More than fifteen years after the rag-tag fugitive fleet began its quest for a shiny planet known as Earth, Dirk Benedict is still remembered as the lovable rogue Starbuck in Battlestar Galactica.

The most ambitious, most publicized and most expensive show of its day, Battlestar Glactica still holds a controversial place in television history. A pretentious failure to some, and an underrated triumph to others, Glen Larson's all-action space opera was originally intended to emulate the success of Star Wars, but was swiftly - and prematurely - condemned as a visually-stunning but hollow experience. At the very least, however, the show did succeed in propelling actor Dirk Benedict to international stardom, a position he consolidated some three years later as the irresistable swindler Templeton 'Faceman'Peck in The A-Team. Looking back at the epic Sci-Fi series, the laid-back, intelligent and charming actor displays nothing but warmth and enthusiasm for both the she and the character which first made him a star.

Happy Memories

"It was a very romantic time of my life," he explains. "Although nobody knew it at the time, I had just come out of my cancer experience, so I was just grateful to be alive and to be healthy and then to have this happen was very exciting, it was really too good to be true. It was a kind of a watershed for me. "It was also my first experience at being what one calls a celebrity and I enjoyed it. It was interesting and I didn't take it too seriously, nor do I now. Battlestar was fun and certainly The A-Team and the other things that have come since have been very different." Given that Benedict breathed such life and depth into a character which could so easily have been a two-dimensional caricature, it's hard to believe that the ABC Television Network didn't want the blond, blue-eyed actor to play Lieutenant Starbuck. "Glen [Larson] was the one who wanted me originally, he sold me to Universal Studios and then ABC was very resistant," he recalls. "I did about five or six screen tests for them, starting in November/December 1977 all the way through to February of 1978, and when they started shooting on March 1st 1978, they still refused to hire me. "Finally, Frank Price, who was then the head of television for Universal, said 'Either you hire this actor, Dirk Benedict, or we're not going to do the show', and I was cast on March 4th. The actor that ABC wanted was Barry Van Dyke, and in fact the next year when they did Galactica: 1980 they hired him to play the part [Starbuck's successor, Dillon]."

Simply Irresistable

Although Apollo (played by Richard Hatch) was the clean-cut, squeaky-clean and square-jawed hero of Battlestar Galactica, Beneduct's wise-cracking, devil-may-care Starbuck proved to be the show's most popular and most charismatic character. To the show's younger audience, he could fly his Viper and handle his blaster better than any human or Cylon, while older, more hot-blooded viewers turned green with envy each week as the colonial warrior fought the amorous intentions of numerous love interests. Yet beneath Starbuck's cool, care-free surface, Benedict instilled an underlying depth which made the character a caring, sensitive and lovable individual. "I made him a guy who was not the first to volunteer for the most dangerous mission, he would rather be gambling, having a good time and smoking a good cigar. I think his light-heartedness, the sense of humour covering up a more serious nature, and his sheer reluctancy are very close to home. They wrote serious shows where he had emotional scenes but it was all very much underneath and I really let Starbuck show that side of him. "Out of all the shows I've done, Starbuck was the one time when I did a fully dimensional character who was not only humorous and light-hearted but also, at the other end of the spectrum, had a seriousness and an underlying emotional quality." Reminded of the numerous women who made Starbuck's life so interesting, Bendict (sic) smiles. "I remember them well," he laughs. "And there were other equally gorgeous women in real life who were making my life interesting!"

Verdict

In Battlestar Galactica, the eponymous starship led a 'rag-tag fugitive fleet' on a desperate quest for a mythical home of fellow human beings known as Earth, with the deadly Cylons in constant pursuit. While popular opinion of the series still remains divided, Benedict feels that the show got something of a raw deal from audiences. "Production wise, there's never been a Science Fiction show on television that could compare to it, it's just the greatest," he claims. "Our show's struggle was trying to find what kind of a show it really was. We had some wonderful episodes and we had some that didn't work so well, as the writers were trying to find the nature of the show. "In terms of experience, it was just unbelievably rich. It was taking over the whole studio, it was the show of shows. Battlestar Galactica was outrageously expensive. The first premier show [The three-hour Saga Of A Star World] cost about 14 million dollars in 1978, and each episode was costing one a half to two million dollars, which was just unheard of. In comparison, Star Trek, either the First, Second or whichever generation, has always been very cheap, Mickey Mouse in terms of special effects, because the show is about something else. It's just a lot of talking. "Production-wise, when you look at it, Battlestar could have been made yesterday, which is more than you can say for Star Trek. From the times I've seen the tapes, you couldn't tell that this is a show made fourteen to fifteen years ago. The only thing that dates it is the two guys' haircuts and their outfits," he laughs. Benedict discusses his co-stars with complete honesty. "Between Richard [Hatch] and I, there was no chemistry or cameraderie or anything, we never did really have anything in common. I was quite close to Lorne [Green], we got along very well and I had a lot of fun with him. I also enjoyed working with Laurette Sprang, Maren Jensen and Ed Begley Jr, that was his first show. As for the guest people, we had Lloyd Bridges, Ray Milland, Bobby Van, Ray Bolger and Fred Astaire, and I had a great time with allof them!" The mention of Fred Astaire brings us neatly to the actor's highlight of working on the series. In Benedict's favourite episode, The Man With Nine Lives, Astaire made a rare television appearance to play Starbuck's long-lost father. "Fred and I became very close, we spent hours talking and spent alot of time away from the set too," he says with pride. "That was probably the one single highlight, although the whole damn show was kind of a highlight. We worked thirteen months solid and we only took a couple of two-week breaks, but I think the whole thing was like a fantasy from the day I went to work until the last day we shot it. It was like being a sugar junkie in a candy store."

