| Battlestar Galactica | |
|---|---|
 Franchise logo | |
| Created by | Glen A. Larson |
| Original work | Battlestar Galactica (1978) |
| Owner | NBCUniversal |
| Years | 1978–2012 |
| Print publications | |
| Book(s) | List of books |
| Comics | List of comics |
| Films and television | |
| Film(s) |
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| Television series |
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| Web series |
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| Television film(s) | |
| Games | |
| Video game(s) | List of video games |
Battlestar Galactica is an Americanscience fictionmedia franchise created byGlen A. Larson. It began with theoriginal 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"[1]reboot aired as atwo-part, three-hour miniseries developed byRonald D. Moore andDavid Eick in 2003, followed by a2004 television series, which aired until 2009. A prequel series,Caprica, aired in 2010.
AllBattlestar 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 theCylons, 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 namedBaltar, 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 theBattlestarGalactica, a gigantic battleship and spacecraft carrier, appears to have survived the attack. Under the leadership ofCommander Adama, theGalactica and the pilots of "Viper fighters" lead a fugitive fleet of survivors in search of the fabled thirteenth colony known asEarth.
| Series | Season | Episodes | Originally released | Creator(s) / Developer(s) | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| First released | Last released | Network | ||||||||||
| Original continuity | ||||||||||||
| Battlestar Galactica | 1 | 24 | September 17, 1978 (1978-09-17) | April 29, 1979 (1979-04-29) | ABC | Glen A. Larson | ||||||
| Galactica 1980 | 1 | 10 | January 27, 1980 (1980-01-27) | May 4, 1980 (1980-05-04) | ||||||||
| New continuity | ||||||||||||
| Battlestar Galactica | miniseries | 2 | December 8, 2003 (2003-12-08) | December 9, 2003 (2003-12-09) | Sci Fi | Ronald D. Moore &David Eick | ||||||
| 1 | 13 | January 15, 2005 (2005-01-15) / October 18, 2004 (2004-10-18)(Sky1) | April 1, 2005 (2005-04-01) / January 24, 2005 (2005-01-24)(Sky1) | Ronald D. Moore | ||||||||
| 2 | 20 | July 15, 2005 (2005-07-15) | March 10, 2006 (2006-03-10) | |||||||||
| 3 | 20 | October 6, 2006 (2006-10-06) | March 25, 2007 (2007-03-25) | |||||||||
| 4 | 21 | April 4, 2008 (2008-04-04) | March 20, 2009 (2009-03-20) | |||||||||
| Caprica | 1 | 19 | January 22, 2010 (2010-01-22) | November 30, 2010 (2010-11-30) | Syfy[note 1] | Remi Aubuchon &Ronald D. Moore | ||||||
Glen A. Larson, the creator andexecutive producer ofBattlestar Galactica, claimed he had conceived of theBattlestar Galactica premise, which he calledAdam'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 (and published as "Theology in Prime Time Science Fiction:Battlestar Galactica and Mormon Doctrine",Journal of Popular Culture #17 [1983]: 83–87), the series incorporated many themes fromMormon theology, such asmarriage for "time and eternity", a "council of twelve", a lost thirteenth tribe of humans, and a planet calledKobol (an anagram ofKolob), as Larson was a member ofthe Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.[2][3] However, he was unable to find financial backing for hisTV series for a number of years.Battlestar Galactica was finally produced in the wake of the success of the 1977 filmStar Wars. The original Cylons ofBattlestar Galactica, robotic antagonists bent on destroying all humankind, owe much toFred Saberhagen'sberserker stories, including Saberhagen's fictional race the Builders whose "sliding single red eye" became the signature design element for the Cylons.[citation needed]
Larson had envisionedBattlestar Galactica as a series ofmade-for-TV movies (a three-hourpilot program and two two-hour episodes) for theAmerican Broadcasting Company (ABC). A shortened version of the three-hour pilot,Saga of a Star World, was screened in Canadian theaters (before the TV series wastelecast) 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 annualPeople's Choice Awards, the TV series won in the category of "Best New TV Drama Series".[4]
The first episode of the TV series (the long pilot TV movie) was broadcast on September 17, 1978. About 30 minutes before the scheduled end, that broadcast was interrupted by the signing of the Egyptian–IsraeliCamp David Accords. After the interruption (which was nearly an hour in length), 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 (five of them two-part shows), equivalent to a standard 24-episode TV season. Citing declining ratings and cost overruns, ABC canceledBattlestar Galactica in April 1979. Its final episode "The Hand of God" was telecast on April 29, 1979.
