So... It is okay to talk to strangers and take presents from them?

God damn my parents, they lied to me!
LIED TO ME!

It's not actually "mind-control tech." The kid is just messing with the bully by saying that whilst invisible...

...and to be honest, I'm not too concerned about the (very mild) revenge inflicted on this bully. Survey some former bullies and some of the former bullied, and then see who has the most residual "mental damage" afterwards.

This is creepy! What's with the two guys doubleteaming the little child??

Thank god the current show is NOTHING like this. You know... in that is doesn't suck and instead of dealing with problems such as who you look up to it deals with problems like the war in iraq.

@TheAlmanac: But how does he make the bully laugh involuntarily just through invisibility?

@Charlie Jane Anders: He was actually tickling him... The bully was just too stupid to reach out and choke the little invisible munchkin.

Don't forget the flying motorcycles. Yeah they were cringingly awesome. I am aware cringingly is not a word.

@Charlie Jane Anders: They gave him mind control tech to apparently.

Why couldn't the bullied kid, Willy bless him, just make fun of the bully by saying he runs like a girl. Which he clearly does.

When this aired on TV I thought it was awesome. I was also in 6th grade and had shirts with unicorns on them.

io9! You are in direct violation of Galactic Nerd Order 1743.b wherein all parties aggreed that while the Existence of Galactica 1980 would be agreed upon no discussion of it shall take place. Furthermore per paragraph 3 rebroadcasting of said program will result in severe penalties.

The majority opinion read as such:
"The signed admit to the campy yet serious awesomeness of the original Battlestar, and it is deservant of our respect, however 1980 while an important plot addendum to the series was sso shitty we must never speak of it again, much less show the clip where Cylons ride in the back of cars and meet Wolfman Jack. Do that and we kill you."

You're on notice io9. I don't want to come back and smack you later for bringing up "The Lone Gunmen".

@Garrison Dean, King Awesome: But The Long Gunmen was awesome.

It was, quite probably, the second best one season long show ever, second only to the epic "Freaks and Geeks".

@Bal-Cleric: It doesn't look like he's being tickled.

@Garrison Dean, King Awesome: Yeah honestly I don't remember it much which I took to mean I didn't like it. I was just trying to quickly think of another short lived spinnoff and that poppedin my head. Was there a "The Prisoner 1980: Back to The Mainland"?

didn't they pull out a "what if" machine that showed recycled footage of cylons attacking LA?

@Dunny0:
The Lone Gunmen is one of those shows that is better in memory than in reality.

Because there were some really awful episodes in that one season.

This show was painful to watch for its incredibly awful awfulness back then, but to watch it now makes you wince even more....the 70s BSG fans who keep harping on the re-imagined series and who deny the existance of this (poor Kent McCord, an actor I always liked, must wince bigtime when these clips are played on hulu) need to realize that just because something is associated with childhood does not make it good. In fact in the case of BSG: 70s Style, it's really amazing anyone even greenlighted the concept of redoing a show this bad. It's the sci fi equivalent of redoing "Joanie Loves Chachi" into some deep thing.

How RDM and Eick did this, and did it so well is like worthy of a Nobel Prize.

It just makes me think of Farscape, except for some reason Crichton's father looks like he isn't old.

Special effects?

Is really bullying if the kid is a git and clearly had it coming?

Well, isn't the rumor that

SPOILER

when the new BSG folks get to Earth they find the old BSG was already there...

That's not a joke.

END SPOILER

@Plague: I'd refute this, but it's been a while since I sat down with the box set... So I can't really remember any episodes off hand I didn't like. I think the one with the kids show was a bit lame, but that's all I can recall off the top of my head.

AAAAHHHHHHH MY EYES!!!!!!

So if all this has happened before and will happen again, will we see Starbuck and Leoben grant invisibility to tow-headed wimps in the greater LA area? And will there be another Battlestar Galactica series in 2025?

I kind of lost interest in the modern BSG when it turned into the Kara Thrace Personality-of-the-week show, but oh MAN, did Ron Moore manage to turn lead into gold or what?

@Dunny0: The Long Gunmen is something completely different.

Galactica 80 was Frakkin' Feldergarb.

"The people on this planet drink beans. Beans!" -Starbuck

And thusly was the name of Starbucks invented.

Thank God I bailed on the original series after the episode where a Cylon was the sheriff of some ghost town and Starbuck was a gunslinger or some damned thing like that...
Someone tell me how human beings, who black out after about half a dozen Gs can engage in what is essentially air-combat maneuvers with machines that don't rely on blood to keep their brains working.
That show sucked wind. In Space.
Oh, that brings up another thing. Why did the Cylon fighters have WINDSHIELDS? to keep air that they don't breath from escaping? Or to keep the nonexistent space wind from messing up their nonexistent hair?
I could go on for hours, but I don't want to be called Snarky McSnarkendale again...

@Dunny0: Guys, I'm gonna have to side with Dunny0 on this one. The Lone Gunmen WAS awesome.

I even looked it up on the internet...

@smcallah: didn't that star Ron Jeremy?

@JennaW: Well DAMN, if it says it was awesome on the Internet then it *must* be true.

@russdanger: SIR SNARKSALOT!!!

Get back under your bridge! That suspension bridge you live underneath. The Suspension of Disbelief bridge.

@JennaW:
Now it's two against a the world! Huzzah!
Did you bring the Kool-Aid?
@smcallah:
Damn... My secret /fic is known...
I mean, um... Typo?

