star trek or battlestar galactica

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How Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek Built Upon Each Other

The sci-fi universes of Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek are more inspired by each other than you might think.

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This article contains spoilers for Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica .

When future television historians are asked to build the Mount Rushmore of fictional adventures through the galaxy, there is certainly room for debate. Rest assured though, there is a place for Star Trek and even a franchise many didn’t think would make it, Battlestar Galactica . 

When Battlestar was released on ABC in 1978, it was almost a decade since Gene Roddenberry’s perennial trek had aired, failed, and was resurrected because of fan support. Since its inception, Star Trek was a survivor, and one of its strengths was always reinvention. This led to feature films, a renaissance of the property in the late ‘80s, and a recent reinvention and “refuel” treatment in the past few years.

Galactica , meanwhile, went from cult classic to mainstream critical success with its reboot in the early 2000s. Yet, that wasn’t the only reinvention in that franchise of note. It’s well known that Battlestar attempted to bottle the lightning in a bottle that Star Wars created and transfer that love of intergalactic battles to the small screen, but it may be Trek that forged deeper bonds with BSG more than anything else. 

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From the late ‘70s onwards, the two franchises shared key moments of evolution which changed the respective properties. There is a cycle of inspiration and homages where the two shows kept feeding and leading each other in new exciting directions. 

Battlestar Galactica Borrowed Star Trek’s Anti-War Subtext

When Roddenberry created Star Trek , he used the science fiction backdrop to hide an overall subtext within the “final frontier.” At the time, not only was Star Trek an overall beacon for hope, it was a not-so-subtle protest of the Vietnam War. Roddenberry and his writing team constantly brought up the war within the context of 23rd century humanity and the advances we have made, and the Enterprise and crew would often visit a “savage” planet ravaged by war. 

When the creative team behind the original series was asked at a 1992 convention whether the showrunners intended specific episodes to subtextually explore anti-Vietnam-war rhetoric, producer Robert Justman simply replied, “Of course we did .” The Star Trek episode “A Private Little War” had the sinister Klingon empire providing a small, savage planet with weaponry, which prompted Captain Kirk (William Shatner) and Doctor McCoy (DeForest Kelly) to debate the morality of the issue.

Kirk even asked “Bones” if he remembered the Vietnam conflict of 20th century Earth. “What would you have suggested—that one side arm its friends with an overpowering weapon?” Kirk poses. “Mankind would never have lived to travel space if they had. No. The only solution is what happened back then: balance of power.”

In fact, both Trek and BSG had specific references to limiting communism and communist countries supplying armaments to an enemy of the protagonists. A later episode in the run of BSG , episode 19 entitled “Experiment in Terra,” was about a mysterious Ship of Lights appearing, hijacking Apollo (Richard Hatch), and sending him to the planet Terra who are in the middle of wartime negotiations between the Eastern Alliance faction, and the Nationalists. 

The episode is a clear allegory of the Cold War, and reintroduced a common theme within the original BSG , which is that governmental authority can be inept, a concept they often showed in the governing “Quorum of Twelve” and ever since the premiere episode, “Saga of a Star World”

Battlestar Galactica Also Borrowed Some of Star Trek’s Optimism 

Gene Roddenberry, a former pilot in World War II, used the difficult lessons humanity learned during that time to create and enlighten. Having survived such hardships and seeing how dark humanity can really  get, Roddenberry somehow had a powerful optimism for the future he couldn’t contain. He envisioned a future where we coexisted peacefully, reached out to new civilizations, and learned from one another. 

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When Battlestar Galactica first aired in 1978, it did not share the same optimism that Trek did. It was more of a Serling-esque warning, a grim look into a dark abyss that showed what would happen if war never ceased, if humanity was in its death throes after centuries of war with the unstoppable Cylons. Yes, it was an obvious nod to George Lucas’ Star Wars , and BSG certainly took the ‘Battle’ part of their title very much to heart, but there was a sudden shift that leaned a little more toward Trek than War. 

Battlestar Galactica: What’s Going On With the New Movie and TV Shared Universe?

The Shakespearean Roots of Star Trek

No, it wasn’t merely the Mormon-subtext of Battlestar Galactica thanks to creator Glen A. Larson’s religious beliefs, but those homages certainly helped. It was in the unexpected big changes in the latter half of the show’s run where BSG had to evolve, and it seemed to look to that same optimism that Trek had that caused a rabid fanbase to write thousands of letters to Desilu studios to get the show back on the air.  

The show technically ran only one season, but aired over the better part of a year. In that time, it was retooled by ABC, which gave the show a new air time, and significantly reduced its budget. Without the same level of funding, BSG ’s overall arc of the first season and a battle for survival against the Cylons took a back seat to more episodic stories, not unlike Star Trek  

In the later episodes, the tone became slightly more optimistic – perhaps the creators knew they had to wrap up the entire story just in case they weren’t picked up. The new episodic feel of these self-contained episodes were not only more “innocent” – having no long-standing repercussions in the BSG universe, but they even borrowed from classic Trek episodes. 

Some of the adventures included “Greetings from Earth” where Apollo and Starbuck (Dirk Benedict) come across an alleged vessel from Earth. When they get inside, they discover half a dozen people in suspended animation. It was a premise used by both the original Star Trek series, and The Next Generation , where it was a chance for Roddenberry to show audiences just how “advanced” the characters in the Trek universe are and how we’ve improved as a species. 

Often the Cylon take a backseat in later BSG , as well. They are no longer the unstoppable killing machines hot on the trail of the Galactica. Even when they are included in later episodes, their attack prowess is laughable, as our plucky heroes can easily defeat dozens of them. The “war” is barely mentioned anymore near the end of the show’s run, and it’s more about tiny little space adventures.

The Next Generation Borrowed from Battlestar Galactica

So with the original BSG picking up where Trek left off in terms of subtext and messages of morality, what would happen when Star Trek: The Next Generation would reboot Roddenberry’s vision of a beautiful future?

Granted, the exploits of the Enterprise D on The Next Generation very much embodied the original Roddenberry vision of a peaceful federation of planets, perhaps even more than the original, but TNG was not afraid to go in the Battlestar direction. The fact that Picard was so much more a diplomat that perhaps any character in the original series appears as if the writers of TNG embraced the great performance of Lorne Green’s Commander Adama, a man who would command respect because of his strength and his patience. Kirk is more of a man of action, with his second-in-command, Spock often taking the more reserved side of intergalactic political relations. More importantly, TNG was never afraid to delve into serious socio-political issues, and it wasn’t merely because times had changed from the’ 60s to the late ‘80s. In a sense, they weren’t afraid to go a little more into the dark parts of the universe, much like early BSG did. 

Critics and connoisseurs of Trek will agree that the show truly hit its stride in season 3. There was the Q (John Delancy) episode where he discovers what it is to be mortal. There was a great Data (Brent Spiner) episode where he discovers what it is to be a father. The unforgettable “Yesterday’s Enterprise” where an old crew member is resurrected in a dark alternate timeline, and one of the greatest hours of science-fiction ever put on the small screen – “The Best of Both Worlds”.

Those last two examples embraced a truly dark tone. Something that was strangely refreshing in the Trek universe. More importantly, the latter episode, which served as the greatest cliffhanger in the show’s history featured the Federation’s greatest nemesis to date, the Borg – a cybernetic species that will not rest until all of humanity is either destroyed or serves their collective. Not a far stretch that a killer robotic force hellbent on humanity’s destruction can be seen as a connection to the original BSG .

BSG to DS9 and Back Again

While TNG was the instigator, the true renaissance of Trek can be pinpointed to the massive expansion the property had in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Yet let it not be forgotten that this was also the time the show began to become darker. The Trek franchise seemed to embrace more and more of the early BSG mentality, becoming more about survival, anti-war rhetoric, and surprisingly religious undertones. 

The most obvious comparison was that of arguably the most underrated Star Trek series – Deep Space Nine . The Commander of the space station, Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks) in the pilot of the show was outright venomous towards the stalwart Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart). Sisko was a survivor of war, like many of the characters in the show, and when he met the man he knew to be (partially) responsible for the casualties the Federation suffered, he was not afraid to show his disdain. It was a beautiful moment where the showrunners were literally showing how different the two shows and their tones were going to be – almost akin to a literal slap in the face of TNG at the hands of the angrier, Gen X upstart, DS9. Even Voyager years later, while slightly more optimistic than the gritty DS9, used the premise of a singular vessel on a seemingly no-win voyage home. It was also more about survival than exploration, and seemed to embrace the BSG mentality as much as Jayneway embraces coffee. 

DS9’ s strongest seasons featured an ongoing war, much like BSG . The format of the original Battlestar run even changed the format of Trek for the first time, as it was the first time that Star Trek had adopted a more serialized structure, and had a real thread in its seasonal arc. It was tense, it was about survival, and as a result, it was really easy to become invested in the characters. 

One of the threads that came out of the Dominion War storyline in DS9 was that the “Founders,” a race of Changelings that could take on the form of whatever they chose, were slowly infiltrating the ranks of Starfleet and their allies. This again, served as a great tension builder throughout the final seasons of the show, and interestingly could be seen as a throwback to the paranoia of the Cold War era and the fact that there may be “Communists among us”.

