Battlestar Galactica has been the best chance of any form in history to really make people nationally comfortable with science fiction," says Glen Larson, producer of ABC's upcoming blockbuster teleseries.

The show follows the adventures of the survivors of an alien invasion that destroys their solar system's twelve planets. Barely escaping the holocaust, hundreds of people band together aboard a mammoth space colony/ship named The Galactica. The craft's crew heads ot to look for their mythological sister planet., Earth, and proceeds to encounter fantastic exploits among the stars. But the Galactica is kept in constant danger by the relentlessly pursuing Cylons, the evil aliens who wish to entirely obliterate the human race.

Universal Studios, Battlestar Galactica's producers, and ABC are making every possible expenditure to insure the series' sucess. Filming the program's pilot cost nearly eight million dolars - a budget rarely spent on any movie. Comparable finances are being allotted to Galactica's weekly episodes, making it the most expensive television show every produced.

Battlestar Galactica evolved from a concept Glen Larson created a few years back, entitled Adam's Ark."

"Adam's Ark was sort of about the origins of mankind in the universe," explains Larson, "taking some of the biblical stories and moving them off into space as if by the time we get them to Earth, they're really not about things that happened here, but things that might have happened someplace else in space. It was influenced by Von Däniken's 'Chariots of the Gods' and some of those things."

Despite Larson's keen interest in the project, Adam's Ark was turned down by the networks.

"Science fiction was a difficult sale to television, because even with the success of Star Trek in syndication, it really was not that big a smash on network television -- maybe scheduling had something to do with it, but nevertheless, there's a narrow band out there. Close Encounters and Star Wars certainly helped us with Galactica, in terms of being able to get our foot in the door."

Even before these films' successes, Universal considered producing a science fiction TV series.

"Some three years ago, the studio was working on a space concept about a Wagon Train in space which had some aspects that were similar to what I wanted to do. It was basically about Earth people looking for something, which is the traditional way to go. Universal was ripe by the time I came in to see them for what essentially was my concept.

"Adam's Ark helped bring a focus into what my concept had been. Ultimately, Battlestar Galactica is my original idea refined down to where I now have fixed on what my point of view is on how all humans throughout the galaxy proably evolved from some mother colony."

When Universal finally gave Larson the go-ahead on Galactica, he started assembling his production staff. Glen knew that a key ingredient to his series' projected success would be the quality of its effects. The producer was tremendously impressed by Star Wars, and set out to hire the film's effects supervisor, John Dykstra.

"I recognized John's contribution to Star Wars for what it was," says Larson. "I happened to catch John right after he steped off the plane from his vacation. Filming Star Wars special effects had John and his people on a marathon, and he had just gone off to unwind. His last hours working on the film were nightmares. I caught him and we talked, and we hit it off together. He's been an enormous help. I also brought John into the other side of the picture -- not just special effects, but to help on the production end so that we could realy have a collaboration. I had a lot of things I wanted to do, and we were really able to get together."

Glen had a good rack record in telvision, including the hit series It Takes A Thief and Switch. But his newness to science fiction could have causd a problem. To help alleviate the situation, Leslie Stevens was hired as Battlestar Galactica's supervising producer. Stevens proved his ability with the genre while producing the sixties' outstanding SF anthology serires, The Outer Limits.

Larson and company quickly got to work. Glen wrote Galactica's three hour pilot, which will air in September as a special. Leslie scripted the second two-hour film, which will tentatively appear within the following week. The third two hour segment, currently being written by Michael Sloan, will probably be aired as Battlestar Galactica's weekly one-hour series debut, as a two-part episode.

These seven hours should be some of the best material ever produced for TV. But what problems will Larson face keeping Galactica fresh, week after week?

"We've come up with some terrific scripts. We are going to do basic people stories.It's not going to be a hardware show in the sense that we are not going to just spend time with pyrotechnics and blowing things up. We'll have much more space technology than any show that's ever been on television. But I don't want it to become a case of one holocaust after another. We can show our cast exploring new frontiers out there, and it doesn't have to be monster of the week. We can talke about man really dealing with elements out there, and technology will merely be part of his life."

