Richard Hatch Dies: ‘Battlestar Galactica’s Captain Apollo Was 71
Richard Hatch, who starred alongside Lorne Greene and Dirk Benedict in the 1970s sci-fi series Battlestar Galactica, has died. He was 71. Ronald D. Moore, who created the 2000s reboot of the show in which Hatch also appeared, tweeted the news:
Richard Hatch was a good man, a gracious man, and a consummate professional. His passing is a heavy blow to the entire BSG family.
— Ronald D. Moore (@RonDMoore) February 7, 2017
Alec Peters, who is working on the crowdsourced Star Trek fan film Axanar in which Hatch was playing a Klingon, said in a Facebook post that the actor had Stage 4 pancreatic cancer.
Hatch earned a Golden Globe nomination for his role as Captain Apollo on the original Galactica, which was greenlighted amid Star Wars mania in the late 1970s. The series, which was expensive to produce and ended up airing only 21 episodes, also earned a Globes nom in 1979 for Outstanding Drama and won a pair of below-the-line Emmys. Running from September 1978-August 1979 on ABC, the good-guys-vs.-bad-guys-in-space drama drew a cult following but finished out of the Primetime Top 25. A retooled Battlestar Galactica 1980 aired that year, with only Greene — who played the father of Hatch’s character — remaining from the original cast.
A native of Santa Monica, Hatch guested on a number of popular TV series during the 1970s — from Room 222 and Kung Fu to Barnaby Jones and Hawaii Five-0 — before landing his first series-regular role. In 1976, he replaced Michael Douglas as Karl Malden’s partner in The Streets of San Francisco. Hatch remained with that show for its final two seasons.
After his signature role on Galactica, Hatch continued working in films and TV throughout his life. Along with more guest work on such hits as Murder, She Wrote, T.J. Hooker an arcs on Dynasty and Santa Barbara, he landed a recurring role as Tom Zarek on Sci-Fi Channel’s 2004-09 Battlestar Galactica series that was toplined by Edward James Olmos.
In 2011, Hatch appeared in a travelogue show called Who The Frak? and later had the title role in digital series The Silicon Assassin Project. He had a number of projects in various stages of development at the time of his death, according to IMDb.
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