That seemed to be something the creators of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica (2004) clung to. Not an uncommon trope, but for two science-fiction shows that revolve around survivors of a devastating war, who are simply trying to rebuild, that seems more of an homage than mere coincidence. The possibility of coincidence shrinks even more if one considers that Ronald D. Moore, a writer and producer who worked on 30 episodes of Deep Space Nine then became the showrunner of the newest Battlestar Galactica in his post Trek career. 

Moore as showrunner seemed to latch on to the Cold War drama of DS9 , which coincidentally only existed because of influences from the original Battlestar . The new BSG for almost its entire run became about the fear that “they’re among us” as some of the key Cylons appeared human, setting up a few shocking moments within the show as the truth was ultimately revealed as to their true origins. 

Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek in the Modern Era

Is there such a thing as too edgy, or too political in these shows? The 2004 BSG series contained the subtext of the 9/11 attacks, still fresh in the mind of Western culture when the show debuted, and so gave that fear of those who have survived this world changing event even more of an emotional punch. 

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In the last two decades, there also hasn’t been a recent iteration of BSG , and so in that time, it has been up to Trek to push the boundaries in terms of political intrigue and drama, and push they have. Part of the newest generation of Star Trek shows, including Star Trek: Discovery and Picard , have become very jaded. In fact, Picard heard public outcry from fans that the showrunners Akiva Goldsman, Michael Chabon, Kirsten Beyer, and Alex Kurtzman forgot where the beloved and stalworth captain came from . Picard himself throughout the first two seasons was pessimistic and jaded, and despite the intrigue of seeing that side of the character, it did not seem to fit with what fans had fallen in love with. 

Discovery seemed to borrow heavily from the dark tone of both generations of BSG. The first season was full of several key, high-ranking characters and their sinister mirror-verse doppelgangers, so once again, the infiltration of Star Fleet at the show’s starship was a major plot device. For a long time viewers are simply not sure who they can trust. The show also turned the volume knob on the drama to 11, as there was nary an episode that went by that didn’t have a main character in tears. It’s perhaps the most realistic human experience we’ve seen on Trek, but does it push it too far?

On the flip side, this newest generation of Trek has also given audiences a satire animated show (which is still canon) in Lower Decks and the delightful Strange New Worlds which is the closest show to the original serialized and fun-loving adventure style of the original series. It was almost as if the absence of a recent iteration of BSG left Trek creators with an unsurety, should they go dark, or should they go lighthearted? Should they be optimistic, or should they embrace a gritty “realiness”? 

With there being Battlestar projects in the works in the past few years, including a canceled Bryan Singer film adaptation , and more recently, Peacock wanting to continue the 2000s iteration with Mr. Robot’s Sam Esmail as showrunner , it is only a matter of time until that property is revisited, while at the same time Trek ’s expansion seems to be in the middle of a second renaissance. Does this mean that a new BSG will come full circle, and once again look to the adventures of the original Enterprise? 

Perhaps the cycle will break and the shows go boldly where no one has gone before. Frak. Who knows.

Michael Winn Johnson | @ReelSchool

Teacher and entertainment journalist based out of Toronto. Michael can talk forever about film, television and animation, and how often Toronto sports teams have made him…

Battlestar Galactica vs. Star Trek

By sam j. miller | jan 15, 2009.

"It's not enough to survive. One has to be worthy of surviving." —Adm. Bill Adama, Battlestar Galactica

Battlestar Galactica presents a problem for me and my Star Trek -fan friends. Why do we love it so much? We call each other up after each new episode and ramble in nervous high-pitched voices, batting back and forth theories and questions and "OH MY GOD" moments"¦ all the while feeling vaguely guilty that no Star Trek clash with the Borg or tampering with the time-space continuum ever engaged and obsessed and haunted us to such a profound extent.

Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica have wildly different aesthetics and ideologies, and both aspire to very different goals. Fundamentally, it boils down to this:

Star Trek is about who we want to be, and Battlestar Galactica is about who we are.

Star Trek takes place in a world where all the ugly things about human existence have been erased. Interstellar globalization has brought us new technologies to make transportation and translation effortless. Machines called replicators can produce absolutely anything you want, so the economics of inequity are gone. The injuries of race and class and gender have been surmounted, if not forgotten altogether. Scarcity, borders, money, and culture have all ceased to exist. Interpersonal tensions are relics of a more savage age. No destructive love affairs, no chafing under authority, minimal arrogance to put your fellow crew members at risk. There's something nice about visiting a world like that—just like it's nice to pretend that institutional racism and violence against women and poverty are getting better instead of worse. Much of mainstream fiction is built on this kind of wish-fulfillment.

That's why the world of Battlestar Galactica feels so fresh, and so challenging.

People still drink too much, and beat their spouses, and work too hard, and hate their bosses, and distrust the government, and fear death. The crew of the Galactica is not boldly exploring the universe for exploring's sake, learning about fascinating new cultures and inviting alien species to join the benevolent Federation of Planets. It's running away from a race of genocidal robots bent on their complete annihilation, while trying to maintain some shred of humanity and civilization.

Star Trek revels in its geekiness. Physicist in-jokes and gleefully incomprehensible technobabble are found in every episode. People say things like "The secondary gyrodyne relays in the propulsion field matrix have just depolarized."

As a nerd, I find this fun. It's part of Star Trek 's fantasy appeal. It's part of the idea that science and reason and the intellect will prevail. But we've been telling ourselves that lie for a long time now.

In a very concrete sense, Battlestar Galactica descends from the sci-fi community's realization that darker and more complex times demand darker and more complex science fiction. Ronald Moore, the developer/writer/executive producer of the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica , has a Star Trek pedigree that makes him the idol of Trekkies everywhere. He scripted 27 episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation , and was promoted to co-producer and later to producer. On Star Trek: Deep Space Nine , he was a supervising producer and a co-executive producer, writing several of the series' most controversial episodes. He co-wrote the scripts for the films Star Trek Generations and Star Trek: First Contact . And while he was hired as a producer of Star Trek: Voyager , he left after only two episodes. In a January 2000 interview with Cinescape magazine, he outlined some of the frustrations with that show:

"I think the audience intuitively knows when something is true and something is not true. Voyager is not true. If it were true, the ship would not look spic-and-span every week, after all these battles it goes through. How many times has the bridge been destroyed? How many shuttlecrafts have vanished, and another one just comes out of the oven? That kind of BSing the audience I think takes its toll. At some point the audience stops taking it seriously, because they know that this is not really the way this would happen. These people wouldn't act like this."

Galactica is sci-fi without that BS. Sci-fi with all the anger and stupidity and sadness that real people experience. Sci-fi without the conviction that we will conquer our own ugliness. Sci-fi for the age of 9/11 and natural disasters compounded by climate change to the point where they can completely destroy major cities. Galactica 's message is that unless we come to terms with our own history, we are doomed. Mankind created the Cylons to fight our wars and to do our grunt work for us. Eventually they rose up and wiped out 99.999% of us. This basic lesson is one we still haven't learned: that exploitation leads to exploitation, that if you oppress someone you sow the seeds of your own oppression. "You can't play God and then wash your hands of the things you've created," says the Galactica 's commander, William Adama. "Sooner or later, the day comes when you can't hide from the things that you've done anymore." * * * * * The apocalypse obsesses us. The idea of society's total collapse has broad traction across the political spectrum. Even Oprah's worried—that's why she picked Cormac McCarthy's The Road for her book club. No getting around it: we're afraid. We want to prepare ourselves mentally. We buy batteries. We lap up every new zombies-destroy-humanity movie. All of a sudden, it's disturbingly easy to imagine the human race reduced from billions of people to tens of thousands.

Battlestar Galactica 's warning that technology and progress will bring us to the brink of total annihilation is far more resonant than Star Trek 's hope that technology and progress will solve all of our problems.

Star Trek doesn't pretend that human beings are perfect—prior to the discovery of the Warp Engine, Earth had been brought back to the edge of the Stone Age by the "Eugenics Wars"—but it does take for granted that human beings are good, and that history represents a fumbling messy sort of progress towards perfection. What makes Battlestar Galactica so haunting is the existential question it poses to all of us: "Do we deserve to exist?" In light of Auschwitz and Darfur and the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, Tibet and 9/11 and Abu Ghraib, can we honestly say we don't deserve total destruction? That we'll learn? That we'll change? Early on, Galactica 's commander wonders: "When we fought the Cylons, we did it to save ourselves from extinction. But we never answered the question: Why? Why are we as a people worth saving?" And while Star Trek plotlines frequently boil down to a search for the best solution to a problem, the "best solution" on Battlestar Galactica is likely to raise all sorts of thorny moral questions. Is it acceptable to rig an election, because you know that your opponent's policies will lead to disaster? Can we assassinate a rival officer whose actions put the fleet at risk? Where is the line between a mob and a society?

I wish I could see the show as a clear sign that we're ready to own up to the narratives of hate and violence and oppression that comprise our history, but that feels like a stretch. At the very least, I think Battlestar Galactica has been an overwhelming critical and popular success because we're ready to be challenged. As we enter the final part of the final season, the survival of the human race clearly hinges on whether mankind will come to terms with what it has done. And while it's simplistic to reduce the Cylons to an allegory for racism, or our oil addiction, BSG offers us a rare opportunity to examine our own culpability, and our own power to change.

This article originally appeared last June. Sam J. Miller is a writer and community organizer. His work has appeared in numerous magazines, anthologies, and print and online journals. He lives in the Bronx with his partner of six years. Visit him at samjmiller.com .

