RETROSPECULATIVE TV: Battlestar Galactica (1978): “Saga of a Star World” (Episode 1) Chapter 3

[CONTINUED FROM CHAPTER 2 YESTERDAY, WHICH WAS ITSELF CONTINUED FROM PART 1 THE DAY BEFORE THAT. TRY TO KEEP UP.]

As an aside, whoever put this scene together clearly doesn’t know anything about gambling (A bit unusual given how many Mormons work in Las Vegas): There’s lots of people at gaming tables, none of which appear to have any games on them. We never see any cards, we never see any chips, and people are just pushing piles of cubits (Colonial money - little gold metal rectangles) around and smiling, almost as if they think the cubits *are* the chips. It’s weird, and there’s a whole lot of close up scenes of this going on.

Meanwhile, Apollo explains to Boxey - in an awkwardly filmed scene in which their hair length changes several times - who and what the Cylons are. The short version: A very long time ago there was a race of reptiles called the Cylons. Eventually these Cylons determined that the human body was the most functional and efficient one in the star system, so they built a race of robots to do their work for them. Eventually, thousands of years ago, the reptile Cylons died off, but their machines kept functioning, and adopted the name of their creator species. Though it’s become fannon that the robo-Cylons killed off the repto-Cylons, there’s absolutely no indication of that here. When they filmed this episode, the Cylons were armor-wearing reptiles. The network became uncomfortable with the notion of so much killing - even if it was aliens - so they asked the producers to make ‘em into robots, which necessitated this scene to be filmed and inserted into the story months after principle filming had ended. Thus - if you look close - you’ll see a landram with four people and a ‘bot in it, then a lot of tight angle shots of Apollo and Boxey in a landram that’s *clearly* got no one else in it, intercut with some generic reaction shots of the other characters.

They get out of the Landram to look around. Boxey immediately gets lost and captured by Ovions, four-armed bipedal insectoids. They’re pretty freakin’ cool! The rest of Team Apollo is promptly captured, and taken to see the queen, who lives in the largest tylium mine anyone’s ever seen - “This must be the biggest one in the star system!” - Tylium is fuel for the Colonial ships, and it’s pronounced “Tie-lee-uhm” here, as opposed to “Till-ee-Um” in the RDM series. The Queen seems friendly enough for a huge bug, and takes the group into the casino, where they meet Starbuck and Boomer and Boxey and that monkey-thing. Starbuck brings Apollo up to speed on what’s going on.

Sire Uri makes another power play, and authorizes shore leave for half the people in the fleet, annoying Adama. The Ovions seem friendly enough, and offer food and fuel to the refugees (Is this charity? How are the refugees paying for this, if it isn’t? I can only imagine the utter destruction of the colonies would have devaluated the Cubit considerably. May as well be Confederate Dollars), which starts filtering up to the fleet, though the fuel is in “Curiously small amounts.”

Mysteries abound:
1) Why hasn’t anyone here heard of the destruction of the colonies?
2) Why hasn’t anyone outside