During the autumn of 1979, ABC executives met withBattlestar Galactica's 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 newTV movie calledGalactica 1980 was produced. Again, it was decided this new version ofBattlestar 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 (e.g., recycling footage from the 1974Universal Studios movieEarthquake during aCylon attack sequence), widely panned writing, and ill-chosen time slot (Sunday evenings, a time generally reserved for family-oriented programming and, more specifically, also for the60 Minutes newsmagazine program). 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, butHerb Jefferson Jr. played "Colonel" Boomer in only about half of the episodes (with little screentime), andDirk Benedict returned as Starbuck just for one episode (the abrupt final episode, though his character was to have also appeared in the unfilmed episode "Wheel of Fire", which was a semi-sequel to "The Return of Starbuck").Richard Hatch (Apollo in the original series) was sent a script forGalactica 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.[5]
SomeTV syndication packages forBattlestar Galactica incorporate the episodes of this series.
Despite attempts to revive the series over the years, none came to fruition until it was rebooted in 2003 byUniversal Television asBattlestar Galactica, a three-hourminiseries 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 theSci-Fi Channel, screenwriterRonald D. Moore and producerDavid Eick were the creative forces behind it.Academy Award-nominated actorEdward James Olmos was cast in the role ofCommander Adama, while two-time Academy Award nomineeMary McDonnell was cast asPresident Laura Roslin. Starbuck and Boomer were now female characters, portrayed byKatee Sackhoff andGrace Park respectively. Other cast members includedJamie Bamber (Captain Lee 'Apollo' Adama),James Callis (Dr. Gaius Baltar), andTricia Helfer as aCylon-humanoid known asNumber Six. The mini-series was a ratings success for the Sci-Fi Channel and they commissioned anew weeklyBattlestar Galactica series to follow.
The new television series was co-funded by the UK'sSky Television, and premiered in the United Kingdom on theSky1 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 1970sBattlestar Galactica TV series, also appeared in several episodes asTom Zarek, a former political terrorist who later becomes part of the new Colonial government.
An edited version of the pilot miniseries was aired onNBC 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 the2007–2008 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[6] andNew York Newsday[7] named it the best show on television in 2005. Other publications such asThe New York Times,[8]The New Yorker,[9]National Review[10] andRolling Stone magazine[11] also gave the show positive reviews.
The show has received aPeabody Award for overall excellence, severalEmmy 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.[12]
Caprica is aprequel television series to the re-imaginedBattlestar Galactica. It premiered on Syfy (formerly Sci-Fi) on January 22, 2010, and was described as "television's first science fictionfamily saga". It was a two-hourback 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 thetitular planet, 58 years before the events ofBattlestar Galactica. The show revolves around two families, the Adamas and the Graystones, and the creation of the Cylons.
The pilot was directed byJeffrey Reiner and starredEric Stoltz,Esai Morales,Paula Malcomson,Alessandra Torresani, andPolly Walker.[13] The pilot was released on DVD on April 21, 2009,[14] and the series was broadcast in January 2010.
On October 27, 2010, Syfy canceledCaprica due to low ratings. The final five episodes were aired in the US on January 4, 2011,[15] though they had aired a couple of months earlier on the Canadian networkSpace. The entire series was released on DVD in 2011.
| Web series | Episodes | Originally released | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| First released | Last released | Network | |||
| The Resistance | 10 | September 5, 2006 (2006-09-05) | October 5, 2006 (2006-10-05) | Sci Fi's website | |
| Razor Flashbacks | 7 | October 5, 2007 (2007-10-05) | November 16, 2007 (2007-11-16) | ||
| The Face of the Enemy | 10 | December 12, 2008 (2008-12-12) | January 12, 2009 (2009-01-12) | ||
| Blood & Chrome | 10 | November 9, 2012 (2012-11-09) | December 7, 2012 (2012-12-07) | Machinima.com | |
The first set ofwebisodes were a series of shorts produced in 2006 to promote the third season of the re-imagined show. Made as an "optional extra" to Season 3, the webisodes filled in some of the events between the second and third seasons and featured some of the main cast, though did not reveal what would happen in the beginning of Season 3, nor was viewing them essential to follow the story of the third season. Each of the ten webisodes was approximately three minutes long, and they were released twice a week leading up to the U.S. Season 3 premiere in 2006.