The Star Trek Frustrations That Shaped Battlestar Galactica

The best remakes are those that take promising ideas and revamp them with better execution. Case in point: "Battlestar Galactica." The original 1978 series was a kitschy "Star Wars" knock-off, while the 2004 reimagined series is one of the best science-fiction TV shows ever made. The series went to places no previous sci-fi show had dared all while telling a gripping, moving story about humanity and faith. "Battlestar Galactica" producer Ronald D. "Ron" Moore had previously worked on "Star Trek" for a decade. The positives and negatives of his experience shaped "Battlestar Galactica." 

How Ron Moore got started

"Star Trek: The Next Generation" famously got off to a rough start — no Trekkie alive lists "TNG" Season 1 as their favorite. Season 2 improved things, with some brilliant episodes like "Q Who" and "The Measure Of A Man," but was a mess behind the scenes. The 1988 Writers Guild of America strike shortened the season, and head writer Maurice Hurley left the series. Michael Piller, who stepped up to replace Hurley, was the one who recruited Ron Moore.

Moore had sent in a spec script titled " The Bonding ," about the son of an Enterprise crewmember grieving his mother's death. This story and its exploration of grief offer a human touch that became a calling card of Moore's writing. The script impressed Piller; "The Bonding" became episode 5 of season 3 while Moore joined the "TNG" writers' room. His next episode, "The Defector," about a Romulan admiral who defects to the Federation, was even better. 

Moore became one of the show's most prolific writers and was always skilled at bringing the series down to earth. His "TNG" filmography includes "Family," where Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) visits his family vineyard and processes his trauma over being assimilated by the Borg , and "The First Duty," where Wesley Crusher (Wil Wheaton) faces a moral quandary after a classmate dies in an accident. Moore ultimately wrote 27 episodes and even co-scripted the finale "All Good Things" with Brannon Braga, another young writer whose career was kickstarted when he joined "TNG." After "TNG" concluded, Moore jumped ship to the concurrent "Star Trek" series, "Deep Space Nine." While "DS9" was only possible thanks to "TNG," it was a very different beast.

Deep Space Nine charted its own path

"TNG" was a first-run syndication show; Paramount sold the airing rights for the show directly to local TV station affiliates. This meant the writers approached episodes as if they could be someone's introduction to "Trek"; the most inter-episode continuity came from two-parters. "DS9," on the other hand, used more long-form storytelling. The bulk of the series focused on the build-up to the Federation's war with the Dominion, the ruling power of the Gamma Quadrant; this cold war went hot in "DS9" Season 5 and carried on until the end. All the while, the main cast changed and emerged from the series as different people than they had been at the start. This approach simultaneously made "DS9" more plot and character-driven than the past two "Star Trek" series, which were episodic to their core.

"DS9" also wasn't afraid to go darker places. "Star Trek" has always been humanistic, at times moralistic, and franchise creator Gene Roddenberry wanted the setting to be a utopian vision of human achievement. However, "DS9" seeks to test those ideals rather just demonstrate them. 

Season 2 episode "The Maquis" features a rebellion by Federation colonists who are unwilling to cede their land to the Cardassians. As Cpt. Ben Sisko (Avery Brooks) notes in this episode, "it's easy to be a saint in paradise, but the Maquis do not live in paradise." Therein lies the strength of "DS9"; it takes its characters out of their comfort zones and tests how they react. Season 6 episode "In The Pale Moonlight," wherein Sisko conspires to bring the Romulans into the Dominion War, would've been unthinkable with Roddenberry running the ship. After "DS9" wrapped, Moore briefly joined the staff of "Star Trek: Voyager." However, as Moore discovered, this series was a step backward compared to "DS9."

What Voyager could have been

"Voyager" was the third "Star Trek" show created within a decade and needed a hook to stand out from its peers. This hook was that the titular ship was stranded in the far reaches of the Delta Quadrant, light-year upon light-year from Federation space. Two crews, led by Captain Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) and Maquis leader Chakotay (Robert Beltran), had to partner to make it back home.

This premise meant "Voyager" held the potential to be the most serialized "Trek" yet. For one, there was a driving goal to the series beyond "go where no one has gone before." Moving the setting away from Starfleet raised the stakes; the Voyager's crew was in a strange, new land with no allies at their beck and call. Not to mention all the potential character conflict from former enemies now working on the same ship towards a common goal. Little to none of this potential was realized.

Rick Berman oversaw "Voyager" alongside a revolving door of showrunners, including the aforementioned Piller and Braga. That turnover alone reflects a show struggling to carve out an identity and an environment non-conducive to creativity. Moore explained in "The Fifty-Year Mission: The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of Star Trek" (by Mark A. Altman and Edward Gross) that the studio barred the writers from experimenting with the "Trek" formula as "DS9" had. Since "TNG" had been more successful than "DS9," they wanted another "Star Trek" show in that vein, and so that's what "Voyager" became: "TNG" -lite.

Moore's month on Voyager

"Voyager" season 3 episode "Worst Case Scenario" features B'Elanna Torres (Roxann Dawson) discovering a holodeck recreation of a Maquis mutiny on Voyager. This episode can't help but feel like a tantalizing taste of the show "Voyager" could've been.

Moore detailed this problem in the aforementioned "Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History":

"When the Maquis put on those Starfleet uniforms at the end of the pilot, the show was dead... It should have been these two sides that were forced to work together that still don't like each other and still are gunning for each other, wondering who's going to come out on top. Who's going to betray who?

Needless to say, Moore didn't last long on "Voyager." He's often recounted his breaking point:

"I started asking questions about B'Elanna, who she is. I was saying, 'I'm having a little trouble watching episodes and getting a handle on her, and what she is about.' The response was, 'We don't have an idea. The past doesn't matter. Just do whatever you want.' What are you talking about? How can you give up on your own show? How do you give up on your characters?"

Moore's departed from "Voyager" in weeks with only 2 episode credits: "Survival Instinct" and "Barge of the Dead." Leaving "Voyager" ended his 10-year run as a writer on "Star Trek." It was not, however, the end of his career in science-fiction television.

Rebooting Battlestar

One of Moore's post "Trek" gigs was the comedy series "Good vs Evil." On that series, he met David Eick , who became his partner in rebooting "Battlestar Galactica" for the 21st century. The pair stripped down the series, removing the goofiness of the original while amping up the melodrama. The villainous Cylons were no longer boxy, monotone-voiced robots but instead artificial humans right out of "Blade Runner."  The original Cylons had been alien creations, but Moore and Eick's "BSG" revised their origin. As the opening narration of the reimagined "BSG" said, "the Cylons were created by man." This turned the conflict at the series' heart from humans vs invaders to parents vs children.

The new "BSG" was made in the shadow of 9/11; like all contemporary American pop culture, this shaped the series to its bones. The Cylons' destruction of the 12 colonies hit much closer to home for a 2000s audience than it had for viewers back in the 1970s. It helps that Moore and his writers weren't shy about getting political. For the episode "Litmus," they repurposed a classic "TNG" episode, "The Drumhead." In both episodes, an explosion aboard the ship prompts the formation of an independent tribunal. Justice descends into a witch hunt as the adjudicator goes power-mad. This premise found new resonance because the ink on the PATRIOT act was still wet when "Litmus" aired.

Deep Space Nine's Influence

"DS9" is often cited as the prototype for "BSG," even by Moore himself. In an interview with Empire, he said :

"Being on the writing staff of 'Deep Space Nine' had a huge impact on me and guided my thinking in a lot of ways. It taught me a lot about characters, about making characters more ambiguous. About having complicated moral choices for them, about telling a war story, about trying to tell a war story honestly. Some of them were negative lessons – 'Star Trek's' built in parameters prevented all of us from doing things at 'Deep Space' that we wanted, certain kinds of stories we wanted to tell and there were certain frustrations built into the experience that then became fuel to do it the way I wanted to do it. To tell stories the way we wanted to, to be bolder, to do things the audience wouldn't expect and to take more chances and not be afraid the audience would stop liking your characters if they did ugly things. A lot of those ideas were born out of the frustration of 'Deep Space'."

There's another unifying factor: religion, something Roddenberry was famously antipathetic towards. Braga summed up the "Trek" creator's views as , "On Roddenberry's future Earth, everyone is an atheist. And that world is the better for it." "DS9," on the other hand, focused on the alien faith of the Bajorans.  Thus, "DS9" became the first "Star Trek" series to explore religion in any depth. "BSG" followed this path, but made the  villains  the ones who carried faith; the reimagined Cylons are monotheists and they act only according to the will of their god. As Moore said , "[The Cylons] have aspects of Al Qaeda and they have aspects of the Catholic Church and they have aspects of America."

Battlestar vs Voyager

While Moore worked on "DS9" far longer than "Voyager," it's clear the latter series also had a sizable impact on how he shaped "BSG." On paper, the "Trek" series that "BSG" was closest to was "Voyager." Both shows starred a starship crew, alone against a hostile universe, embarking on a perilous journey towards Earth. The difference is that "BSG" was able to make the most of its premise.

