Galaxy was a British satellite television channel focusing on general entertainment and children's programmes, one of the five channels run by British Satellite Broadcasting and based at its Battersea Studios in the Marco Polo House Building. The channel broadcast a mix of home-grown programming, American imports and repeats from the BBC library. Galaxy's most infamous production was "Heil Honey I'm Home" a television series about Adolf Hitler. The show only saw one episode broadcast.
Jupiter Moon was Galaxy's sci-fi soap opera, shown three times a week, with an omnibus at weekends. 150 episodes were made, but only the first 108 were broadcast by Galaxy before it closed, while the last 42 episodes would be broadcast six years later by Sci Fi Channel. The cast included Richard Derrington, Anna Chancellor, Alison Dowling, Lucy Benjamin, Fay Masterson, Richard Lintern and Jason Durr. The entire series has been released on Region 1 DVD.
Galaxy's magazine show broadcast Monday to Friday, 6.00–6.30pm, presented by Simon Potter, Debbie Flint and Shyama Perera and soap expert Chris Stacey. The show got its name from the placing of BSB's Marcopolo Satellite at 31 degrees west.
The station also broadcast children's programmes under the strand 'Galaxy Club', which featured home-grown programming, mixed with imported cartoons and series such as the cartoons Denver, the Last Dinosaur, Spider-Man, Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles, and Underdog. Programmes specially made for the channel included Cool Cube and The Galaxy Club Show. One such programme, The Satellite Game, was made by Broadsword, who re-used the interactive game show format in their following programmes, including the successful Knightmare.
Logo
The Galaxy logo, along with all the BSB logos, has been critically acclaimed. On the TV Ark website, an archive of British television presentation history, Hayden Walker writes: "There is no doubt the BSB identity was a serious coherent design. The project of work stretched back over a year and included product designers, model makers, composers and other specialists. The BSB identities emerged with startling clarity, with an upmarket pitch. Stylish and distinctive both on screen and in print, Lambie-Nairn designed identities which told stories." And of the Galaxy logo in particular: "The ident had a lovely warmth to it, with animated swirls of colours and stars."
Galaxy archives
Apart from Jupiter Moon and many of Galaxy's imported programming, the vast majority of the original programming made for broadcast by Galaxy, such as Up Yer News and The Happening, is now missing. Most was made by various independent production companies, and broadcaster and production company have both deleted their copies – each thinking the other will have kept theirs.
Closure
Following the merger of BSB and Sky, the decision was taken to hand over Galaxy's transponder to Sky One, who took only a few programmes from Galaxy and incorporated them into its channels line up. Galaxy closed down for the last time at 1am on 2 December 1990, ending with the ident quickly disappearing before the test card.
