Galactica 1980 - Episode One

Galactica Discovers Earth

Part 1 - January 27, 1980; Part 2 - February 3, 1980; Part 3 - February 10, 1980

Writer: Glen A. Larson

Director: Sidney Hayers

Guest Cast:

Richard Lynch          as     Xavier

Robert Reed            as     Professror Mortinson

Christopher Stone   as     Major Stockwell

Also:  Sharon Acker (Anne) / Hank Brandt (Air Force Colonel) / Paul Brown (4th Guard) / Douglas Bruce (Second Pilot) / Frank Downing (1st Guard) / Ray Duke (Newspaper Boy) / Richard Eastham (General Cushing) / Eddie Firestone (Derelict) / Eric Forst (1st German Officer) / Missy Francis (Little Girl) / Ted Gehring (Sherriff) / Doug Hale (Air Force Major) / Erik Holland (2nd German Officer) / Brion James (Willy the Biker) / Billy Jayne (Tucker) / Mickey Jones (Donzo the Biker) / Curt Lowens (German Commander) / Duncan MacKenzie (1st Pilot) / Todd Martin (3rd German) / Don Maxwell (2nd Guard) / David Moses (2nd Cop) / James R. Parkes (Willie's Father) / Albert Paulsen / Pamela Susan Shoop (Dorothy Carlyle) / Adam Starr (Willy - boy) / Michael Strong / Louis Turenne / Vernon Wheedle (1st Cop) /  Jonathan Williams (2nd Guard)  / Bruce Wright (Aide) / John Zenda (3rd Cop) 

Note: Cast links are to the Internet Movie Database

Plot Summary

Part One

30 years after the Destruction of the Colonies, the ragtag fleet receives information from remote probes that they have at last found Earth.  Unfortunately, Adama and Doctor Zee, a child genius that advises the Commander, discover that they have arrived at Earth in 1980, and that the planet is at a low level of cultural and technological development.

To make his point further, Zee shows the leaders of the Fleet to a video simulating a Cylon attack on Los Angeles.   The conclusion is clear, at its present level of technology, the Earth will be of no assistance to defending the fleet against the approaching Cylons.   

Adama orders pairs of warriors to contact key  scientists with the various nations on Earth, to help them speed up the planet's technological capabilities.   However, embittered Council Member Xaviar rejects this strategy as too slow.

Two Colonials to be dispatched  are Adama's grandson Captain Troy (who we knew as Boxey in the former series) and Lieutenant Dillon, who are tasked with contacting scientists in the United States.   Before they leave, Doctor Zee provides the team with some gadgets to assist their infiltration efforts.  First, is a invisibility cloak that can render the warriors and their vehicles unseen.   In addition, the warriors will be able to use motorcycles to get around on the surface, which are also able to fly, and will have the use of stun weapons to incapacitate Earth humans without killing them.   Finally, it is also noted that in the lighter gravity of Earth, the Colonials will have the ability to leap to great heights.   

Descending to the Earth in their Vipers, Troy and Dillon are intercepted by US Air Force fighters, and make a hasty landing in a field near Los Angeles.  Hiding their ships with the invisibility screens, they take to their motorcycles, and shortly thereafter have a run in with a biker gang, which they escape through use of their motorcycle's flying capabilities.  

Changing into contemporary clothes, Troy and Dillon stop at a service station to make a call to the scientist they are to contact, Dr. Donald Mortenson.  While attempting to use the phone, they run into Jamie Hamilton, who's on her way to L.A. for a job interview with the UBC television network. When she learns that the duo are on their way to see Dr Mortenson, Jamie offers to give them a lift to the Pacific Intstitute of Technology.

Pushing past anti-nuclear protesters at the campus, and stunning a guard, Troy and Dillon reach Dr. Mortenson's lab but he is not there.  Before being hauled away by security, Troy and Dillon leave a complex math equation on Dr. Mortenson's computer as a way of verifyingh they are vistors from an advanced culture.   Troy and Dillon are hauled off to jail.  When Dr. Mortenson returns to his computer, he quickly realizes that the only people possible of producing the formula he is seeing on the screen must have been from another planet.