"BSG" was unafraid to rock the boat or shift the status quo, in the process racking up a body count higher than any "Trek" series. There was a much greater sense of consequence on "BSG" than there ever was on "Trek." The opening episodes of "BSG" season 1, "33" and "Water," demonstrate this right off the bat. In the former, Lee "Apollo" Adama (Jamie Bamber) and Kara "Starbuck" Thrace ( Katee Sackhoff ) are forced to shoot down a civilian ship after it's believed to have been captured by Cylons. The latter centers on the Galactica's search for water, a precious resource in the dark heart of space.

Moore's specific complaint about "Voyager," the lack of character conflict and conflicting loyalties, was embraced in "BSG." At the end of the pilot mini-series, Sharon "Boomer" Valerii (Grace Park) is revealed as a Cylon sleeper agent. She spends season 1 wrestling with her true nature before the finale, "Kobol's Last Gleaming," ends with her shooting Commander William Adama (Edward James Olmos). "BSG" season 4 features an alliance between the humans and a rebel faction of Cylons, but it's far more factional than the Starfleet/Maquis team-up. It even leads to a mutiny on Galactica during two-parter "The Oath" and "Blood on the Scales." What "Voyager" relegated to its holodeck, "BSG" mined for all it was worth with palpable consequences.

A polarizing ending

Now, "BSG" isn't perfect.  According to the aforementioned Empire interview, Moore felt by the third season that "BSG" was approaching its end, but he and his team hadn't begun writing with an ending in mind. This led to some questionable twists in the latter half of the show. A running mystery in season 3 was the identity of the "Final Five" Cylons. The answers: Col. Saul Tigh (Michael Hogan), his wife Ellen (Kate Vernon), Galen Tyrol (Aaron Douglas), Samuel Anders (Michael Trucco) and Tory Foster (Rekha Sharma) felt like they'd been plucked from a hat.

The ending was especially polarizing. It turned out the series was actually set millennia in the  past ; the humans and rebel Cylons name the planet they settle on "Earth" in tribute to the destination they'd long been searching for. The series' final scene is the two angels who appeared as Cylon Number Six (Tricia Helfer) and Gaius Baltar (James Callis) in modern-day New York, contemplating if our civilization will repeat the cycle of machine rebelling against man. They walk off into the crowd as Jimi Hendrix's "All Along The Watchtower" plays.

However, even when the narrative of "BSG" veered off course, the characters and their actors stayed true. The scene in "Revelations" when Tigh confesses his Cylon nature to Adama, his best friend for 30 years, is some of the best work that either Olmos or Hogan put in on the show. If there's one positive lesson Moore learned from "Star Trek," it was that character comes first.

Battlestar Galactica

Battlestar Galactica ( BSG for short) was a science fiction franchise conceived by Glen A. Larson in the late-1960s. The basic premise concerned the annihilation of The Twelve Colonies of Humanity by the artificially intelligent robotic Cylon race. Led by Galactica , Humanity's last surviving capital warship, called a " battlestar " and under the command of Commander Adama , a " Rag Tag Refugee Fleet " carrying the last few remaining Humans, sets out to find the lost and mythical thirteenth colony of mankind, only known as " Earth ".

While the basic premise had little in common with that of Star Trek aside from being a space -based science fiction show, and with in-camera crossover references being few and far between in either, as franchises both shared similarities in their histories. Apart from this, there were many behind-the-scenes connections, which held especially true for Ronald D. Moore 's re-imagined version of the 2000s.

The two franchises, however, did share some commonalities in themes. Both BSG and Star Trek: The Original Series (TOS) had a heavy influence from American westerns, and the country's white pioneer heritage (particularly given Larson's Latter-day Saint aka Mormon background). Other similarities in the franchises include Humans being hunted by a ruthless cybernetic race, beings who are so highly evolved as to appear gods, Erich von Däniken -esque ancient astronaut themes, lost Human space colonies, the fraught relationship between a space military and civilian colonists, and a wandering crew à la Voyager . Star Trek writer Harlan Ellison was highly critical of Glen Larson calling him "Glen Larceny" for his alleged plagiarism. ("Glen A. Larson does Star Wars!": Empire Magazine , No. 261; [1] (X) )

As such, the original BSG series was broadcast in the gap between TOS and Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG), meaning there was no direct competition between the franchises on the small screen initially – Star Trek: The Animated Series (TAS) had also been cancelled a few years previously. After the cancellation of BSG, there was a major fan-based letter writing campaign, somewhat similar to that which occurred after the axing of TOS. Unlike TNG, however, BSG's first revival, Galactica 1980, was a failure.

• 1.1 Battlestar Galactica in Star Trek
• 1.2 Cast crossover appearances
• 1.3 Production staff crossovers
• 1.4 Reception and demise
• 1.5 Aftermath
• 2.1 Star Trek in Battlestar Galactica
• 2.2 Cast crossover appearances
• 2.3 Production staff crossovers
• 2.4 Reception
• 2.5 Aftermath
• 3 External links

Original Battlestar Galactica (1978-1980) [ ]

Original Battlestar Galactica series opening title and logo

Originally called Adam's Ark , Glen Larson had been working on the outline since 1968. When Larson landed one of his first professional jobs as a writer on the television series It Takes a Thief (1969-1970), he met former TOS writer and producer Gene L. Coon in Coon's first gainful employment as a television writer after he had left Star Trek . Coon was known for his tendency to act as a mentor for aspiring writers, and this he also did for Larson, helping him out to beef out and professionalize his story treatment, which Larson, grateful for "Coon's perception of science fiction", in the process renamed to Galactica . [2]

Coon's help notwithstanding, Larson was unable to sell his premise for the next decade, until the first Star Wars film premiered in 1977. The entire industry taken aback by the huge and completely unexpected runaway success of the film, Larson found Universal Studios suddenly interested in the property. Universal, actually, had something to set straight, as they were one of the studios that had turned down George Lucas, when he approached them with his Star Wars proposition in the mid-1970s. [3] Nor was Universal the only Hollywood studio caught unawares by Star Wars : Paramount Pictures , too, was taken aback, leading up to their spur-of-the-moment decision to upgrade their television series Star Trek: Phase II , which at that time – October 1977 – was in an advanced state of development, into the theatrical feature Star Trek: The Motion Picture , with all the repercussions it entailed. (See The Motion Picture: Production history . )

Renamed Battlestar Galactica on the insistence of the studio (in an obvious ploy to capitalize on the "star" in Star Wars ) and armed with an hitherto unheard of production budget of US$1 million per episode, Larson set to work on the two-part pilot episode of his series, " Saga of a Star World ", which was actually, again as a ploy to capitalize on the success of Star Wars , re-edited into the May/July 1978 theatrical feature Battlestar Galactica , becoming the de facto start of the franchise, before the main series , picked up by broadcaster ABC (one of the broadcasters to turn down the original Star Trek back in April 1964, only to turn down Star Trek yet again in the fall of 1986 when John S. Pike approached them with the pitch for The Next Generation ), started its television run on 17 September 1978.

Battlestar Galactica in Star Trek [ ]

While there had been few in-camera crossover references in either franchise, then and later, there were a couple from original BSG that made it as homages into the later Star Trek: Voyager incarnation, specifically in the season seven episode " Flesh and Blood ",

• Boray , an alien species, after the similarly named species in the episode " The Magnificent Warriors ". ( Star Trek Encyclopedia , 4th ed., vol. 1, p. 92)
• Ovion , an alien species, after the similarly named species in the pilot episode "Saga of a Star World". ( Star Trek Encyclopedia , 4th ed., vol. 2, p. 117)
• Tylium , a fuel substance also referenced in the later Voyager episode " Workforce ", after the similarly named fuel ore in the Galactica series. ( Star Trek Encyclopedia , 4th ed., vol. 2, p. 431)

Cast crossover appearances [ ]

Since Battlestar Galactica as a television series began a decade before Star Trek restarted its run in 1987 with Star Trek: The Next Generation , most of the then relatively young performers who appeared in both, appeared first in Galactica before making their Star Trek appearances. But there were several original Star Trek veterans as well though, most notably Kor performer John Colicos in an equally memorable role for original BSG, as well as John Hoyt and Paul Fix , the USS Enterprise ship doctors , before DeForest Kelley was cast in the role.

Worthy of mention was the noticeable guest star appearance of Lloyd Bridges in the two-part episode " The Living Legend " (re-edited into the little known 1979 theatrical feature Mission Galactica: The Cylon Attack ), playing the part of the strong but misguided Commander Cain , commanding the battlestar Pegasus , incorrectly presumed destroyed previously. In 1964 , Bridges had been one of the very first choices of Gene Roddenberry to play the lead in the pilot, " The Cage " for a proposed science fiction series . Bridges turned down the role, not wanting to be involved in another science fiction project following the failure of his 1950 film Rocketship X-M and feeling that doing a "space show" would hurt his career. [4] (X) [5] (X) Years later, Roddenberry still considered hiring Bridges, this time for the role of Gary Seven in the proposed series " Assignment: Earth ", and later in the backdoor pilot episode of the same title. However, Bridges again turned him down. ( These Are the Voyages: TOS Season Two ) A glimpse of what the Original Series ' first captain of the Enterprise might have looked and acted like, was therefore proffered when Bridges did concede to appear in a "space show" after all.

Production staff crossovers [ ]

The original incarnation was served by future Star Trek Visual Effects (VFX) Producer Dan Curry as matte painter , (Assistant) Director Winrich Kolbe , VFX Compositor David Stipes , [6] with production illustrators Andrew Probert and his mentor Ralph McQuarrie (commissioned previously in a similar role on the abandoned Star Trek: Planet of the Titans project) as concept designers.

