Two of the most influential science-fiction franchises of the 1970s went head-to-head in the courts, when George Lucas’ Star Wars sued Battlestar Galactica in 1978, and here’s how the court case ended. The legal dispute between Star Wars and BSG started just as George Lucas’ movie began spawning the billion dollar franchise that continues to dominate the pop culture landscape to this day. Battlestar Galactica was less successful than Star Wars, and the legal dispute lasted for longer than the lifespanc of the TV show and its 1980s spinoff.
At the heart of the legal battle between Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica was a dispute over plagiarism, and a feud between George Lucas and a former employee. Plagiarism was the main complaint, but it’s interesting to note that both Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica stole from classic sci-fi. This fact didn’t escape the lawyers defending BSG against Fox and George Lucas in a court case that would expose just how indebted Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica were to the classic science fiction serials of the 1930s, but also honored how they were both moving the genre forward.
Battlestar Galactica Shared Production Staff With Star Wars
The connection between Battlestar Galactica and Star Wars is John Dykstra, a VFX artist who worked on both iconic science fiction franchises. Dykstra had been recommended to George Lucas by the legendary VFX supervisor Douglas Trumbull, who had previously worked on Stanley Kubrick’s sci-fi masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey. Sadly, Dykstra and Lucas had a strained working relationship which led to the former being released from the first Star Wars movie after principal filming was completed.
From there, Dykstra went on to supervise the special effects for the feature-length pilot for the original Battlestar Galactica series. Having been let go from George Lucas’ Industrial Light & Magic, John Dykstra founded his own visual effects company, Apogee, Inc. This company hired several staff members from ILM, including concept artist Ralph McQuarrie, who all worked on BSG‘s movie-length pilot, scheduled for broadcast on ABC in Fall 1978 – attracting the attention of 20th Century Fox and George Lucas.
Fox And George Lucas’ Battlestar Galactica Copyright Suit Explained
In June 1978, 20th Century Fox had submitted a lawsuit to the courts citing plagiarism and copyright infringement. Fox and their co-plaintiff Lucasfilm Ltd. believed that BSG had significantly plagiarized George Lucas’ blockbuster movie in making their TV show. It’s true that the success of Star Wars created an appetite for similar sci-fi epics and Lucas was reportedly given a copy of the BSG pilot script in 1977, as a courtesy. However, Glen A. Larson insists that he first conceived of Battlestar Galactica in the late 1960s. Despite this, the Fox lawsuit cited 34 ideas that were apparently stolen from George Lucas’ 1977 movie.
Court documents (via Film Suits) relating to the 1982 appeal case submitted by 20th Century Fox summarized the original case, highlighting 13 of the 34 similarities that Fox found between Glen A. Larson’s Battlestar Galactica and George Lucas’ Star Wars. Among these similarities was a heroine who was “imprisoned by the totalitarian forces“, and a scene where “musical entertainment is offered by bizarre, non-human creatures“. Fox also stated that Star Wars and BSG both climax with “an attack by the democratic fighter pilots on the totalitarian headquarters.” Something which could also be said about any World War 2 movie involving the American or Royal Air Forces.
What lent weight to Fox and George Lucas’ lawsuit was the presentation of Battlestar Galactica‘s technology, which bore similarities to the look of the tech used in Star Wars. Fox stated that the vehicles in BSG were, like the Rebel ships in Star Wars, “made to look used and old, contrary to the stereo-typical sleek, new appearance of space age equipment.” As John Dykstra and his team had worked on the designs and effects for Star Wars, it’s hardly surprising that their creative vision was transferred over to their work on BSG.
Did George Lucas And John Dykstra’s Star Wars Feud Influence The BSG Lawsuit?
In The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back by J.W. Rinzler, George Lucas maintains that he took Battlestar Galactica to court because it “spoiled” the TV market for a potential Star Wars show. However, it’s also been suggested that Lucas was upset that John Dykstra used the techniques he’d pioneered for Star Wars while working on BSG. In pioneering these new camera techniques, Dykstra had created a wedge between him and Lucas, who was displeased that these technical innovations were delaying the production of his movie.
The BSG court case was rumbling on while production began on Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, and it’s telling that Lucas didn’t invite John Dykstra back for the sequel. As a young filmmaker who didn’t quite appreciate just how huge and influential his creation would become, it’s understandable that George Lucas may have felt slighted by Dykstra using similar techniques on BSG. Given the fine line between plagiarism and adhering to similar genre tropes, it’s surely the similar techniques used by Dykstra and his Star Wars colleagues that really inspired Fox’s lawsuit against Battlestar Galactica.
How Battlestar Galactica Beat Star Wars In Court
In court, Universal countered that George Lucas’ Star Wars had borrowed several science fiction ideas from their own licensed works. Universal’s lawyers submitted a “videotape montage of prior science fiction works” which presumably included the studios’ 1930s theatrical science fiction serials, Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon, to which Star Wars owes a debt. Both of those serials were also battles for good and evil in space, highlighting that Star Wars wasn’t particularly unique in its central struggle. What was more damning was that Universal also cited the similarities between Star Wars‘ R2D2 and the friendly robot drones from Douglas Trumbull’s Silent Running.
It was John Dykstra’s work on Silent Running that inspired Douglas Trumbull to recommend the special effects camera operator to George Lucas for Star Wars. The fact that Dykstra is the common thread across Silent Running, Star Wars, and Battlestar Galactica really answers the question of plagiarism between the three properties. As Dykstra was the common thread between the three, it’s no exaggeration to claim that his unique creative vision was the driving force the stylistic similarities between Star Wars and BSG.
The court deemed that the similarities between the Battlestar Galactica story and the story of the Rebel Alliance’s struggle against the Empire in Star Wars weren’t plagiarism. They rejected Fox and Lucas’ case, stating that BSG and Star Wars were “only similar on the most general level of intellectual abstraction.” It was a disappointing result for the studio, who took their case to the United States Court of Appeals For The Ninth Circuit. The Court of Appeals sided with Fox, stating that their arguments “do in fact raise genuine issues of material fact as to whether only the ‘Star Wars’ idea or the expression of that idea was copied.“
In January 1983, the Court of Appeals reversed the initial decision to throw out Fox’s case, and remanded it for trial. This must have been a bitter pill for Universal to swallow, as the decision was made nearly three years after the cancelation of Battlestar Galactica 1980. The fact that the legal disputes had lasted for longer than the original BSG ever did may have been behind the decision to settle the case out of court, meaning that it’s never been entirely clear who, if anyone, was in the wrong. Ultimately, the Star Wars v.s. Battlestar Galactica legal dispute served to place both properties within an extensive canon of hugely influential science fiction, and it’s a canon which continues to resonate 40 years after the legal dispute was resolved.