TheRazor Flashbacks were a series of seven webisodes produced in 2007, set some 40 years earlier during William Adama's fighter pilot days during the later stages of theFirst Cylon War. They were released on the Internet as "webisodes" leading up toRazor's release. They are now available on the DVD and Blu-Ray releases ofBattlestar Galactica: Razor, and some are inserted into both the broadcast and extended cuts of the movie on DVD and Blu-Ray. The installments that did not make the final cut include 1, 2, and the latter half of 7.
A set of ten webisodes were released during the seven-month hiatus between episodes 10 and 11 of Season 4.[16] TitledThe Face of the Enemy, the web series premiered on December 12, 2008, on SciFi.com.
Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome was to be a spin-off series from the re-imaginedBattlestar Galactica series.[1] Syfy approached show runner Ronald D. Moore to produce another spin-off set in the reimaginedBattlestar Galactica universe, which was to begin as a two-hour pilot focused on William "Husker" Adama (portrayed byLuke Pasqualino) during the First Cylon War (as was glimpsed inRazor and the corresponding webisodes).
Syfy decided against moving forward with theBlood and Chrome TV series, but aired a 10-part webseries over four weeks viaMachinima.com, beginning on November 9, 2012. The webseries was also aired as a 2-hour movie on Syfy on February 10, 2013,[17] and was released on DVD shortly afterwards.[18]
Battlestar Galactica is a re-edit of the pilot episode of the 1978 TV series,Saga of a Star World. It was released theatrically in Canada before the television series aired in the United States, in order to help recoup its high production costs.[19] Later, thestandalone film edit was also released in the United States.
Battlestar Galactica: Razor is a 2007television movie produced and broadcast in the gap between Seasons 3 and 4 of the new series.Razor is also the first two episodes of Season 4 though it chronicles events on BattlestarPegasus in two time periods, both of which are "in the past" with respect to the Season 4 continuity. The "present day" framing scenes are set during Lee Adama's command of thePegasus in the latter half of Season 2, while "flashback" scenes depict Helena Cain's command in the period between the Cylon attack (shown in the 2003 mini-series) and the reunion with theGalactica in the second season. It aired in the United States and Canada on November 24, 2007, and in the UK and Ireland on December 18, 2007. An expanded version of the movie was released on DVD on December 4, 2007.
Sci Fi Channel produced a two-hour TV movie which was planned to air after the final episode of the series in 2009. The movie began production on September 8, 2008.[20] The movie premiered exclusively on DVD, Blu-ray and digital download on October 27, 2009 and aired on January 10, 2010, on Sci Fi. Written byJane Espenson and directed byEdward James Olmos,The Plan storyline begins before the attack on the Twelve Colonies and shows events primarily from the perspective of the Cylons.[21]Edward James Olmos reprised his role as Adama, and ten of the eleven actors who played Cylons appeared, includingMichael Trucco,Aaron Douglas,Dean Stockwell,Tricia Helfer,Grace Park,Rick Worthy,Matthew Bennett,Callum Keith Rennie,Michael Hogan andRekha Sharma.[20] The only "Cylon" actor not present wasLucy Lawless (although previously filmed footage of her was included).[22]
In 1999, theproducer ofWing Commander, Todd Moyer, and the producer of the original TV series, Glen Larson, planned to produce amotion picture based on the TV series.[23][24][25] It would have featured BattlestarPegasus.