Of critical importance to the production was famed former Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) co-founder and Star Wars visual effects (VFX) wizard John Dykstra (who also served as co-producer on BSG for the duration of his tenure, and who was brought aboard because of his Star Wars credentials in the first place) and his mostly uncredited staff, which included among others Don Trumbull , Steve Gawley (who was on loan from ILM due to slow business), and Grant McCune . During his tenure on the pilot and the subsequent three series episodes, Dykstra formed his Apogee, Inc. company and the effects he and his team produced were extensively reused as stock footage throughout the remainder of the original franchise. This was actually the exact same original intent for the effects produced by ILM for The Next Generation pilot episode " Encounter at Farpoint " a decade later. ( Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion , 3rd ed., p. 31) Dykstra's protégée Patricia Rose Duignan , who was featured in a 1978 behind-the-scenes video made on personal title by the VFX crew, albeit unidentified, [7] served alongside him as an uncredited production associate on BSG.

Directly after the February 1979 VFX debacle , he was offered a VFX commission on Star Trek: The Motion Picture by his former mentor Douglas Trumbull , son of the aforementioned Don Trumbull. Actually, Dykstra had already been approached earlier by Paul Rabwin as one of the VFX companies sought out after the upgrade decision in October 1977, while he was still working on his BSG commission (during which he had formed his company), and had already committed his company to a follow-up project, the 1980 film Altered States , so he had to decline on that occasion. Trumbull was faced with the gargantuan task of recreating all the VFX from scratch for the film at the eleventh hour, and suggested his former protégé in order to get a head-start on VFX production, as he needed time to revitalize Future General Corporation (FGC), his own near dismantled VFX company. At that particular time though, Dykstra had to decline again as he and his company was still working on Altered States . However, less than a month later, the project was taken away from the company and Dykstra, with no further work left in the pipeline, was able to offer the services of his company, along with most of his BSG staff, to a relieved Trumbull after all. ( Cinefex , issue 2, p. 51; Return to Tomorrow - The Filming of Star Trek: The Motion Picture , pp. 46-47, 372-374) Dykstra and his team subsequently provided signature contributions for the film. (See: The Motion Picture: Visual Effects ) The Galactica pilot episode had earned Dykstra a 1979 Emmy Award , shared with original Star Trek veteran Richard Edlund (one of only two known original Star Trek production staff to serve original BSG as well), both of whom having already shared an Academy Award for Star Wars , the year previously, with Dykstra having earned an additional one in a technical category to boot. Dykstra went on to become an Acadamy Award nominee for The Motion Picture as well one year later, making him a laureate of three major science fiction franchises in only as many years.

Two important, albeit also uncredited, members on Dykstra's BSG team were VFX cameramen Hoyt Yeatman and Dave Stewart . Both men were originally part of Trumbull's FGC company, but the latter was forced to let them go when work on the science fiction film Close Encounters of the Third Kind was completed in November 1977, whereupon both men joined Dykstra's team on BSG. However, both men were among the few that opted not to join Dykstra's newly-formed Apogee and stayed on at Universal after Apogee had left for the remainder of the series, and to subsequently start work on the pilot of Larson's follow-up project Buck Rogers in the 25th Century . Nonetheless, their skills were sorely needed for The Motion Picture , and Trumbull managed to re-hire both men back into FGC again after the February 1979 VFX debacle, around the same time Apogee was sub-contracted, and where they were made responsible for that film's studio model photography as eventually realized. ( Return to Tomorrow - The Filming of Star Trek: The Motion Picture , pp. 324-325) A third VFX cameraman concerned Don Dow , as identified in the same behind-the-scenes video Duignan was featured in. [8] Like Duignan, Dow did not join Trumbull's outfit, but opted to return to ILM, both yet to work on several later Star Trek films , starting with Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan .

Robert Bralver was the second known original Star Trek production staff veteran (continuing being so for Berman-era Star Trek as well) to serve original BSG as stunt coordinator. Like Bralver and Apogee, Inc., Probert too went on to work on The Motion Picture after the original Galactica film was completed, whereas Curry started his long Star Trek association with Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home , on that occasion joined by McQuarrie. Stipes joined Curry as VFX supervisor on the later seasons of The Next Generation and beyond, as did Kolbe as director.

Furthermore, the director of the pilot episode/theatrical feature, Richard Colla , later directed The Next Generation first season episode " The Last Outpost ", in which the Ferengi were introduced. Additionally, Art Director John E. Chilberg II and his subordinate, Set Decorator Mickey S. Michaels , shared an Emmy Award nomination for their work on the pilot episode. Chilberg later served as such on Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (his only theatrical feature film credit), whereas Michaels, as part of Herman Zimmerman 's staff, later worked as set decorator on Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country as well as on the first season of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine , likewise earning him an Emmy Award co-nomination for its pilot episode " Emissary ". Original BSG series' Sound Effects Editor Jim Alexander reprised his function as such later on for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan .

In the merchandise department, Nicholas Yermakov aka Simon Hawke , wrote the novelizations of the two-part episodes " The Living Legend " and " War of the Gods ", before he penned his three Star Trek novels in the 1990s. Richard J. Anobile adapted the original BSG theatrical feature into a fotonovel , Battlestar Galactica: The Photostory , published in May 1979, before he did the same for the first two Star Trek films, the first of which published one year later. Reference book author Shane Johnson has also written on both franchises, though his writings were in some cases, particularly where original BSG was concerned, limited to fan publications .

Reception and demise [ ]

While the 1978 theatrical feature was generally well received, earning eight industry award nominations of which it won two, including the one Dykstra and Edlund received, [9] critics quickly changed their minds once the regular series started airing. By and large their main criticism boiled down to their assessment that Battlestar Galactica was nothing more than a cheap copy of Star Wars , which, given the original intent of Universal, [10] was not entirely unfounded. Noted scientist, science fiction writer, Roddenberry friend, and unapologetic " trekkie " Isaac Asimov summarized all the criticism in one scathing September 1978 commentary, " Star Wars was fun and I enjoyed it. But Battlestar Galactica was Star Wars all over again and I couldn't enjoy it without amnesia, " thereby joining the ranks of critics like fellow science fiction author Harlan Ellison. [11] Star Wars production company 20th Century Fox saw it the same way and sued Universal for plagiarism the same year, ( Universal Studios vs. Battlestar Galactica , 2007, pp. 10, 171, ISBN 9780615170305 ) which was however immediately met with a counter-suit by Universal, accusing Fox of plagiarizing their 1930s Buck Rogers serials and their 1972 science fiction film Silent Running [12] – which was incidentally also served by Dykstra and his then-mentor Trumbull – and rightfully so, according to Susan Sackett , the long-serving personal assistant of Gene Roddenberry. Already in 1978, she had observed that " they're all ripping off Star Wars , which ripped off Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers to begin with ". ( Return to Tomorrow - The Filming of Star Trek: The Motion Picture , p. 41) Both suits petered out eventually, evidently "resolved without trial". [13] (X) Echoing these to-and-fro accusations of plagiarism were the later Deep Space Nine and Babylon 5 productions, though in these cases, both franchises refrained from actually starting legal proceedings.

Science fiction fans on the other hand, left wanting for more after Star Wars – which at the time was nowhere near the franchise juggernaut it later became – were of a decidedly different mind. Excepting the ubiquitous reruns of original Star Trek in syndication , no other science fiction show of its kind was aired at the time, and BSG managed to quickly acquire a substantial and loyal fan following of its own.

It were these fans who made the series a ratings success for ABC initially. However, ABC was forced to play fast and loose with time slots in response to competitors shifting time slots of then particularly popular television shows into the ones BSG originally held, causing ratings to fall as interpreted by ABC. ("Battlestar Show Blasting Nowhere at Light Speed", The Montreal Gazette , 27 March 1979; Wilmington Morning Star , 11 January 1979) For ABC executives it became the primary public reason to cancel the show near the end of the first season, though the high production costs were unofficially the actual major factor for the cancellation decision. ("Battlestar Galactica, Five others to be Cancelled Next Fall by ABC", The Toledo Blade , 24 April 1979) In more than one way this chain of events was very reminiscent of the way NBC came to its decision to cancel the original Star Trek series a decade earlier.

And like NBC before them, ABC saw itself unexpectedly confronted with a fierce fan backlash, complete with fans picketing the ABC offices and, worse still, the nation-wide publicized suicide of a young fan because of the cancellation, after he had written a letter to ABC to reconsider, to no avail. [14] [15] (X) Unlike their Star Trek counterparts however, the fans did not succeed to save the series for another season.

Series creator Glen Larson in the meantime was set to work on the other property he was concurrently contracted for, the remake of Universal's 1930s Buck Rogers serials, somewhat ironically picked up by former Star Trek broadcaster NBC. Following the same pattern set by BSG, to wit, pilot episodes re-edited into theatrical feature to start off the renewed franchise, the new series, called Buck Rogers in the 25th Century , started its television run later that year on 20 September 1979. Production-wise the series had the advantage of being able to use production assets already constructed for Galactica and it too was served by some Star Trek alumni, past and future, most notably Dan Curry who had moved over from Galactica . In visual style unsurprisingly very reminiscent of BSG, the series fared slightly better than its predecessor, running for two seasons, before it too was cancelled in 1981 for pretty much the same reasons as Galactica and original Star Trek had been.