Cancellation

As the series developed, the Cylons were gradually phased out and the Galacticans faced new friends, new foes and better, bolder storylines. Then, on the verge of possible greatness, the show was cancelled after just one season totalling twenty-four hours of television. "It was a big shock," Benedict admits. "People ask me if I have anything from the show and I don't because nobody thought it would be cancelled, so I left everything in my dressing room! It was a tremendous shock at the time, in May '78, when it was cancelled, but I was so busy working that I never had time to really register that it had been cancelled until January 1980 when I stopped working and was in the Bahama Islands on the beach. I was sad because I thought it was a very good show and I loved playing Starbuck, I have yet to get a character as fun to play."

Starbuck's Return

Upon Larson's persuasion, however, the Network agreed to produce a spin-off series, Galactica: 1980, in which the mighty Battlestar finally reached its long-awaited destination. An Earthbound follow-up, the series lacked any of the ambition, awe, and simple charm of its predecessor, something Benedict was aware of when he was offered a starring role in the show. "I didn't want to do that because it was not as good as the first series and I was too close to Battlestar Galactica. The scripts that they showed me were bad and they were going to cheapen the production values. Had the character and the scripts been great and you might have thought more about it, but it was nothing and I was very fond of Starbuck, so I just couldn't bring myself to do it. It would have seemed like cheating on your wife." Eventually, however, the actor was coaxed into making a guest appearance by Glen Larson's script entitled The Return Of Starbuck. Undoubtedly the only decent instalment of the spin-off series, it features a remarkably poignant performance from Benedict and stands alongside the very finest of the original show's episodes. Ironically, it was also the final episode of the whole Battlestar saga. "It was a great script and I actually talked to Glen about doing a series based on Starbuck. It could have been like The Fugitive or a Western, with him going through outer space, through the various galaxies trying to find Earth and having these experiences."

Life After Galactica

Shortly after Battlestar Galactica, Benedict consolidated his popularity around the world as Face in the all-action adventure series, The A-Team. More recently, he returned to the Science Fiction genre with two movies, Blue Tornado and Official Denial. In the former, he plays a NATO top gun desperate to prove the existence of UFOs, while in the latter, he ironically stars as a member of a special Air Force team assigned to make contact with a group of aliens. "Blue Tornado was shot in Italy over three months and was very difficult to make," he says of the film which combines elements of Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Top Gun. "The locations were very tough, we were in the Italian Alps in February which was very cold and it was a very big production for the crew to pull off. The hours were long and nobody spoke English except David Warner!" "By the way, I wrote all the scenes between myself and Patsy Kensit. The director [Tony B. Dobb] asked me if I had some ideas for the relationship between my character and hers, and I wrote these scenes which he took and used in the film. He later then blamed me for the film not being as successful as it was supposed to be, but I do know that I made it much better, and beyond that he could have rejected what I had given him. "Official Denial was pleasant enough, I just didn't have much to do," he continues with typical candour. "I did it because (a) I wanted to go to Australia with my family and (b) I wanted to play a bad guy. I think it was a relatively good film. I only saw it once but it seemed to work fairly well.

Battlestar Revival?

In the years since Battlestar Galactica and The A-Team, the popular actor has moved towards writing, producing and directing with an ease Starbuck would be proud of. The author of two books, Confessions of a Camikazi Cowboy and its follow-up, And Then We Went Fishing, Benedict is currently working on his third novel as well as directing his first short, Christina's Dream. Despite his extremely busy schedule, however, Dirk Benedict would be happy to pick up his blaster to play Starbuck in a revival of Battlestar Galactica. "I'd love to do it, it the scripts were right," he declares with a glint in his eye. "I'm always surprised by the tremendous success of other Science Fiction shows that have been revived and I think it hasn't been done because the Networks don't realize what a following it has around the world. I do, because I've travelled around the world and I've met people from everywhere from the African continent to New Zealand to Malaysia and Taiwan who are big Battlestar Galactica fans."

The End