From his private island in the Caribbean Sea, Mikkos Cassadine would use climate change (via carbonic snow) to rule the world. "Now my friends, we begin what we have dream for a lifetime and plan so meticulously for nearly half that long. You've realized that for centuries man has dream of changing this world for the better? Our vision has become a reality. My vision of world peace will be achieved through this power that I now command. What a joy to realize that with each moment our plan move with one step closer to completion," Mikkos gleefully toasted.
With a daily audience of over 14 million (three-quarters aged between 18 and 24), the Ice Princess storyline did for 'General Hospital' what "Who Shot J.R.?" had done for 'Dallas' - turning the show into a pop-cultural phenomenon. Once near cancellation, 'General Hospital' by 1981 was earning around $1 million a week in profit for the American Broadcasting Company. It was the most watched daytime program in the history of television at the time.
The Dean of the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School of Communications told 'Newsweek', "With their realistic characters, daytime serials (some 13 on the air in 1981) provide a more accurate representation of the real world than prime time shows. Prime time is a world of action, power and danger. Daytime is a world of interior turbulence that hits much closer to home."
In one scene, Mikkos Cassadine made the comment, "Alexandria has not quite comprehend the enormity of our achievement."
To force the world to submit to his demand and endorse his every beliefs for a perfect new world, Mikkos Cassadine had chosen the world's most powerful country to be the first to fall so the rest of the world would follow in close order. To demonstrate his power, Mikkos Cassadine would make an example of an average city representing the spirit of that nation to instil terror in the heart of the people.
Alexandria: Never forget Victor to what I did to you all before! Now I almost took the whole House of Cassadine down once and I can do it again if I have to. You remember that.
Mikkos: You overestimated yourself Ms. Quartermaine. No one will ever bring down the House of Cassadine. You didn't even come close.
Before playing Mikkos Cassadine on 'General Hospital', John Colicos played Count Baltar in the $7 million 3-hour pilot movie, 'Battlestar Galactica', about the citizens of the 12 colonies (named for signs of the zodiac). Some 65 million viewers watched. In 1958, John played the title role in the Canadian Broadcasting Company's production of 'Hamlet'. "One of the first roles I ever played was God," John made known. In an interview with 'Starlog' in 1989, John Colicos
told Peter Bloch-Hansen, "Villains, like blondes, have more fun. I can't go anywhere! People are screaming out of taxis, 'Hey, Baltar!' It's the curse of the Cylons!
"About 4 or 5 years ago (around 1984), we were doing 'The Dresser' out in Edmonton (Canada) to a school audience who were magnificent, great applause at the end. I put up my hand and they went deader than a doornail. 'I just want to tell you,' I said, 'that I think you've been the best audience we've had.' We started applauding them, and some kid screamed out, 'Baltar lives!' It brought the house down."
At one Hollywood Science Fiction convention John Colicos attended, "there was one kid who said, 'Mr. Colicos, what does Baltar do when the chair turns around and we can't see him anymore?' I was stumped for a second, then I said, 'Well, it's perfectly obvious. He reads Marvel comics all day long.' That brought down the house. Then, I thought, well, maybe he does. I mean, what else does Baltar do?"
"Initially, I was only to be in the pilot," John Colicos recounted. "Then, Glen (Larson) decided he liked the character and the work that I was doing, so he decided to keep Baltar as a running character. He re-directed the pilot's final scene himself, so that when the sword came down to cut my head off, he stopped at the least second and I was spared if I would betray the human race.
"Had the show gone on longer, we had some marvelous ideas. Glen is a Mormon, very imbued with the Bible. There are many biblical references in 'Battlestar' - Adama, for instance, and the tombs of Kobol, the lost tribes of Earth. All that is a kind of strange pastiche of events in the Bible. We conceived Baltar as eventually being a sort of Lucifer, basically a fallen son of God. He might have turned out eventually to be a bastard son of Adama, or a brother - the black sheep of the family, as it were. In fact, I was the one who, at a luncheon in a Chinese restaurant, brought up the idea."
Of the 16 weekly episodes shown during the 1978-79 TV season, "we had different writers on every episode and they hadn't come to grips with the storyline. They hadn't quite decided what audience they were trying to reach, whether it was cutesy kid audiences, or whether it was college-level science-fiction fans, or the general populace. By not finding a full 2-year storyline, and having a bible to follow, the character of Baltar kept flipping back and forth."
"Glen Larson was marvelous," John Colicos remembered. "He's highly intelligent and very creative - millions of ideas floating around in his head all the time. He's not closed-minded at all, but open to all suggestions. The fellow who played Lucifer was a sweet kid. He was marvelous, but he had no voice at all. He was a tiny, little fellow, a dwarf, I think you would say. He only came up to the middle of Lucifer. The top was a harness that he wore. He was speaking out of the middle of the body, while all this electronic madness was going on top, the eyeballs going beep-beep-beep. They brought in Jonathan Harris (of 'Lost in Space') to dub in Lucifer's voice later, but I never saw him.
"Half the time when I was playing Baltar, the scene started when I would whirl around in the chair, and there I would be, the regal lord, sitting on top of the pedestal. But, I thought, 'I'm going crazy here. I'm climbing this Leaning Tower of Pisa, on this rickety ladder.' The most dangerous part of the whole performance was getting up 30 feet on that ladder, with four stagehands hanging on. It was way the hell up in the top of the ceiling. They shot all my stuff on a crane. What with 'By your command' and all this, I finally got to the point where I thought if I talked any more to bloody robots, I would go out of my mind.
"When I finally did go to war on Battlestar, and wore the Cylon helmet, which had my face showing in there, instead of mechanicals, I was nearly burned to death. The helmet had these lights or something, over my forehead but I couldn't get it off, and I was yelling for help, but they couldn't hear me. Finally, someone saw me waving my arms around like a madman and realized something was wrong, but it was a near thing."
"To me, Shakespeare," John argued, "is the greatest psychologist who was ever born. His knowledge of humanity, from the highest to the lowers, is absolutely incredible. When you do science fiction, then the imagination can run wild. All of these films appeal to the childish imagination in everybody. 'Battlestar' was like playing games again, with mad costumes and ridiculous lines, being the lord of the universe - it was a ball. I love 'Star Trek', too. I've got most of it on tape, as a matter of fact. I had fun on 'Star Trek' because I just literally walked from set to set following my make-up around. I would love to do Baltar again. I would love to do Kor again, and some day, before I die, I would like to play Ming the Merciless."
