Excellent, Without a doubt!!

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Note:- 8/10 is considering it was 1978. Today, more like a 7.Fast paced sci-fi drama with tongue in cheek character typing and scripting that plays out beautifully well in a serious manner. In your face religious references and future technology produce a cunning backdrop and environment.Family friendly with good moments for laughing.Even the wife started watching it after she got over that it was sci fi (she hates sci-fi - even Star Wars).If someone was to say that this is supposed to be competition for the Target Audience of Star Trek I would disagree. This series has more appeal than what I've seen of Star Trek (old and new).Note:- To those who want to watch BsG, this 1978 series is the most common and best - with the spin offs being very poor in many ways (except for the 2004 're-imagined' seasons which are actually user rated into the top 100 TV shows on IMDb).

The special effects and characters in the pilot episode were enjoyable. The premise was well beyond belief. We're supposed to believe that in a time of war the wise men of an advanced human race leave all their colonies and battle stars unprotected in the hopes of peace. The USA couldn't achieve that level of defenselessness with months of focused suicidal preparation. After most of their leaders and people are annihilated, the newly elected council advises disarming and placing the people at the mercy of a ruthless regime. The stupidity of these people defies human nature. Hopefully, the following episodes allow the viewer to suspend disbelief.

Who, having grown up at the time, can ever forget the good old days, when TV shows like this were the ultimate scream of fashion?I wasn't even born in the 70's, but I still remember very well that in the early 90's TV often aired TV series like this, which now looking back were made before my time but as a child I didn't know that fact nor do I cared.'Battlestar Galactica' was created by Glen A. Larson, who also created 'Knight Rider', another TV series from my childhood.Now, looking at it through an adult's perspective, it is lesser great than it was in the days of innocence, but still 'Battlestar Gallactica' shines in nostalgia. Although some episodes were better than others and they always had their flaws, the show really gives that feeling of nostalgia. If not perfect, at least it is authentic. It is from a time when things were real, when things had a special magic. The opening, for example, is fantastic, with those spectacular images of space and space wars. The opening music too is absolutely wonderful, and that opening quote is memorable: «There are those who believe that life here began out there, far across the universe, with tribes of humans who may have been the forefathers of the Egyptians, or the Toltecs, or the Mayans. Some believe that there may yet be brothers of man who even now fight to survive somewhere beyond the heavens.»Like I said, it's by no means a perfect TV show. But the action scenes and their delicious sounds, the special effects, the space backgrounds... ahhh.... it's all so authentic and perfect (as it should be), without any of the excessive action and explosive noise seen these days.It starred Lorne Greene as Commander Adama, Richard Hatch as Captain Apollo and Dirk Benedict as Lt. Starbuck, all of them great. Most of these episodes also had Noah Hathaway in a minor role as Boxey, Apollo's little son. Boxey is the cute little tyke. Him and his Muffit. This was a few years before he "became" Atreyu. Too bad Boxey doesn't have a bigger role. Inevitably, this TV series resembles '2001: A Space Odyssey', 'Star Trek' and 'Star Wars'. It was even accused of plagiarism when 'Star Wars' itself heavily drank ideas from an early 70's film called 'Silent Running'.

I've recently had the chance to watch this show on a thing called the Retro Television Network, a channel whose line-up consists mostly of short-lived Glen Larson programs and other assorted junk from the Seventies and Eighties. For a while I only knew of "Battlestar Galactica" from the original pilot movie, and I could only guess how much worse the actual show was.And it really is awful. It was made in 1978, but that's no excuse: "Star Trek" was ten years earlier, and the heyday of "Doctor Who" was just a few years before "Galactica" came on. The special effects are just fine, even if they quickly become tedious and repetitive, cursed with irritating sound effects. So there must be something else that makes this series as terrible as it is.Maybe it's the actors? Lorne Green plays Adama as a warm, fatherly patriarch whose first instinct in any situation is to start shooting, because he's so wise he knows exactly who is good and who is evil. Moral ambiguity was apparently not known of in the USA back then. Richard Hatch plays heroic Apollo as an overgrown boyscout who always seems seconds away from dispensing public service announcements. It's amazing that Hatch took on a dynamic role in the remake. Dirk Benedict, star of "The A-team", chomps on his cigar, seduces the ladies, and as the loutish Starbuck generally gives men a bad name. Tigh and Boomer, the black sidekicks, just do generic sidekick stuff. Lord Baltar, played by John Colicos (who was the first Klingon on "Star Trek") tries to be evil, but comes off weak and sniveling. There might also be some women in the cast, but it's hard to tell.Or maybe it's the writing? In one episode, Apollo crash-lands on a planet and becomes the star in a remake of the western classic "Shane", and has a shootout with a Cylon who for some reason is wearing a cowboy hat. In another episode, Starbuck crash-lands on a different planet and runs into a gang of small blond children, who he teaches to be soldiers. In the 1970's it was apparently okay to give children guns and teach them to kill. Another episode rehashes "The Guns of Navarone". Plots typically involve some threat from the menacing (but useless) Cylon baddies, a feeble attempt at pacifism by the Quorum of Twelve (take that, democracy!), and repeated efforts by our heroes to convince everyone that killing and shooting stuff is the only option. There will then be a battle consisting of stock footage from the pilot movie.But wait, there's more: The music, in generic Seventies style, is bombastic and obnoxiously martial; the villains are appallingly clumsy and hopeless; there's an annoying little boy and his robot dog-monkey; there's a game called Triad in which grown men compete in their undies; there are cloying attempts at sentimentality and family-feelings that are straight out of Sesame Street. Most characters are flat and childish. The few women have very minor parts, and even those in uniform wear high heels and faint periodically. Everyday terms are replaced for no reason: "year" becomes "yahren", for example, and we are also treated to centons, microns (not to be confused with real microns, aka micrometers), and other stupid words. There's a sort of jingoistic, hawkish patriotism at work that was outdated even in 1978.After this show was canceled, Glen Larson went on to make such classics as "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century", "Knight Rider", and "Manimal", clogging US airwaves with rubbish until vanishing sometime in the late Eighties. Will he return to save television?