Battlestar Galactica
Battlestar Galactica is an American science fiction media franchise created by Glen A. Larson. It began with the original television series in 1978, and was followed by a short-run sequel series, Galactica 1980, a line of book adaptations, original novels, comic books, a board game, and video games. A "re-imagined" reboot aired as a two-part, three-hour miniseries developed by Ronald D. Moore and David Eick in 2003, followed by a 2004 television series, which aired until 2009. A prequel series, Caprica, aired in 2010.
All Battlestar Galactica productions share the premise that in a distant part of the universe, a human civilization has extended to a group of planets known as the Twelve Colonies, to which they have migrated from their ancestral homeworld of Kobol. The Twelve Colonies have been engaged in a lengthy war with the Cylons, a cybernetic race whose goal is the extermination of the human species. The Cylons offer peace to the humans, which proves to be a ruse. With the aid of a human named Baltar, the Cylons carry out a massive nuclear attack on the Twelve Colonies and the Colonial Fleet of starships that protect them, devastating the fleet, laying waste to the Colonies, and destroying all but a small remaining population. Survivors flee into outer space aboard a motley fleet of spaceworthy ships. Of the Colonial battle fleet, only the Battlestar Galactica, a gigantic battleship and spacecraft carrier, appears to have survived the attack. Under the leadership of Commander Adama, the Galactica and the pilots of "Viper fighters" lead a fugitive fleet of survivors in search of the fabled thirteenth colony known as Earth.
Television series
Original continuity
''Battlestar Galactica'' (1978–79)
, the creator and executive producer of Battlestar Galactica, claimed he had conceived of the Battlestar Galactica premise, which he called Adam's Ark, during the late 1960s. As James E. Ford detailed in "Battlestar Galactica and Mormon Theology", a paper read at the Joint Conference of the American Culture and Popular Culture Associations on April 17, 1980, the series incorporated many themes from Mormon theology, such as marriage for "time and eternity", a "council of twelve", a lost thirteenth tribe of humans, and a planet called Kobol, as Larson was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. However, he was unable to find financial backing for his TV series for a number of years. Battlestar Galactica was finally produced in the wake of the success of the 1977 film Star Wars. The original Cylons of Battlestar Galactica, robotic antagonists bent on destroying all humankind, owe much to Fred Saberhagen's berserker stories, including Saberhagen's fictional race the Builders whose "sliding single red eye" became the signature design element for the Cylons.Larson had envisioned Battlestar Galactica as a series of made-for-TV movies for the American Broadcasting Company. A shortened version of the three-hour pilot, Saga of a Star World, was screened in Canadian theaters and in American, European and Australian theaters later on. Instead of two additional TV movies, ABC decided to commission a weekly TV series of one-hour episodes.
In 1979 at the sixth annual People's Choice Awards, the TV series won in the category of "Best New TV Drama Series".
The first episode of the TV series was broadcast on September 17, 1978. About 30 minutes before the scheduled end, that broadcast was interrupted by the signing of the Egyptian–Israeli Camp David Accords. After the interruption, the episode picked back up where it left off.
During the eight months after the pilot's first broadcast, 17 original episodes of the series were made, equivalent to a standard 24-episode TV season. Citing declining ratings and cost overruns, ABC canceled Battlestar Galactica in April 1979. Its final episode "The Hand of God" was telecast on April 29, 1979.
''Galactica 1980'' (1980)
During the autumn of 1979, ABC executives met with Battlestar Galacticas creator Glen Larson to consider restarting the series. A suitable concept was needed to draw viewers, and it was decided that the arrival of the Colonial Fleet at present-day Earth would be the storyline. A new TV movie called Galactica 1980 was produced. Again, it was decided this new version of Battlestar Galactica would be made into a weekly TV series. Despite the early success of the premiere, this program failed to achieve the popularity of the original series, and it was canceled after just ten episodes.In this 1980 sequel series, the Colonial fleet finds the Earth, and then it covertly protects it from the Cylons. This series was a quick failure due to its low budget, widely panned writing, and ill-chosen time slot. The TV series also had to adhere to strict content restrictions such as limiting the number of acts of violence and being required to shoehorn educational content into the script and dialogue.