Damn...

@that Garrison punk: When you're runnin' down The Lone Gunmen, you're walkin' down the fightin' side of me. (lemme take a breather, those apostrophes. whew.)

I take seriously the only TV show that did better than Condolezza Rice, in actually predicting that someone could hijack an aircraft and run it into the World Trade Center.

Yes the Lone Gunmen series rocked for its 6 episode run...

It was a real shame that the network didn't pick it up for at least one full season.

@pink_clerical_collar: Screw those nerds. Snake Plissken landed on it 20 years earlier, so eat it.

So did Dorothy and the gang in The Wiz. Your point?

@Garrison Dean, King Awesome: Ah, Snake Plissken.
Is there anything he can't do?

I mean, other than land in such a way as to NOT lose his vehicle moments afterwards?

Alright from now on, replace everyone's precious fuckin Lone Gunmen show with Stargate Atlantis, Harsh Realm or some other equally mediocre spinoff. Good lord, didn't realize I hit such a nerve. Apparently the internet is powered by Frohike man crushes.

The only thing I can recall from this series, when I watched it as a kid, was once the BSG gang arrived at Earth they discovered that their gravity was much higher than Earth's so they were capable of leaping 30 feet up into the air with glee.

Wow. Absolutely craptastic. Isn't the dark-haired guy the actor that plays John Crighton's dad in Farscape?

I bet some of the fleet finds Earth and they find themselves a nice island to land on and set up shop. But this will happen in our past, just like Stargate. They obviouls were the ones who left artifacts on the island, only to have Lost pick up the story thousands of years later.

@Jeff-Minor: Go bigger! They get to earth, were they meet up with Federation representatives (ask Ron Moore). After some drama and lots of crying, the Galactica is re-equipped with phasers, photon torpedoes, and shield and proceeds to exterminate the cyclons. Hilarity ensues. All remaining human and cylons re re-settled on Raisa where they open a resort called New Caprica. Which looks oddly like Fantasy Island, but with hotter babes. The End.

@deckard97: Very nice. How about the end up finding Earth, but the Borg are already there. They all get assimilated, end of story.

@Garrison Dean, King Awesome: You can't accuse a LOTR fan of having a problem suspending disbelief. What I'm saying is that there is no substitute for good writing. If you're going to write "Science" fiction, you need obey the laws of physics, and if you don't you need to explain why in an acceptable fashion ('thank god we invented this force-field, or else we'd be sucking vacuum right now!").
My big gripe is that the medium of Sci-Fi, which I love, is a magnet for a herd of untalented, intellectually lazy, idiotic slobs with no knowledge or appreciation of the science upon which they presume to speculate. If they can't get the science bit, they should be writing fantasy, soap operas, or fairy-tales.

They are going to get to Earth at the same time as the Cylons and there will be a big battle. All the colonial ships will be destroyed. There will be a few survivors that make it to the ground, mostly children. The battle will continue and then the Cylons will get mad at each other and pull out the big Death Star gun and destroy Earth, because if they can't have Earth then nobody can. The exploding planet will destroy all the Cylon ships and Galactica. All that will be left will be a raptor with Apollo and Starbuck on board with enough fuel to get back to New Caprica. On the way there they run into a lifepod with a Leoben inside. He talks them into taking him along. When he docks with the raptor he smiles and then detonates the nuke he has in the life pod.

I remember that the original BSG had a feature film with Sensearound sound. I didn't get to go see it but I think it was the TV premier movie on the big screen with big speakers. They need to do that with the new show. Don't end it on Scifi. Put it in theaters with 3D. I would go see that twice.

@russdanger: I couldn't agree with you more. I don't think anyone in Hollywood has an good knowledge of good sf.

That alien that pretends to be John Chriton's dad on Farscape is pretending to be Richard Hatch here?

@njudah: You are more correct than you know. Just last week, I showed the GF the original 1978 BSG "movie" that included the first three episodes. She's a huge fan of the new show, but had never seen the original. I told her that it was cool when I was five years old, but probably hasn't aged well.

Guess what? It aged TERRIBLY. Worse than you remember.

Which makes me love Moore and Eick even more for what they did with the new show. I mean, to look at the original series and think, "Hey. . . there's something good buried under all that schlock!" and come up with a show as good as the new one, that's a major fucking accomplishment.

I won't defend the RDM BSG from some of the sadly accurate charges of losing its way from time to time, but in comparison with what we all *used* to love? Good God, it's like Tolstoy vs. Highlights for Children.

We are blessed. Never forget that.

@Jeff-Minor: Unfortunately Hollywood is about money and only money, selling the least product to most audience. If that means "dumbing down" source material (as they did with "I Robot" and countless other tales), that's what they're going to do to sell tickets to all least common denominator.

Two developments give me hope; Digital movie cameras and the internet will allow small producers who are true fans to create films for a smaller niche market of hardcore Sci-Fiers. Look at the stuff that the H.P.Lovecraft Historical Society is doing. Tiny films on tiny budgets that are true to the source-material and are amazing..

@Daveinva: You are SO right about how great we had it back then! The BSG movie in the theater was awesome, but looking at it now...yikes. It's truly amazing what Moore & Eick did with that source material, but I still have a fondness for it. Probably the childhood nostalgia factor and it was as close to Star Wars on TV as we could get.