Creator Glen A. Larson entered negotiations withUniversal Pictures for a film adaptation of the 1978 series in February 2009.[26]Bryan Singer signed on to direct thereboot the following August, but was obliged to directJack the Giant Slayer.[27] In October 2011John Orloff was hired to write the script. "I have wanted to write this movie since I was 12 years old, and built a Galactica model from scratch out of balsa wood, cardboard, old model parts and LEDs", Orloff toldDeadline Hollywood.[28] By August 2012 the script was being rewritten, with Singer explaining that "It will exist, I think, quite well between the Glen Larson and Ron Moore universes".[29] On April 7, 2014, the studio hired Jack Paglen to write the script for the film.[30] On February 12, 2016, Universal signedMichael De Luca,Scott Stuber and Dylan Clark to produce theBattlestar Galactica film.[31] On June 9, 2016,Lisa Joy was reportedly writing the film, andFrancis Lawrence was in talks to direct.[32] On December 18, 2018, it was reported that Jay Basu (The Girl in the Spider's Web) had been hired to rewrite Joy's script.[33] On October 22, 2020, The Hollywood Reporter revealed thatSimon Kinberg will be writing and co-producing the film withDylan Clark.[34]
Besides a re-edited version of the pilot, released in Canada, Europe, parts of Latin America, and, following the broadcast of the series, in the U.S., two otherBattlestar Galactica feature films were released in cinemas.Mission Galactica: The Cylon Attack andConquest of the Earth were made up of various episodes of the original series andGalactica 1980 respectively. (SeeList ofBattlestar Galactica (1978 TV series) andGalactica 1980 episodes § Theatrical releases)
The original series maintained acult fandom, which supported efforts by Glen A. Larson, Richard Hatch, andBryan Singer (independently of one another) to revive the premise.
Richard Hatch produced a demonstration video in 1998 to 1999 which featured several actors from the original series combined with state-of-the-art special effects. This video, titledBattlestar Galactica: The Second Coming, was screened at somescience fiction conventions, but it did not lead to a new series.[35]
In 2000, the director and an executive producer of theX-Men movie, Bryan Singer andTom DeSanto, began developing aBattlestar GalacticaTV miniseries under the auspices ofStudios USA for theFox TV network. A continuation of the original series but set 25 years later, Singer and DeSanto's version included several members of the original cast reprising their original roles and the introduction of newer characters. It was intended to be telecast as abackdoor pilot in May 2002, and pre-production commenced and sets had even been partially constructed with a view to filming starting in November 2001.[36] However, production delays caused by theSeptember 11, 2001 attacks meant that Bryan Singer had to drop out, due to his commitment to direct theX-Men 2 movie. This caused the executives of Fox TV to cancel the project.
In September 2019,NBCUniversal was planning a new series as part of theirPeacock streaming service, set in the same continuity as the 2004Battlestar Galactica series,[37] and produced bySam Esmail.[38] In March 2021, writer and producer Michael Lesslie had reportedly left the project, leaving production plans in doubt.[39] In July 2024,Variety reported that Peacock were no longer developing the series, though the project was planned to be shopped to other networks.[40]
Both the original and the reimagined series have had books published about the series, academically oriented analysis, novelizations, and new works based on the characters.
TheseBattlestar Galactica softcover novelisations were written byGlen A. Larson with the authors listed below.[41] They were critically disparaged, but proved popular, with the first novel selling over a million copies within its first year.[42] The first ten novels adapt the episode of the same title except as indicated. All novels exceptBattlestar Galactica 14: Surrender the Galactica! (ACE publishing) were originally published by Berkley, and have been republished, recently, by I Books, which called themBattlestar Galactica Classic to differentiate it from the reimagined series. The episodic novels featured expanded scenes, excerpts from "The Adama Journals", more background on the characters, and the expansion of the ragtag fleet to almost 22,000 ships as opposed to the 220 in the TV series.
A new book series written by series starRichard Hatch starting in the 1990s continued the original story based on his attempt to revive the series, and ignored the events ofGalactica 1980. His series picked up several years after the TV series ended, and featured Apollo in command of theGalactica after the death of Adama, a grown-up Boxey, who was now a Viper pilot, and the rediscovery of Commander Cain and the battlestarPegasus, who had started a new colony and was preparing to restart the war with the Cylons.
Episodic novels
Original novels
Original novels by Richard Hatch
Tor Science Fiction has published the following works in both hardcover and paperback format.
A series of comic book publishers have adaptedBattlestar Galactica since its inception.
