perplexing question, “What does Baltar do when his chair turns around?” and I said, “He reads Marvel Comics,” which brought the house down.

  Just as Star Wars clearly influenced Galactica’s visual aesthetic, so, too, would the success of John Williams’s music define the approach to the series’ score, the last major component of the massive three-hour telefilm. To create the grand dramatic music audiences expected from their space operas, Larson sought out longtime associate Stu Phillips. Over the course of their fourteen-year partnership, Phillips composed the music for numerous Larson productions, including The Six Million Dollar Man, Quincy, Knight Rider, and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.

  Phillips is justifiably particularly proud of the main title, on which he shares credit with Glen Larson, for its combination of heroism and pastoral motifs. With the exception of the main title and some thematic material, which he had begun earlier, Phillips was allocated a scant thirteen days to score the entire three-hour telefilm.

  STU PHILLIPS

  (composer, Battlestar Galactica)

  In thirteen days, I can tell you, a lot of it wasn’t inspiration, it was hard work. A lot of it was, “I’d better decide on something, because I’ve only got thirty-six hours left.”

  Although the series itself was scored with a studio orchestra, the pilot was recorded in five days with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, an opportunity that was very exciting for Phillips as a conductor.

  STU PHILLIPS

  A space adventure like this is a composer’s delight. It’s the kind of thing that opens you up, because you’re on ground where you can justify anything you do. It’s the big career thing you do that you love—the opportunity to do a Lawrence of Arabia.

  The theme as far as I know has been recorded about seventeen times with seventeen various orchestras. Years ago, I went to Scotland and rerecorded the entire score. Some of it wasn’t in the original soundtrack album and we added some cues. I did it in Scotland with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, and that was very exciting, to suddenly revisit all that music after all that time.

  A very funny thing is we had to get the music from Universal. The librarian said great but this was a different librarian than was there when we did the show and he called me up and told me they could not find the music to Battlestar Galactica. They had looked through the entire warehouse and could not find it. It was ridiculous. They were about to cancel the entire trip to Scotland to go rerecord this and I called up the original librarian who used to be there, who was my neighbor. And I asked him why can’t we find the music to Battlestar Galactica, and we thought and thought, and while I was on the phone it suddenly occurred to me that this originally was called Saga of a Star World. We were looking under “B” and it was in the warehouse under “S.” I barely got the music to Scotland in time for the recording. So nothing has changed after all these years.

  With production in full swing, Universal, in what was hoped would be a merchandising bonanza, signed licensing agreements with Mattel Toys in 1977. By July 1978, almost two months before the premiere, model kits of the Viper and Cylon Raider were already selling well past their quota. Future merchandise plans included action figures, clothing, electronic games, stuffed daggits, playing cards, a soundtrack album, and a Marvel comic book.

  SCOTT MANTZ

  What I remember about the merchandise from Battlestar Galactica was I had all of it, because there wasn’t that much of it. The show started, and it was very popular. It kicked the floodgates open for merchandising. I had the Topps trading cards, and I still have them, mint con
dition, the same condition I bought them in. I had the Battlestar Galactica Photostory, which I still have in mint condition next to all my Star Trek Fotonovels. I also had Battlestar Galactica the game. I don’t remember what the objective of the game was.

  RONALD D. MOORE

  (cocreator/executive producer, Battlestar Galactica [2004])

  I remember getting the TV Guide in the mail at our house that had Galactica on the cover. It was the Fall Preview issue, which I always looked forward to as a kid. I read TV Guide obsessively. They were on the cover as the big, new, flashy series on ABC that fall. I was like, “Oh my God, they’re doing a full-blown sci-fi epic on television. This is amazing.” And then I went out and bought the novelization and read it before the show was on the air and I was really excited to watch it.

  I think that I was surprised that it was campier than it read on the page in the book, which had a rougher-edged quality to it in my memory. The things like the death of Zac and political aspects of the dialogue and the human colonies were more deeply explored in the novelization. In the filmed version, I remember feeling they went for the humor more than they did in the book, and I was a little bit disappointed by that, but trusting that it’s all going to be fine. Even at that kind of young age, thirteen I think, I was becoming somewhat aware of tone and style and that kind of thing.

  SCOTT MANTZ

  I also had the plastic Colonial Viper, the one that shot a little missile from the front. Technically, the missile should have been shot from the side to the wings, but it was a missile that came from the front of the Viper. I got the thing, and I would play around with it and fire the missile, and then I heard on TV that a kid died because he shot the missile into his mouth and choked on it. Everyone in school was talking about this toy. My mom immediately took away my toy and took the missile and said, “Here, now you can play with it.” I had the Cylon fighter, too. But that cast a very bad shadow over the series itself.

  JAMES CALLIS

  (actor, “Gaius Baltar,” Battlestar Galactica [2004])

  Growing up in the seventies and watching that show as a seven-year-old, I’d say Richard Hatch and Dirk Benedict were kind of heroes of mine. I thought they were amazing and they looked amazing. The premise of the show seemed pretty dark to me, even as a kid, that there were millions of people who would have been killed, their planets destroyed. I remember the scene where Apollo comes down in his Viper. There’s all these people at his side in background, slightly out of focus, and there’s evidently only room for him and maybe one more in the Viper, and there’s hundreds of people behind him. I just remember as a kid thinking, “Wait a minute. What’s going to happen to all of them?” And that upset me, because I’d not seen that before. It was, like, not only does that happen in the real world, it also happens on TV. I was like, “No, no, somebody’s got to come and save these people. Are they just going to be left there to die?” It was upsetting.