However, while production for Buck Rogers was being geared up, ABC came to reconsider their cancellation decision of Galactica , due to the letter-writing campaign fans had embarked upon, in imitation of Bjo Trimble 's famous 1967/1968 "Save Star Trek " letter-writing campaign, which had caused NBC to buckle. Essentially doing the same, but in this case belated, ABC commissioned Universal to proceed with Galactica , but not before some of ABC's most pressing concerns, i.e. production costs, were addressed. Glen Larson, who now had to divide his time between two television productions, was set to work on its development, working in some elements envisioned for the never produced second season, and it was decided to proceed with a separate spin-off sequel series, taking place when Galactica had actually reached contemporary 1980s Earth. But more importantly, it was reasoned that it also afforded considerable cost savings as most of the action was Earthbound, if only for the fact that most Galactica production assets had already been re-purposed for Buck Rogers , enabling the studio to make use of its standing sets, whereas most of the original cast was shed and replaced by unknown, and therefore cheaper performers, with screen-time of the few that were retained limited to an absolute minimum. Furthermore, since outer space visuals was also kept to an absolute minimum, no new visual effects needed to be produced, as use was made of the library of stock footage, including some not previously used, produced for the original series.

Titled Galactica 1980 , the spin-off series premiered on 27 January 1980. It was not what fans expected and most definitely not what they had hoped for, because of the overuse of the by then already tired science fiction clichés, the mostly contemporary Earth-based settings, as well as its heavy emphasis on light family entertainment with children taking up an inordinate amount of quality time, and which actually had already started to cripple the later episodes of the main series on the ill-advised insistence of ABC, contributing to its fall in ratings – thus foreshadowing similar fan criticism of Wil Wheaton who played the part of the child prodigy Wesley Crusher , The Next Generation 's counterpart for BSG's Boxey . BSG's Story Editor Allan Cole recalled a testy remark an overworked and exasperated Glen Larson once made when ABC continued to pester him with their incessant demands of including more children on the show, " Okay, I'll give you kids crawling out of your ears! ", which he subsequently did. Right from the start, the series became almost overnight an unmitigated and costly ratings disaster, as the studio did not quite realize the savings it had hoped for either, and then some, as the per episode production costs actually surpassed that of the original series. [16] (X) After only ten episodes, with a nearly completed eleventh one not even allowed to be finished, the series was unceremoniously cancelled in May, effective immediately. In this at least, TOS had fared a little better, as it was allowed to finish up on its third season by NBC when it was definitively cancelled halfway trough its production, albeit shy of a full season by two episodes – much like the later fourth season of Star Trek: Enterprise was, when that series was cancelled halfway through its fourth season production.

ABC had not been the only broadcaster in their misguided belief that dumbing down a production would result in higher ratings and viewerships. A decade earlier, NBC too demanded less talk and more action – though not more children, if one is to disregard the " And the Children Shall Lead " episode – on top of severe budget slashes when it, after Trimble's letter campaign, reluctantly embarked upon the third season of TOS. It only resulted in that season becoming the least well-received by fans for decades. And when a relieved NBC finally managed to cancel the series in 1969 without much further ado during the season three run, there was no fan outcry this time around, barely even a whisper. ( Inside Star Trek: The Real Story , 1997, p. 409) The showrunner for that season, Fred Freiberger (who was put in charge over Roddenberry), was forced by networks to do something similar to later television shows, including the initially well-received British science fiction series Space 1999 – taken over by American producers after its first season – with very similar results, earning him the unenviable sobriquet "Series Killer".

NBC coincidentally, had been an industry partner of Universal since the 1950s, and the two companies formalized their longstanding relationship in May 2004 when they merged into what is currently the media conglomerate NBCUniversal .

Deeply disappointed with this incarnation of BSG, the fanbase as well as most of the associated production staff, including Larson himself, [17] (X) consider Galactica 1980 to this day as non- canon or " apocryphal ", and the series has never even been considered once for contemplation in later revival attempts. In effect, a very similar fate befell Star Trek: The Animated Series six years earlier, which became even disavowed by creator Roddenberry himself, before the franchise elevated the series to canon in 2006 for commercial reasons after Roddenberry had passed away. However, as had been the case with the TAS episode " Yesteryear ", there was one episode of Galactica 1980 that was favorably received by fans and production staff alike, the series' finale " The Return of Starbuck ". In that episode original Starbuck performer Dirk Benedict reprised his role as a guest star, befriending a Cylon after both had crashed on a deserted planet, the only episode with a more or less mature theme, later explored in more depth in the small and unnoticed, yet acclaimed 1985 film Enemy Mine , itself essentially the science-fiction remake of the 1968 World War II film Hell in the Pacific (featuring Toshiro Mifune ). A such, fans consider only this Galactica 1980 episode as being semi-canon, much like their Star Trek counterparts do "Yesteryear". ( Star Trek: The Animated Series : "Yesteryear" – text commentary ) Incidentally, the 2003 season two Enterprise episode " Dawn " is in itself essentially a remake of Enemy Mine , down to the near identical reptilian adversary Trip Tucker eventually befriended.

Following the cancellation of Galactica 1980 , ABC commissioned Universal to re-edit the multi-part episodes of both Galactica series into twelve television films, which it repeatedly aired in the early 1980s in order to recoup some of the production costs. [18] Of these, Mission Galactica: The Cylon Attack , cobbled together from the action-packed episodes "The Living Legend" (Part I and II), "Fire in Space", and "The Hand of God", directly after the main series had wrapped, was not only the first, but also the most notable one, as it has seen a limited 1979 theatrical release outside the USA a few months before Star Trek: The Motion Picture premiered. Unlike Star Trek in syndication however, this ploy failed to rekindle interest in the Galactica franchise.

Still, while considered " camp " by modern audiences, the original series – as does Larson's Buck Rogers for that matter – retains to this day a relatively small, yet loyal, fanbase, both having attained a cult status in the process. Both these series are regularly re-issued on home video formats as complete collection editions, including on Blu-ray Discs , these brought forth by the success of re-imagined BSG. Unsurprisingly, Galactica 1980 is rarely re-issued and left out of the main series collection releases, though it has itself seen an one-time-only 2007 bare-bone (meaning no special features included) DVD release as the most recent one.

Aftermath [ ]

The perceived dismal performance of original BSG, combined with an all-time low interest for televised science fiction in the 1980s, and the near-similar per episode price-tag attached to it, were almost certainly the reasons for ABC to decline the new Star Trek: The Next Generation pitch, when Paramount Television CEO John Pike approached the studio six years later in 1986 in search for an outlet for the new show. ( William Shatner Presents: Chaos on the Bridge ) Yet it was precisely The Next Generation that proved conclusively that a considerable science fiction television audience was still out there when it soared in popularity around the turn of the decade, spawning two successful spin-off series of its own, Deep Space Nine and Voyager , in 1992 and 1994 respectively, and being joined on television in 1993 by a new, equally successful science fiction franchise, Babylon 5 . It is therefore not too much a stretch of the imagination to argue that The Next Generation heralded a new era of televised science fiction, as well as paving the way for re-imagined BSG.

Nonetheless, it took some time for minds to ripen to even consider revisiting BSG. First and foremost there was original BSG performer Richard Hatch , who had played the original Captain Apollo , one of the main characters in the original series. Though he had declined to reprise his role in Galactica 1980 , having been skeptical of the premise of that series, he remained a staunch and vocal believer and supporter of the original series throughout the 1980s and 1990s. A frequent convention attendee, writer of several BSG tie-in books and novels, and founder of the battlestargalactica.com website, Hatch tried hard to keep the original series in the awareness of the public and studio. His efforts to get BSG back on the screen culminated in 1998 in the four minute, proof-of-concept, trailer Battlestar Galactica: The Second Coming , which he co-wrote/produced/starred in/directed, and, coming in at a cost-price of US$20,000, paid for by himself. [19] Intended as a sequel to the original series, discounting Galactica 1980 , it was received to great fan acclaim when shown at conventions. Featuring brand new CGI visual effects, Hatch also managed to enlist the help of several former BSG performers, including Star Trek performer Richard Lynch , who thereby gained the distinction of becoming one of only two performers to appear in all three original BSG live-action incarnations – the other one being original Colonel Tigh performer Terry Carter. Despite the fan acclaim though, and much to Hatch's frustration, the trailer failed to get the attention of Universal. Hatch himself though, was yet to make a significant contribution to the live-action franchise later on.