Battlestar Galactica will be television's first totally believable science fiction series. Complete alien civilizations and galaxies will be created by tremendous use of special photographic processes. Galactica's technical work is being generated at Industrial Light and Magic, John Dykstra's in-house SFX studio where Star Wars opticals were filmed.

Galactica incorporates a lot of scope," says Dykstra, "which is not unusual for television shows, but it incorprates the scope of space. Star Trek and Space: 1999 had to limit some of the range of their shows by virtue of the cost to go on location or to make alien envornments that were really quite large. We've tried to incorporate some of our special effects techniques to get the same scope that you would have on location, without having to go there."

Many of the people who served on John's Star Wars staff are also working on Battlestar Galactica. Cameraman Dennis Muren, who made the full length feature Equinox while still in high school, is eagerly awaiting Galactica's premiere.

"The SFX is way beyond anything you've ever seen on televiion," says muren. "It is much more on the level of the work in Star Wars -- and even beyond Star Wars. The effects won't dominate the seies, but they'll add a lot of interest to it, because you've never seen so many SFX shots before in a TV show. The opticals make the show seem commplace and add a lot of credibility to it. The procucers are obviously not cutting away from the effects or writing around it. Everything that you want to see in a science fiction show, you're going to see.

ILM has constructed a couple of dozen beautiful miniature spacecraft, to be shot as the Galactica's rag tag fleet and the Cylon's warships. The Galactica, which is supposed to be two to three miles long, has been built down to scale as a detailed, 7 foot long model.

The miniatures will be filmed by the Dykstrafllex, a special computerlike camera system designed by Dykstra and Al Miller for Star Wars.

"The Dykstraflex is a motorized animation camera," Dennis explains, "that shoots continuously. The camrea runs by motors and is very flexible and very movable. By programming the motors -- telling the motors which motor should work, speed up, or slow down -- we can make the camera do virtually any motion we want. What we do is photograph a spaceship, and the motion is created by the camera, instead of the model."

The comparisons between Battlestar Galactica and Star Wars, Star Trek and other science fiction shows are inevitable. But Glen Larson feels that once his series debuts, Galactica will establish its own standards.

"Battlestar Galactica is quite different. When it comes to who are characters and what our story is, I would have to say that if you were trying to compare Share to Gunfight At The OK Corral, you';d say, 'Yes, they're both westerns,' but I doubt if you'd find many parallels beyond that.

"Visually, you can't compare to Star Trek anymore, because Star Trek had an establishing shot every week and that was about it. Galactica has gone light years beyond that.

"The only valid comparison is to Star Wars, because in going to Industrial Light and Magic and John, you are talking about the latest generation in space technology in terms of motion picture making. Therefore, there have to be similarities because you have the same artist involved. John has a certain touch in terms of how he and some of his guys do things. However, that technology is now somewhat indigenous to all the young filmmakers. For example, Universal also does Buck Rogers (NBC's new series), and we've got Future General (Close Encounters, Silent Running) working on that. They're similarities there. John and I have bent over backwards in trying to avoid the obvious."

To replace science fictions standard laser gun fire, Dykstra innovated a strobe effect.

"We used electronics to provide a flash that is synchronous with camera," says John. "It's really asynchronous, but it turns out that it gives you a flash on about three frames. Originally, our concept had been to try and make it look lik a laser by using filtration, which really wasn't quite successful. Although what we have now, in conjunction with an auditory thing that sounds like a laser firing, works out pretty well. It gets away from the animated laser look, which is what we wre trying to avoid -- to avoid being a duplicate of Star Wars.

"There'll be lasers from the fighter craft. That will be very similar to the effects we used in Star Wars. Perhaps there will be lasers in the battle itself, but one of the limitarions is time, and we have significant amounts of gunplay, so to speak, between the Cylons and the humans. in order to complete all those scenes in time for our air date becomes a problem. So we tried this other method, and I think it works. It's credible, but I suppose it would have been nicer to come up with a new Rotoscope technique (an animation process), but time just doesn't allow us to do that.

