Youth Make Believe

Not too long ago, I got the first sea­son of Bat­tlestar Galac­ti­ca on DVD. That’s the new Sci­Fi Chan­nel ver­sion, which is a good show if you’re not already watch­ing it. Sev­er­al of the episodes guest star Richard Hatch, who played Capt. Apol­lo in the orig­i­nal series, as a rebel leader named Tom Zarek.

I was point­ing out to Angela how cool I thought it was that Richard Hatch was involved with the new show some. I explained to her that when I was a kid (around six or so), my friend Robert and I pre­tend­ed that we were a cou­ple of the char­ac­ters from Bat­tlestar Galac­ti­ca. Robert always played at being Lt. Star­buck (played by Dirk Bene­dict, who would lat­er go on to play Face on The A‑Team). I always played at being Apollo.

I told her, as a mat­ter of fact, Robert and I had a rule: he’d play the blond guy and I’d play the dark-head­ed guy.

“He’d play Luke, I’d play Han.”

“He’d play Ted, I’d play Chris, the heli­copter pilot from Code Red1.

“He’d play Bak­er, I’d play Ponch.”

silence

“You’d play Poncherel­lo, from CHiPs?”

“Well, yeah.”

Eric Estra­da?”

“Well, I was­n’t blond. Robert was.”

“Jason, you’re way too white for that.”

“But I’m not blond.”

  1. Okay, so you may not remem­ber this show, which was about a fam­i­ly of fire­fight­ers in Los Ange­les. The show also starred Lorne Greene as well as a dark-haired Sam J Jones (he was bleach blond in the pre­vi­ous year’s Flash Gor­don. I loved Code Red so much, that I told every­one for about a year that I want­ed to grow up to live in Los Ange­les and fly a heli­copter, just like the guy in the show I used to pre­tend to be. []

By Jason Coleman

Structural engineer and technical content manager Bentley Systems by day. Geeky father and husband all the rest of time.

2 comments

  1. I read some­where a while back that Richard Hatch has tried for years to remake Bat­tlestar Gal­lac­ti­ca. He was not real­ly onboard or in agree­ment with the cur­rent project but was brought along to shut him up. He agreed to come on board to at least have some involvement.

    Come on man, PONCH?!?!
    Per­haps the crazy mechan­ic guy (what was his name?) would be a bet­ter choice. He was the guy that worked on Ponch’s motor­cy­cle’s when­ev­er it was crashed. Please don’t be insult­ed by this char­ac­ter assign­ment. I always thought he was the cool guy that could fix anything.

  2. From what I’ve read about the new series, I’d agree with that assess­ment of how Richard Hatch got involved with the new Bat­tlestar Galac­ti­ca. As far as the cast­ing goes for me as Ponch, well, it always just seemed to fit that we played the parts of the two main bud­dies in bud­dy shows. What was it with all these blond/brown-haired guy bud­dy shows in the ear­ly 80’s?

    I left out Bo & Luke Duke, by the way. Guess who played who?

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