In hindsight, and unbeknownst to Hatch at the time, there was actually a reason for this. It turned out that Universal had let the BSG film rights slip back to creator Larson, who subsequently was in the midst of developing his own BSG sequel film called Battlestar Atlantis (in which Commander Cain and his battlestar Pegasus was slated to make a re-appearance) at the same time Hatch was busy with his. A simple trailer, only featuring graphics, was presented before Hatch's more professional one, but like Hatch's, Larson's proposal failed to gain traction as well. The reason for this in both cases was that Universal was still licking its wounds after the costly failure of their own ill-fated 1993-1996 The Next Generation emulation attempt, seaQuest DSV – incidentally also served by some Star Trek alumni, past and future. ( A Vision of the Future - Star Trek: Voyager , p. 54)

After Universal had regained the BSG rights, it contracted Star Trek performer and X-Men director Bryan Singer and Producer Tom DeSanto in January 2001 to develop a new BSG sequel series for their and, most ironically, Fox's television divisions, again discounting Galactica 1980 . Announced on 22 February 2001, [20] Singer stated at the time, " [T]he Galactica brand is a sleeping giant. It was a show I watched during its initial run, from the pilot to the final episode. The essence and the brand name is quite potent in a climate where there's a great deficit of sci-fi programming. " [21] The development, however, was thwarted by the 9/11 terror attacks, and by the time the project could be taken up again, Fox had dropped out, Singer was forced to decline further participation as he was committed to direct the second X-men film, and Universal itself had already decided to go with the different concept of David Eick and Ronald D. Moore. Singer, incidentally, shortly thereafter conceived Star Trek: Federation , a spin-off proposal that was not developed either.

All these revival attempts were very reminiscent of the struggle Gene Roddenberry and others had to go through to get Star Trek back on the screen in the 1970s. (See: The Motion Picture: Production history )

Re-imagined Battlestar Galactica (2003-2012) [ ]

Revamped logo

Prior revival attempts having come to naught and prompted on again by industry competitors to revisit its old science fiction property, it was only after the dismal failure of seaQuest DSV and the 9/11 Attacks that Universal Studios decided in 2002 to start anew with a remake instead of a sequel as previously proposed. Despite being industry distribution partners , Universal had by then become one of the Hollywood studios that became increasingly envious of Paramount Pictures for its Star Trek franchise due to the property's stable and highly profitable revenue stream for that studio, particularly in the early-to-mid 1990s when Star Trek was at its peak in popularity, being Paramount's most profitable property for a period of time, admitted as such by them. Universal desperately wanted something of their own like Star Trek as well, and that had been the primary reason for the ill-fated seaQuest DSV project in the first place. ( A Vision of the Future - Star Trek: Voyager , pp. 50-51, 54)

In service of that goal, Universal appointed Producer David Eick for its development as showrunner. Eick immediately sought out former Star Trek Writer/Producer Ronald D. Moore – who had been responsible for many of Star Trek 's most popular episodes in the Berman-era, just like his predecessor Gene Coon had been on original Star Trek – to serve alongside him as an equal. Eick reasoned that if anyone had a thorough understanding of what made a mature, modern science fiction show tick, it must have been Moore; seaQuest DSV had failed precisely because it did not tick.

The franchise was successfully relaunched as an original production on Sci-Fi Channel (which continued to be the broadcaster for the subsequent remainder of the revamped franchise) with the 8-9 December 2003 two-part miniseries Battlestar Galactica , subtitled " Night, Part 1 " and " Night, Part 2 ". Sci-Fi Channel itself was in effect launched on 24 September 1992 by USA Networks, a 50/50 joint venture of Universal Studios and Paramount Pictures, and had aired the original and animated Star Trek series, but was sold off by them in 1997. Gene Roddenberry and original BSG critic Isaac Asimov had actually served on the initial advisory board of the broadcaster, but neither had lived long enough to see its launch. [22] Universal though, repurchased the broadcaster as sole owner in 2002, in anticipation of the new BSG show they had in development, which was testament to their commitment to the project.

The series was well received by both fans and critics, earning eight industry award nominations of which it won two – purely by coincidence the exact same numbers the 1978 original had – enticing the studio and broadcaster to continue with the production. Essentially one itself, the miniseries has, like Star Trek , seen several spin-off live-action productions. The first was the 2004-2009 four-season main series (into which the miniseries was incorporated as the re-edited pilot episode). Then came four smaller webisodes series (delving deeper into the background of events referenced to in the main series), of which two ( Razor and Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome , in 2007 and 2012 respectively, the latter becoming the last live-action outing in the re-imagined franchise) were re-edited into feature length television movies. They were joined by a specifically-made third one ( The Plan , 2009), and eventually a spin-off prequel series Caprica (2010). Coined "Re-imagined BSG", the renewed franchise became also frequently referred to as "Rebooted BSG" or "Revamped BSG", akin to the later alternate reality Star Trek films as produced by J.J. Abrams .

Like Roddenberry before him on The Next Generation , the new BSG showrunners were legally obligated to bring in creator Glen Larson in an official capacity on the revamped show because of his "created by" credit. Given the official "Consulting Producer" title, Larson, however, unlike Roddenberry on The Next Generation , largely left the showrunners to their own devices, though he was consulted by them, asked for his input, and generally kept in the loop. This was in stark contrast to Roddenberry when he was given a similar title – but no function – for the five subsequent Star Trek films following The Motion Picture .

The looks and settings modernized, and using imaginative cinematography for the space action scenes – a variation thereof also introduced in later live-action Star Trek , starting with the 2009 alternate reality movie Star Trek – the miniseries largely followed the story-line of the 1978 original pilot episode/feature film, but the subsequent spin-offs, starting with the main series, differed substantially in story thematics from the more straightforward, superficial, somewhat "campy" – typical for television action shows of the 1970s-1980s era – and action driven ones of its progenitor. "Taking the series seriously" and incorporating lessons learned from 1990s television, the showrunners crafted episodes with more depth in which television audiences could see their own lives and the contemporary social issues they had to contend with reflected realistically in the lives and events of the series' characters in a mature manner. ( The 2000's , S01E01: "The Platinum Age of Television, Part Two") In this the showrunners followed in the footsteps of Moore's great example Gene Roddenberry, who had already intended something similar for both his Original and The Next Generation series. In order to focus on the Human condition and Human drama, the re-imagined franchise, contrary to the original one, featured no aliens whatsoever.

Even the original alien Cylon race – having been for BSG what the Borg race was for Star Trek – were re-imagined as being Human-created , and who had risen up against their makers, reflecting the growing ethical concerns in contemporary society about artificial intelligence as voiced by such luminaries as Bill Gates , Stephen Hawking , and Elon Musk . [23] [24] Not only constructed as lifelike Humans (actually already foreshadowed in the unsuccessful Galactica 1980 series, where a Human-like Cylon was introduced in the two-part episode " The Night the Cylons Landed "), the newest, cybernetic / cyborg hybrid models were also burdened with Human emotions, doubts, and fallacies they had inherited from their creators, leading eventually up to a Cylon civil war. The particular theme of a robotic intelligence rising up against its creators only to go to war with itself had actually already been explored in the prior Voyager season two episode " Prototype ", whereas the internal conflict had an additional counterpart in Star Trek in the form of the Unimatrix Zero Borg resistance , established in later Voyager episodes. In the even earlier TNG season two episode " The Measure Of A Man ", the difficult ethical question was postulated of whether or not an artificial, yet sentient, lifeform remains the property of its creator, to be exploited at will by said creator. This in re-imagined BSG was in effect the very reason for the uprising of the Cylons against their makers, further explored in the prequel spin-off series Caprica , which dealt with the origin of the sentient Cylons – as indeed it became more explicitly in the later season two "Identity" two-part episode of the TNG-inspired science fiction series The Orville from Seth MacFarlane . These two Star Trek episodes therefore, foreshadowed in themselves the advent of re-imagined BSG.

The theme of the fraught relations between artificial lifeforms and their creators, went on to play a major part in season one of the 2020 series Star Trek: Picard , especially in regard to the destruction of Mars by rogue synths , which is very reminiscent of the Cylon surprise attack which set off both incarnations of BSG – including the hacking of defense nets by the attackers in both Picard and reimagined BSG.

There were until 2009, however, two major differences with Roddenberry's enlightened atheistic (Human) universe; first, the basic premise itself made BSG by default a far more darker and grittier universe, especially after the franchise was rebooted, with its thinly veiled references to among others, the 9/11 attacks, the Iraq War, and terrorism. Secondly, religion played a major part in re-imagined BSG, particularly in Caprica , in which religious intolerance and fanaticism served as social commentary on contemporary real world growing religious intolerance. Creator Larson had actually already incorporated subtle references to the Mormon faith, to which he belonged, in his original incarnation. [25] These references, however, were lost on non-believing viewers of the superficial, action-driven original series. While Star Trek 's universe has remained largely atheistic, it did become grittier and darker after 2009, first under the reign of J.J. Abrams for the alternate reality films, and subsequently and more prominently under that of Alex Kurtzman and his associates for the CBS All Access -era television series.

Star Trek in Battlestar Galactica [ ]

USS Enterprise joining the "Rag Tag Refugee Fleet" in the upper right, proceeded by the Astral Queen two places up front, with the Gemenon Liner in the lower right corner

In the miniseries, one of the "Rag Tag Refugee Fleet" ships had the call sign " Gemenon Liner 1701 ". The colonial fleet also included a ship named Astral Queen , a reference to the ship of the same name in TOS : " The Conscience of the King ". A Constitution -class starship is briefly visible in one shot of the colonial fleet in the miniseries. The footage is subsequently recycled in the first season opening credits, as well as selected stock footage in several episodes themselves. [26] [27] It was later revealed that former Foundation Imaging digital artist Lee Stringer , a Star Trek: Voyager veteran, had been responsible for the latter insertion. ( Battlestar Galactica: Designing Spaceships , p. 173, ISBN 1858758009 )

Moore has revealed that the first name of the " Kara "Starbuck" Thrace " character, one of the main protagonists from the revamped Battlestar Galactica , was inspired by Deep Space Nine 's Kira Nerys , played by Nana Visitor . [28] Incidentally, for Moore's Galactica , the "Starbuck" part was recast as female from the original male character and played by Katee Sackhoff , which, however, was initially met with disdain by its original performer Dirk Benedict. [29] (X)

In the episode " The Ties That Bind " (S04E05), Colonel Tigh, Chief Tyrol, and Tory Foster meet in weapons locker " 1701D ", like the " Gemenon Traveler 1701" a reference to BSG show-runner Moore's previous Star Trek work, The Next Generation in particular.

