Advance Team Tuesday: The high-falutin' authors series takes a break for some distinctly low-falutin' pop culture

Sorry about the absence of an Advance Team Tuesday post last week, but I was on vacation in Ohio, visiting family and friends.
Believe me, it was time well spent. Especially because, while rummaging through my mom's attic, I found this...

Yes, it's my old Mattel Electronics "Battlestar Galactica Space Alert" game, which I'm pretty sure I got for Christmas way, way back in 1978. I had to change the battery, of course, but the thing still works almost perfectly. It's as simple as a game can get, with a fire button and that joystick-sort-of-thing at the bottom that toggles your LED dot between the three spaces at the bottom of the screen. Other LED dots come down from above, and you have to "shoot" them, scoring more points the higher on the screen you hit them. If you take a hit in the middle space, you're done -- no extra men, no bonus rounds. Also, there's a set amount of attacks you have to endure, meaning your top score isn't going to be much more than 80 or so.
Compared to the Nintendo DS my six-year-oldi daughter was playing on the same trip, it looked crude and primitive indeed. But I still had (and have) fun playing "Space Alert," and it took me back to those days of the late 1970s when classrooms echoed with the tiny sounds of Mattel Electronics games. This one was never as popular as the all-time fave, Mattel Electronics Football, but as a science fiction geek instead of a sports geek, it's the one I preferred.
Oddly enough, I was never that big a fan of the show that "inspired" it. Sure, I watched "Battlestar Galactica," because in those pre-home video days, you took your space-based entertainment where you could get it. But I remember watching the show in a constant state of near boredom, wishing that somehow it could be "Star Wars " instead. (It's hard to believe just how much the fast-paced thrills of "Star Wars" -- which looks downright sedate and measured today -- spoiled all the ripoffs that were aimed at taking its place, along with our money). But no, it was just the same scenes of the same actors in the same hallway sets, then the same inconclusive space battles (with the same footage) between Apollo and Starbuck and the Cylons, then back to those hallways for more of ... well, you get the idea.

When "Battlestar Galactica" premiered, the "movie-length" pilot episode was so heavily hyped that, somehow, I thought it would be as good as "Star Wars" -- or at least good enough to take its place until "Star Wars" returned to theaters (as it was known to do). So, these being the pre-home video days, I convinced my dad to record the entire show on his reel-to-reel tape recorder, figuring I could then at least relive the audio thrills of the show.
I still remember how many times I listened to that tape: None. It was that boring. Even as an 11-year-old nerd, I had no desire to experience that pilot episode a second time. Watching the new episodes (hallways, space battles, repeat as necessary) was boring enough.
But at least the game was still fun. Hell, it still is.
This blog post -- and all the blog posts in the "Advance Team Tuesday" series -- are brought to you by "The Advance Team," the graphic novel Tor/Forge will be publishing in the spring, with script by yours truly and art by German Torres. Read more about it here.