Marvel Comics published a 23-issue comic book series based upon the show between 1978 and 1981. Walt Simonson, who later wrote and drewThor and had a long stint on Marvel'sStar Wars comic, was the artist for the series at its conclusion. Other comics have since been published byMaximum Press, Grandreams,Look-in magazine, Realm Press, andDynamite Comics.
Dynamite Entertainment was the last company to publish comic books featuring both the classic and reimaginedBattlestar Galactica series. They also released a 4-issueGalactica 1980 comic miniseries written byMarc Guggenheim. The limited miniseries was a re-imagining of the original series but at the end featured a second, smallerBattlestar (replacing the original which was destroyed) also namedGalactica but strongly resembling the ship seen in the reimagined Sci-Fi Channel series.[citation needed]
In 1978,Mattel Electronics released a handheld electronicLED game based on the series. The player tries to defendGalactica fromkamikaze Cylon Raiders by manipulating a switch on the game unit to direct their fire, triggered by a red button to the left of the unit.[47]
In November 2003, shortly before the premiere of the re-imagined TV series, Sierra released a 3D space combatBattlestar Galactica computer game for the originalXbox,PlayStation 2, and PC. The game took place 40 years before the original series and featured an ensign Adama flying a Viper during the Cylon war. The game was developed by Warthog.[48]
There is also a 2DXbox 360 Live Arcade title calledBattlestar Galactica wherein players can co-op or dogfight with up to 8 people overXbox Live.[49]
Battlestar Galactica Online was a 3Dbrowser-basedMMOG released as anopen beta on February 8, 2011, byBigpoint Games.[50]
Battlestar Galactica Deadlock is a 2017 3D turn based strategy game (released on PC, Xbox One and PS4) featuring the First Cylon War. The game is developed by Black Lab Games and published by the Slitherine Software.
The original series inspired aBattlestar Galactica board game. The game is set during a training mission, where two to four players maneuver pieces representing Colonial Vipers to capture a damagedCylon Raider. Play includes using terrain elements and a number of special-ability cards to the players' advantage.[citation needed]
In 1979,FASA released a tabletop counter piece game forBattlestar Galactica based on the fighter combat, which included theGalactica and a Cylon Basestar to be launched from, attack with and be attacked/defended. The counters for the Vipers and the Raiders included three model versions MKI/MKII/MKIII, not just the MKII Viper and Raider MKI.[51]
Wiz Kids, Inc. (a collectible game manufacturer) produced theBattlestar Galactica Collectible Card Game based on the 2003 mini-series and 2004 TV show. The premier set of this game was released in May 2006. After the release of one expansion set, Wizkids cancelled the game on March 13, 2007.[52]
ABattlestar Galacticarole-playing game was released in August 2007 byMargaret Weis Productions atGen Con.[53]
In 2008 Fantasy Flight Games producedBattlestar Galactica: The Board Game, based on the 2003 re-imagined series. It is a semi-cooperative game of strategy for 3–6 players with some players being Cylon agents, either aware at start of the game or become aware later, assleeper agents. Each of the 10 playable character has its own abilities and weaknesses, and they must all work together in order for humanity to survive, as well as attempt to expose the traitor while fuel shortages, food contaminations, and political unrest threaten to tear the fleet apart.[54] The game had three expansions,Pegasus,Exodus andDaybreak.[55][56]
In 2018, Ares Games releasedBattlestar Galactica: Starship Battles, a miniature game byAndrea Angiolino and Andrea Mainini simulating space duels between Vipers and Raiders, with expansions including further models. The game is based on the 2003 re-imagined series, but the license will also allow use of spaceships from the original series, with a game approach similar toWings of War.[57]
Battle of Galactica opened June 9, 1979, as an event on theStudio Tour atUniversal Studios Hollywood at a cost of $1 million, the most expensive special effects attraction ever built at the park at the time.[58] This high-technology attraction featured animatronics and live actors in a spectacular laser battle based on the television series, with a 200-foot long spaceship that "swallowed" the passengers.[58] This was the first themed attraction to featureAudio-Animatronics characters outsideDisney Parks, and was the firstdark ride to combine sophisticated animatronics and lasers with live actors. It was replaced in 1992 by the foundations ofBack to the Future: The Ride.
ABattlestar Galactica: Human vs. Cylonroller coaster opened March 18, 2010, atUniversal Studios Singapore.
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