To cut costs, the show was set mostly on the contemporary Earth, to the great dismay of fans. Another factor for fan apathy was the nearly complete recasting of the original series: Lorne Greene reprised his role as Adama, but Herb Jefferson Jr. played "Colonel" Boomer in only about half of the episodes, and Dirk Benedict returned as Starbuck just for one episode. Richard Hatch was sent a script for Galactica 1980, but he turned it down since he was not sure what his part in the series would be now that all the characters had changed.
Some TV syndication packages for Battlestar Galactica incorporate the episodes of this series.
New continuity
Miniseries (2003)
Despite attempts to revive the series over the years, none came to fruition until it was rebooted in 2003 by Universal Television as Battlestar Galactica, a three-hour miniseries where a long-standing armistice following a war between humans and Cylons is broken by a second Cylon War, when the machines launch a sneak attack wiping out virtually all of humanity. Commissioned by the Sci-Fi Channel, screenwriter Ronald D. Moore and producer David Eick were the creative forces behind it. Academy Award-nominated actor Edward James Olmos was cast in the role of Commander Adama, while two-time Academy Award nominee Mary McDonnell was cast as President Laura Roslin. Starbuck and Boomer were now female characters, portrayed by Katee Sackhoff and Grace Park respectively. Other cast members included Jamie Bamber, James Callis, and Tricia Helfer as a Cylon-humanoid known as Number Six. The mini-series was a ratings success for the Sci-Fi Channel and they commissioned a new weekly Battlestar Galactica series to follow.''Battlestar Galactica'' (2004–09)
The new television series was co-funded by the UK's Sky Television, and premiered in the United Kingdom on the Sky1 satellite channel in October 2004. The series was then broadcast in North America on the Sci-Fi Channel in January 2005. Continuing where the 2003 mini-series left off, the main cast all returned to reprise their roles. Several new characters were introduced, and Richard Hatch, who played Captain Apollo in the 1970s Battlestar Galactica TV series, also appeared in several episodes as Tom Zarek, a former political terrorist who later becomes part of the new Colonial government.An edited version of the pilot miniseries was aired on NBC on January 9, 2005, five days before the Sci-Fi series premiere. NBC also aired three selected first-season episodes to promote the show in advance of the second-season premiere in July 2005. The series ran for four seasons between 2004 and 2009. The second season was split into two halves screened several months apart. Due to production delays caused by the 2007–2008 Writers Guild strike, the fourth season was also split into two parts, with a seven-month hiatus in between.
The series has won widespread critical acclaim among many mainstream non-SF-genre publications. Time and New York Newsday named it the best show on television in 2005. Other publications such as The New York Times, The New Yorker, National Review and Rolling Stone magazine also gave the show positive reviews.
The show has received a Peabody Award for overall excellence, several Emmy Awards for Visual Effects, and Emmy nominations for Writing and Directing. Time magazine named it one of the 100 Best TV Shows of All Time.
''Caprica'' (2010)
Caprica is a prequel television series to the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica. It premiered on Syfy on January 22, 2010, and was described as "television's first science fiction family saga". It was a two-hour back door pilot for a possible weekly television series, but on December 2, 2008, Syfy gave the go-ahead to expand the project into a full, 20-episode series. Caprica is set on the titular planet, 58 years before the events of Battlestar Galactica. The show revolves around two families, the Adamas and the Graystones, and the creation of the Cylons.The pilot was directed by Jeffrey Reiner and starred Eric Stoltz, Esai Morales, Paula Malcomson, Alessandra Torresani, and Polly Walker. The pilot was released on DVD on April 21, 2009, and the series was broadcast in January 2010.
On October 27, 2010, Syfy canceled Caprica due to low ratings. The final five episodes were aired in the US on January 4, 2011, though they had aired a couple of months earlier on the Canadian network Space. The entire series was released on DVD in 2011.