Using their invisibility devices, Troy and Dillon escape their imprisonment.  Meanwhile back in the field where they first arrived,  the two Vipers suddenly shimmer back into view. A young boy named Willy is playing in the field with his dog, Skipper, and stumbles upon the ships, and he runs to inform his parents.  

Part Two

Willy arrives home, rushing home to tell his dad he's found a pair of spaceships. His dad is skeptical but is eventually persuaded to have a look.   When Willy's father sees the Vipers, he calls the police.

Meanwhile, Jamie has reached the UBC television studios, where her interview is going poorly.  During the interview, she is interrupted to take a phone call from Dillon.  Realizing that the pair are now in trouble with the law, Jamie refuses to talk and hangs up on him.   Then, Dr. Mortinson calls Jamie, having determined she was the somehow connected with Troy and Dillon.  Overhearing part of this conversation, Mr. Brooks, the UBC station manager, offers Jamie a reporting job if she can wangle an interview with Mortinson, a Nobel laureate who rarely does interviews.  Jamie accepts and offers to meet Dr Mortinson.

Shadowed by a UBC camera crew in a van, Jamie goes to meet Mortinson as planned, and Troy and Dillon manage to catch up to her on the way.   When Mortinson arrives, he is pleased to meet the Colonials, but also recognizes that Jamie is attempting to capture him on film.   Troy suggests they leave, and the four get into the doctor's car. As the UBC van sets off after them, Dillon gets quickly frustrated with Mortinson's attempts to lose their pursuers, and grabs the wheel himself.     Of course, Dillon has never driven an automobile before, and a crazy car chase ensues, resulting in Dillon plowing the car into a shopfront.   The four are without injury however, and Troy Dillon and Jamie manage to escape by use of the invisibility screen. 

Adama contacts the two warriors and instructs them to return to the Galactica immediately. As they make it back to their vipers, Jamie refuses to leave them alone, so they end up bringing her with them to the Galactica.  The Vipers streak thorugh the night sky just in time to be seen by Willy, his Dad and the police - but the police discount them as shooting stars.

Arriving at the Galactica, an amazed Jamie accompanies Troy and Dillon to the briefiing with Adama.  While the two were away on Earth, Xaviar has been arguing with Adama over the merits of introducing technological advancements to Earth in 1980, and has decided to take matters into his own hands. Xavier has stolen Dr. Zee's time machine, to travel to Earth's past and by altering history speed up the technological development of the planet.  Doctor Zee ulitmately determines that Xavier has gone back to Germany during World War II to introduce Galactican technology to the Nazis.

Troy, Dillon and Jamie launch for Earth and using Doctor Zee's space warp travel backwards in time.   The process alters the fabric of their clothes, leaving their uniforms white in color.   Arriving in the skies over 1944 Germany, thee Colonials avoid the pursuing Luftwaffe, and Troy and Dillon land the Vipers in a field.   As they are contemplating their next action, they trio see a B-17 sail into view, under heavy flak.   The plane is downed by anti-aircraft fire, but a lone parachutist makes it down.   The parachutist is Major Stockwell, who is in Germany to try and sabotage the new V-2 rocket which is being tested at a nearby rocket base.

On their way to the rocket base, Troy, Dillon, Stockwell, and Jamie observer a transport of Jews about to be shipped to Auschwitz.  They manage to free a single young girl, and take her with them as they head to a home owned by one of Stockwell's contacts.   Suddenly, the SS arrives to raid the house, but again the invisibility cloak does the trick and the time travellers and Stockwell are able to avoid capture.   Promising to help those who were taken by the SS later, Troy determines that they need first to find Xavier.

Xavier is indeed at the rocket base, posing as a British rocket scientist with Nazi sympathies, and is overseeing the testing of an augmented V-2 - equipped with a Galactican pulse jet.   Dressed as German soldiers, Troy Dillon Stockwell and Jamie infilitrate the base in time to see the V-2 sitting on the pad, awaiting the test that could give the Nazis the upper hand in World War Two, altering Earth history.

