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LARSON, GLEN A. (1937– ). American producer and writer.
Consulting producer: Battlestar Galactica (tv miniseries) (and based on his work) (2003
); Battlestar Galactica (tv series)
(2004- ).
Wrote: The Six Million Dollar Man: Wine,
Women, and War (tv movie) (Russ Mayberry 1973); "Lost Planet of the Gods"
(with Don BELLISARIO) (two-part episode), "The Magnificent Warriors," "War of
the Gods" (two-part episode) (1978), "Greetings from Earth," "Experiment in
Terra" (1979), episodes of Battlestar Galactica; "Galactica Discovers
Earth" (three-part episode), "The Super Scouts" (two-part episode), "Spaceball"
(with Frank Lupo and Jeff Freilich), "The Night the Cylons Landed," "So This Is
New York," "The Return of Starbuck" (1980), episodes of Galactica 1980; "Night
of the Phoenix" (two-part episode) (1982), episode of Knight Rider; "Manimal," "Night of the Scorpion" (1983), episodes
of Manimal; "Staying Alive While Running a High Flashdance Fever"
(1983), episode of Automan; Chameleons (tv movie) (co-wrote with
Stephen A. Miller and directed) (Larson 1989).
Needless to say, this overview does not precisely accord with the authorized
version of Larson's biography. Though a previous career of crooning with the
Four Freshmen would suggest no interest in or aptitude for writing science
fiction, we have been solemnly informed that Larson first demonstrated his
authorial talents to television executives in the early 1960s by showing them
his original science fiction script, "Adam's Ark," which would eventually
engender the series Battlestar Galactica. I possess no evidence to
dispute the story, but it might strike any objective observer as a suspiciously
self-serving claim, coming from a man who in 1978 faced a huge lawsuit for
purportedly plagiarizing George LUCAS's
1977 film Star Wars. Furthermore, the skeptical attorney for the
plaintiff might inquire, if Larson had harbored a passionate desire to write
science fiction in the 1960s and early 1970s, why didn't he attempt to write
for series like The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, The Man
from U.N.C.L.E., Lost in Space, or Star Trek? Why do we
instead find his name as writer and/or producer linked only to forgettably
mundane series like The Fugitive, The Virginian, Alias Smith
and Jones, Get Christie Love, Switch, and Quincy M.E.?
In any event, Larson's first documented association with science
fiction, of the most tepid variety, came in his work for the series The Six
Million Dollar Man, essentially a routine spy thriller interspersed with
two-minute sequences of star Lee Majors performing spectacular stunts in slow
motion, with occasional episodes that awkwardly ventured into genuinely
speculative territory by featuring aliens or Bigfoot. The series established
what would emerge as the major recurring pattern in Larson's producing career:
the modestly imaginative superhero mired in astoundingly unimaginative plots
and situations.
His next success, the series The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries (at
times decoupled as separate offerings), is primarily noteworthy because it
introduced Larson's habit of drawing upon his musical background to compose
mediocre theme music for his series, thus earning himself another undeserved
paycheck. Somehow, ABC became convinced
that Larson was the perfect person to come up with television's answer to Star
Wars for their Sunday night lineup. Larson's brilliant response to the
challenge: first, recalling that the most successful Sunday-night drama in
television history had been the western Bonanza, he hired its star Lorne
GREENE, guessing that the
actor had some special gift for attracting Sunday-night viewers. He then hired
special-effects artist John DYKSTRA to ensure that all the sets and props would
look exactly like those in Star Wars, evidently believing that this in
itself would guarantee the series's success, despite the absence of all the
other elements—such as an intelligent, well-developed background, inspired
plotting, and capable actors—that made the film so popular. The result of his
labors, as immediately evidenced by a three-hour premiere that rapidly
plummeted from Star Wars-like grandeur to Lost in Space-like
inanity, easily qualifies as one of the greatest disasters in the history of
television, the series that edges out Gerry and Sylvia ANDERSON's Space: 1999
as the worst science fiction series of all time. In an effort to rescue the
series, the inert Greene and Richard Hatch were thrust to the sidelines to focus
on the animate Dirk Benedict, but the plots remained as idiotic as ever, and
only an unbreakable contract kept the series limping along for a single season.