"In terms of the practical aspect of it, a hand laser of some kind would probably be a pulse laser, in which you really wouldn't really see a projectile. it adheres a little more closer to the reality of the situation. Excitement-wise -- I really don't know. Quite frankly, I'm kind of lukewarm on animated lasers anyways."

Dykstra has also devloped a new way to create lightning effects.

"We're generating our own lightning made basically of large testler coil, which we will photograph at high speed to achieve certain effects. It will be like the lightning you saw in Frankenstein, except that we're going to multiple pass it, and do some superimposition or color enhancement on it. We'll end up with not simply finger lightning, but some further manifestation of that. It's a little more exciting and there's more color to it. That will be used hopefully in our second show, or at the end of the first."

Complementing Battlestar Galactica's incredible special effects is a fine cast. Lorne Greene (Bonanza), Richard Hatch (The Streets Of San Francisco), and Herb Jefferson (Rich Man, Poor Man) head the series' regulars. Jane Seymour (Sinbad And The Eye Of The Tiger) guest stars in Galactica's plot.

Glen Larson realizes that good actors and effects cannot create a successful program without superior stories. Battlestar Galactica's format promises to disappoint no one.

"Some of the stores are about a couple of our young guys who go off on scouts to try and see which way to go with the Galactica," says Larson. "They'll land on planets and encounter various adventures. Some of the stories will take placed totally within the Galactica's rag tag fleet, because there is an enormous number of people up there. We can met new ones each week, with various conflicts and problems that go on within the Wagon Train in the sky. There are combinations of how we'll operate."

The Cylons will also be an improtant part of the series.

"There will always be the element of the Cylons chasing the humans," Glen continues. "If you remember The Fugitive, Lt. Girard didn't have to show up every episode in order to keep the heat on. There is that threat of a highly mechanized civilization that has evolved very far along in terms of their mechanized state and their omnipotence in the universe. What the Cylons' alliances are, we don't know. The humans can't trust anyone, because of sphere or are just basically sympathetic to the aliens. We don't have to have the Cylons in every episode. On the other hand, we are going to have that threat showing up quite often."

After Battlestar Galactica's first seven hours comlete filming, John Dykstra will probably leave the show to pursue other projects. With John's help, Universal has commenced construction of their own effects plant to generate technical work for both Galactica and Buck Rogers. The Studio will be run by Universal's opticals personnel and effects artists currently being developed by Dykstra. Other technical footage will be extracted from the material produced for Battlestar Galactica's initial installments.

"It's not settled that I'm leaving," says Dykstra, "that's discussion at this point. even if I do leave the series, I'll probably still be working on it as a consultant. It just depends on what Universal's feelings on the thing are."

Battlestar Galactica wil maintain plausibility by accurately portraying its scientific elements. The show's producers understand that good SF contains crediblity.

"The Galactica's bridge has over three million dollars worth of actualy space technology equipment," says Glen Larson. "All of the Tektronix equipment ou see there is the actual heart, lung and pulse monotoring systems used by our astronauts. The flight control deck was provided by Amiercan Airlines, NASA, and Boeing. it's one generation beyond the new space shuttle -- beyond what they've installed in that shuttle.

"I would hope that we can have a high level of scientific efficiency. An awful lot of what you deal with out there is conjecture anyway. What I want to avoid is that we don't fill up the show with pure conjecture, and forget people. I think we can have a balance of both."

Battlestar Galactica could be the television series that science fiction enthusiasts have dreamed of for years. The necessary essentials for producing a good show are evidence by Galactica's talented producers. Whether or not the program is finally well done will be discovered when it debuts in September.

"If we blow Battlestar Galactica, finalizes Larson, "I think we'll have taken a giant step backwards for science fiction. We've got a truly rare opportunity to really open up that frontier and talk about what could happen out there in space. It doesn't have to be all robots and flying machines. The one thing I try to do in any show I'm involved with is bring in an element of humor and human predicament.

"If we can not make it just one esoteric concept after another, as has been done in other science fiction shows, I think we'll have a good series."

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