Re-Run Theater: Battlestar Galactica - The Living Legend
The original Battlestar Galactica's high-point is arguably the Lloyd Bridges-starring Living Legend two-parter. This was the last serious thing Bridges did before starring in Airplane! and (rubber-) cementing himself for the rest of his life as a wild-haired, glue-huffing, bug-eyed spoof machine. As the '70s faded into the '80s, audiences were still capable of believing the Alpo man (AKA Lorne Greene as Commander Adama) and the Airplane! guy were bottomless wells of gravitas. This two-parter (screened with period-appropriate ads in the commercial breaks) needs you to believe it too, and if you can hoist that suspension of disbelief just high enough, The Living Legend shrugs off the naugahyde mediocrity Battlestar was normally swaddled in and peaks so highly that over 25 years later, Ron Moore would tackle the same tale for his remake of the show—and it became that Galactica's high point, too.
by Bobby Roberts