Part Three

With time running out, the team splits up.  Dillon and Stockwell go to sabotage the rocket, while Troy and Jamie head into the rocket base bunker to confront Xavier.    Reaching the launch pad Dillon fires on the V-2 as it takes off with his laser destroys it.   Xavier having failed, he comes immediately under suspicion by the Nazis.  'This man is a spy,' declares General Jodl.  Troy and Jamie, who are still posing as German soldiers, oblige, but not long after 

Xavier captured, the Galacticans and Stockwell  now turn their attention to making sure the convoy to Auschwitz is stopped. Flying through the air on their motorbikes, firing on the German  guards, while Stockwell springs the Jews from the boxcars.  Jamie, realizing what the date is, explains that the Nazis can't pursue them, since the D-Day landings have begun and the local German units have all been ordered to Normandy.   

The time has come to return to 1980, and Stockwell says a sad goodbye to Jamie.  Unfortunately, just as they are approaching the Vipers, Xaviar wriggles out of their grasp, activating his invisibility screen, and gets away. 

Returning to 1980, Troy and Dillon land their Vipers in California and proceed to drop off Jamie at a rural bus station. As the Greyhound drives away, a sheriff recognizes Troy and Dillon from a wanted poster.  The sheriff pursues the duo in his squad car, but the Galacticans again escape into the air on their bikes.  

Arriving back at the field where they parked their vipers, Troy and Dillon discover the ships are being taken away by local military and police.  Troy and Dillon discover this is due to a boy having discovered their Vipers, and go to find Willy at school.  Once there, they discover Willy has been getting beat up for his spreading of tall tales about spaceships by a bully named Tucker.   Troy and Dillon make a deal: if Willy will tell them where the Vipers have been taken, they'll lend him one of their wrist computrons.  Willy uses the computron to go invisible and proceeds to torment Tucker.  Having gotten back at the bully Willy tells the Colonials the location of their ships, and also mentions there was a third Viper - the one belonging to Xavier!

Colonel Boomer comes to see Adama to bring him up to date on the developments, and the Commander has all the Colonial missions to Earth recalled until Xaxier can be located.    Xavier in the meantime has returned to Los Angeles, and seeing a UBC news broadcast, determines to go to the studio to look for Dr. Mortinson.  Xavier convinces two LAPD officers to give him a lift to UBC.  Arriving there, Xavier uses invisibility to lose the officers, who have grown suspicious and identifies himself to Dr Mortinson as one of the visitors from space. 

Arriving at Mortinson's beachside home, Xavier goes tries to convince the scientist about the benefits of returning to various time periods in to change Earth's history.  Troy and Dillon track down Jamie at UBC to let her know what they believe is happening.  Jamie calls Mortinson to warn him about Xavier, but before Mortinson can react, Xavier pulls a gun on him.  Arriving at UBC, Troy and Dillon meet Jamie, and together they head out to the base where the Vipers are being kept, in hopes of heading off Xavier.    Jamie uses her feminine wiles to lure away one of the sentries and Troy and Dillon sneak in. As they do, Xaviar materializes in his own viper, wearing a stolen Marine uniform, and is using the base's generator to suck up enough power to launch. The villain spots our heroes and gets off a shot at them, before putting Troy down with a stunner. Before Troy can stagger back to his feet, Xaviar is airborne, leaving his hostage Dr. Mortinson behind.. A dozen sentries are now bearing down on them, but Troy and Dillon dispatch them effortlessly with a few laser stun blasts. 

As Dillon jumps into his Viper, he discovers Jamie already in the back seat.    Launching their ships, Troy and Dillon pursue Xavier into space, but they are too late - just as they open fire too late Xavier's Viper enters a timewarp.  

Troy, Dillon and Jamie return to the Galactica, and meet with Adama in his quarters.  Adama reveals that Xavier has gone to 18th century to interfere in the history of pre-Revolutionary America.   Jamie agrees to help Troy and Dillon with this next mission. 

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Last Updated on Sunday, April 03, 2005