I was recently reading Glen Larson's thoughts on Galactica 1980. He absolutely hated it, for whatever reason, the studios had primary creative control over what was aired, rather than him. Larson begged and pleaded with the studios to let him do something, and the studios, watching the ratings tank, asked him what he was going to do. Larson responded, "I'm going to bring Starbuck back." The studios were ecstatic, a change to drag the ratings out of the crapper, but the actors weren't quite as thrilled, they were raising quite a stink over what they thought their role was going to be in there. They didn't want to be second fiddle to Dirk Benedict, but wanted the chance for the series to succeed, so they were willing to play along for one week. Then Larson told them that they shouldn't even bother showing up during the filming.
They told the studios and Larson that they were going to strike. Didn't matter, Starbuck couldn't save that god-awful show. A later made for TV movie has a US Astronaut find a log book drifting in space. The log book was Commander Adama's log, made prior to the events that "The Return of Starbuck" portrayed, the assumption that was supposed to be made was that Galactica did not survive the battle that Starbuck was stranded. Hence the events in Galactica 1980 never happened. That movie is what most Old Series BSG fans use to claim that 1980 never happened.