NEW YORK — Lee Goldberg thinks Glen A. Larson is a genius, and not because the prolific television writer and producer gave us “Knight Rider” and “B.J. and the Bear.”
It was Larson who first used the faux curse word “frak” in the original “Battlestar Galactica.” The word was mostly overlooked back in the ’70s series but is working its way into popular vocabulary as SciFi’s modern update of the show winds down production.
“All joking aside, say what you will about what you might call the lowbrow nature of many of his shows, he did something truly amazing and subversive, up there with what Steven Bochco gets credit for, with ‘frak,’ ” said Goldberg, a television writer and novelist whose credits include “Monk” and “Diagnosis Murder.”
There’s no question what the word stands for, and it’s used gleefully, as many as 20 times in some episodes.
The word is showing up everywhere — on T-shirts, in sit-coms, best-selling novels and regular conversation.
“I have to start by saying that I’m drinking coffee out of a mug that says ‘frak off’ on the side of it, so much has it seeped into my life,” said “Galactica” star Jamie Bamber, who plays fighter pilot-turned-president Lee “Apollo” Adama.
The word is insinuating its way into popular vocabulary for a simple reason: You can’t get in trouble. It’s a made-up word.
“It may have been the great George Carlin who talked about these things so cleverly,” Larson said. “He’d say, ‘Mother would say shoot, but she meant … when she reached in and burned her fingers on the crocker.’ And the child says, ‘I know what you meant, mom.’ “
The word’s usage has moved from the small but fervent group of “Galactica” fans into everyday language. It’s shown up in mainstream shows such as “The Office,” “Gossip Girl” and “Scrubs.” One YouTube posting has 2 minutes of sound bites that cover the gamut.
The word has even appeared in the funny pages, where Dilbert muttered a disconsolate “frack” — the original spelling before producers of the current show changed it to a four-letter word — after a particularly dumb order from his evil twit of a boss.
“Dilbert” creator Scott Adams calls the word “pure genius.”
“At first I thought ‘frak’ was too contrived and it bothered me to hear it,” Adams said. “Over time it merged in my mind with its coarser cousin and totally worked. The creators ingeniously found a way to make viewers curse in their own heads — you tend to translate the word — and yet the show is not profane.”
The re-imagined “Battlestar Galactica” tells the story of the human survivors of a war with a robotic race known as the Cylons. Fewer than 40,000 humans remain in a ragtag fleet being pursued across space by the Cylons, who wiped out the 12 colonies in a surprise nuclear holocaust.
Larson, one of television’s most prolific and successful writers, doesn’t much care for the new series. He used “frack” and its cousin “feldergarb” as alternates for curse words because the original “Battlestar” was family friendly and appeared on Sunday nights. The words fit in with his philosophy that while the show was about humans, it shouldn’t have an Earthly feel.
Michael Angeli, co-executive producer and writer for the new series, said using the word in scripts is satisfying for anyone who’s been censored over the years.
“It’s a great way to do something naughty and get away with it,” Angeli said. “One of the things that television shows do constantly is they battle with Standards and Practices over what can be seen and what can’t be seen, what can be said and what can’t be said.
“A lot of our characters are soldiers. That whole sort of view and that subculture, that’s how they speak. They’re rough and tumble, and they’re bawdy and they swear.”
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