“Mission Galactica: The Cylon Attack” (1979) 4/10
This was the second Battlestar Galactica theatrical release. It is a re-edited version of the original Battlestar Galactica T.V. series episodes “The Living Legend”, “Fire in Space” and the pilot episode “Saga of a Star World”, with some extra (never used on the T.V. show) model shots thrown in to extend the running time to theatrical film standards. I can see how Universal wanted to get their money back from the expensive special effects bill that the T.V. show ran up, but this film does not play as well as the slimmed down pilot had. The “Fire in Space” segment is so laughable. The nova space-minefield segment from the previous movie was shoehorned into the final battle segment and it just did not work. At least this movie version cut most of of the boxy scenes out. This movie never played in theaters in the U.S. (wise move), but was a big money maker overseas.
Wait until you see Conquest Of The Earth. 😉
The one saving grace of the movie edits is occasionally there is live action footage that didn’t make it into the episodes.
Universal allegedly sold Galactica FX footage to cheesy low budget films like Space Mutiny, which later became infamous thanks to MST3K. I did a double take when I saw the VHS for sale at Kmart.