Surprisingly, as evidence of the rampant stupidity, vacuity, and incompetence
in contemporary Hollywood, rival factions emerged in 2002 to fight for the rights
to relaunch Battlestar Galactica (which was like fighting for the rights
to make a sequel to Howard the Duck). Unsurprisingly, the miniseries and
series that eventually resulted were, by all accounts, infinitely better than
the original—but how could they possibly have been worse?
The unexpected collapse of Battlestar Galactica left Larson with some
big bills to pay and a warehouse full of science fiction models and props,
prompting some initiatives in recycling that were more creative than anything
Larson had displayed on the screen. First, he reedited material from
already-aired episodes of Battlestar Galactica into two feature-length
films that were rushed in theaters to garner quick profits before filmgoers
realized they were watching leftovers. Next, he came up with two new science
fiction series to reuse some of the Battlestar Galactica hardware. The
first one, a revival of Buck Rogers in the Twenty-Fifth Century, was by
Larson's standards not half-bad; stars Gil Gerard and Tim O'Connor possessed a
modicum of acting skill, and the demands of emulating a 1930s serial for
children were marginally within the realm of Larson's expertise. When the
series attempted the more arduous task of emulating Star Trek in its
second season, however, the game was over. The second series, Galactica 1980,
artlessly endeavored to continue the storyline of Battlestar Galactica
by bringing an older but not wiser Greene to contemporary Earth, accompanied by
bland new regulars, where they begin for some reason to chase the nasty Cylons
back and forth through time, evidently in order to combine Larson's remaining
space-age stuff with historical costumes and props economically retrieved from
studio storage rooms. It lasted for half a season, much longer than it deserved
to.
While recovering from the debacle of Battlestar Galactica, Larson
kept himself busy with listless exercises like B.J. and the Bear, The
Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo, and The Fall Guy before finally
returning to science fiction with the series Knight Rider, the modestly
futuristic saga of a man partnered with a technologically advanced talking car
named KITT. While little more than a science-fictional take on the pathetic
sitcom My Mother, the Car, the series came together remarkably well,
largely due to the accident of what was, for Larson, the unusually appealing
cast of the charismatic David Hasselhoff, the urbane Edward Mulhare, and the
sardonic William Daniels as the voice of the car. Any suspicions that Larson had
reacquired his magic touch, however, were dashed by the rapid failures of his
next hapless ventures into gimmicky superheroics starring the changeling Manimal
and the computer-created Automan; equally ephemeral were two subsequent
series, the spy thriller Cover Up and The Highwayman, which
attempted to do for trucks what Knight Rider had done for cars. By the
late 1980s, even the densest denizens of the television industry recognized
that Larson's projects weren't taking anybody to Easy Street, which is why two
other projected series—Chameleons and a revival of Knight Rider—never advanced beyond the pilot/tv movie stage.
Still, suckers are like buses—there's always a new one coming around—and
ongoing expansion in the syndication and cable markets of the 1990s created new
opportunities for Larson series, though it was not unexpected to learn that another
effort to recycle Knight Rider, Team Knight Rider, and another
derivative superhero, NightMan, failed to attract many viewers. After
two widely panned tv movies in 1999—The Darwin Conspiracy and Millennium
Man—fans of quality television might have reasonably hoped that Larson,
now in his sixties, would consider retirement. But if Larson has no other
virtues, one must credit him with persistence: as part of the Byzantine deal
that led to the Battlestar Galactica revival,
he negotiated himself the lucrative title of "consulting producer" (although
new producer Ronald D. MOORE, who demonstrated his skills in science fiction
with work for the Star Trek franchise,
has thankfully displayed no inclination to consult with Larson about anything),
and he even garnered a writing credit for new episodes vaguely related to his
earlier efforts. He also has apparently found financial backers for yet another
revival of his greatest triumph, a film currently entitled Knight Rider and
scheduled for release in 2006. One derives amusement from this prospect only by
imagining what KITT would have to say about it: "You silly humans! You keep
making the same mistakes, again and again and again!" And no business other
than the entertainment industry would ever be so irrational as to allow a
proven incompetent like Glen A. Larson to keep churning out his trademark
mistakes.
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