In the Caprica spin-off series finale, " Apotheosis " (S01E19), right before landing Daniel Graystone's personal airplane can be seen flying past a large building featuring a banner which (apart from a new color scheme) is identical to a banner previously seen in the conference hall for the IME conference on Dekendi III in ENT : " Stigma ". The large overlap in VFX crew between the two series had more than likely something to do with this.

Contrary to the original incarnation, the re-imagined franchise started its television run at the tailend of Berman-era Star Trek , and all performers who appeared in both had already made their Star Trek appearances. However, for two Star Trek performers of the later Kurtzman-era , Rekha Sharma and James Callis , it was the other way around.

The revamped version's principal star Edward James Olmos 's Hollywood Walk of Fame star is right next to that of Patrick Stewart . Amusingly, and like Lloyd Bridges had been previously in a similar case, Olmos had been invited to audition for the part of Jean-Luc Picard before Stewart was ultimately signed for the role. [30] Olmos has been on record of being skeptical of the science fiction genre, particularly for its portrayal of aliens (and therefore declining the audition invitation), yet in 1983 he was already seriously considered for a role in The Search for Spock , ironically for the part of the Klingon Kruge , at the express wish of Director Leonard Nimoy . Olmos only accepted his BSG role as Commander William Adama – played by Bonanza star Lorne Greene in the original franchise – when it became apparent to him that the series was to be primarily drama-driven and not to feature any "outlandish" life forms. ( Battlestar Galactica: The Complete Series Blu-ray Disc -special features, "Cast And Crew Take A Look Back", "The Last Frakkin Special")

Noteworthy was that Bridges' original part as Commander Cain had also been recast as a female for the new version with Michelle Forbes now playing the strong, but equally misguided Admiral Helena Cain .

Playing the part of a cancer patient in the season four episode " Faith ", Nana Visitor was brought aboard on the express wish of writers David Weddle and Bradley Thompson , like Moore, former Deep Space Nine production staff. According to Thompson, Visitor was the first person Weddle thought of after reading the script. According to Weddle, Moore attempted to cast Visitor in the previous season and jumped at the opportunity to cast her in this episode. " We have always thought she is a tremendous actress with great range, " Weddle said. " We thought she could deliver an amazing performance in this particular role. She did not disappoint us. " [31] Cast as Kira Nerys, Visitor was actually the replacement for Michelle Forbes, who had declined to reprise her The Next Generation alter ego role as the primary Bajoran character on the new Deep Space Nine show.

Roger Cross was slated to play the role of Tomas Vergis in Caprica and had actually already played the role in several deleted scenes of the pilot episode before the role was recast in subsequent episodes with John Pyper-Ferguson for unknown reasons.

Star Trek regular Dwight Schultz did not appear in any of the live action productions, but did voice a character in the November 2003 Battlestar Galactica roleplaying video game , set in the original universe and released one month before re-imagined BSG premiered. Original BSG actor Dirk Benedict also reprised his original Starbuck character as voice actor; Schultz was co-starring alongside regulars Benedict and Lance LeGault in the popular 1980s series The A-Team . Likewise, frequent Berman-era Star Trek guest star James Horan lent his voice talents to the game as an older Adama, as did Malia performer Kristanna S. Loken for two parts.

That subtle references to Star Trek were on occasion sneaked into the Battlestar Galactica franchise should not come as a surprise as Moore was an unadulterated "trekkie" himself, having brought in his former Deep Space Nine co-workers David Weddle and Bradley Thompson as writers/producers to form the nucleus of his creative writing staff on Galactica , joined by Jacques Gravett and Michael O'Halloran as film editors. Jane Espenson , who eventually became showrunner on Caprica (alongside Moore and Eick) and Michael Taylor joined from season three onward. After Star Trek: Enterprise had wrapped these staff were shortly joined by longtime Star Trek director Allan Kroeker , who directed two episodes for Moore's Galactica , as did former Voyager regular cast member Roxann Dawson , who directed one episode of Caprica . Dawson's husband Eric already served as casting director for both series of re-imagined BSG. Duras performer Patrick Massett joined Moore's team on Caprica as writer/producer. Moore himself incidentally, made a cameo appearance at the end of the 2004 series finale " Daybreak, Part III ". Moore additionally brought along Maril Davis as his personal production associate, and who was quickly becoming for Moore what Susan Sacket had been for Gene Roddenberry. [32]

Weddle and Thompson incidentally, were actually already acquainted with the original show around 1978/79 when both were attending, " (...) an acting class and we discovered we were both at USC School of Cinema . It was the same acting class that Richard Hatch frequented. Richard was doing the original Battlestar Galactica at that time, and everybody in class was in awe -- he was a WORKING ACTOR! And all the class ladies would go to parties and watch him when the show came on. Of course, while they were adoring him, they were ignoring me, so I didn't like the show very much. But they would have ignored me anyway, so I guess I wasn't giving the show a fair shake. " Still, in 2002 both men overcame their adolescent bias towards the franchise when they attended a re-imagined mini-series screening as a courtesy to their former Deep Space Nine co-worker Moore upon his invitation. Fully expecting a mere campy a-dime-a-dozen 1970s show remake, they admitted to be blown away by Moore's vision and jumped at the opportunity presented to them to work on the re-imagined show. Thompson later confessed that it was "the best job I ever had". [33] As it so happened, the by Thompson initially much envied Hatch became in Moore's version a featured recurring character.

Nor were Moore and his writing staff the only production staff on the franchise with a strong Star Trek pedigree, not by a long shot. The VFX department in particular was heavily manned with many former Star Trek production staff. First and foremost there was Gary Hutzel who served as VFX supervisor, just like he had on Star Trek , but now serving right from the start in 2003 as the most senior VFX staff, becoming Moore's right hand as far as the VFX were concerned, serving even longer than Moore had, as the latter left before the franchise finished its run in 2012. After Star Trek prime temporarily ceased its existence in 2005 with the demise of Enterprise , the VFX department was, after the first season of the 2004 series, substantially strengthened with additional "refugees" from the Star Trek franchise, Doug Drexler and David Takemura the most senior ones, both personally recruited by Hutzel upon the cancellation of Enterprise and now serving as his right hands. ( Battlestar Galactica: Designing Spaceships , pp. 183-184) Already staffed with several ex-Foundation Imaging employees and Star Trek veterans such as Jose Perez and his already mentioned former Foundation colleague Lee Stringer [34] who were among the very first digital artists to work on the revamped show, Zoic Studios (where Mark Stetson became a senior VFX staff member from 2010 onward, though he did not work on the final, 2012 BSG installment), the VFX house for Battlestar Galactica , became inundated with digital artist, who had moved over from Eden FX , the last VFX house to serve Star Trek prime in the Berman-era. A far from exhaustive catalog of former Star Trek VFX staff employed at Zoic, included such artists as Robert Bonchune , Pierre Drolet , [35] [36] Adam Lebowitz , Gabriel Koerner , and Dave Morton , to name but a few. Like they had done for Star Trek , these staff helped the Battlestar Galactica franchise to its slew of VFX Emmy Award wins and nominations. A Zoic Studios addition had been Digital Artist Fabio Passaro , a prolific prior and later Star Trek (non live-action) franchise contributor. [37] Several of these VFX staff have appeared in the various special features on the DVD/Blu-ray home video releases, discussing their work on re-imagined BSG.

In the merchandise department, an official " Map of the Twelve Colonies " was released by Quantum Mechanix in 2011 , drawn by Star Trek: Star Charts creator Geoffrey Mandel . Four systems are depicted, in a 2×2 grid, designated Helios Alpha through Delta. The four maps are ordered on the chart following the same unusual pattern as the four quadrants of the Star Trek galaxy (i.e. clockwise from top left: Gamma, Delta, Beta, Alpha). Frequent Star Trek novelist Peter David has written one tie-in for the BSG franchise as well, Sagittarius Is Bleeding , while the main series was being aired. Author Paul Ruditis has written reference books for both franchises.

Re-imagined BSG production staff Mark Verheiden (Producer/Writer), Anne Cofell Saunders (Writer) and Michael Rymer (Director/Writer) have Star Trek universe characters named after them, when novelist David Mack introduced Agents Verheiden and Cofell, as well as Captain Rymer respectively in his 2007 novel Reap the Whirlwind , the third outing in the Star Trek: Vanguard series, the covers of which incidentally, created by Doug Drexler during his tenure on BSG . Cofell Saunders incidentally, went on to become officially part of Kurtzman-era Star Trek , starting in 2020 when she joined season three of Star Trek: Discovery as co-executive producer/writer.

Reception [ ]

The favorable reception by fans and critics alike of the 2003 miniseries, was continued with its follow-up; The main series, including the television movie Razor and The Face of the Enemy webisode series, added no less than eighty-six industry award nominations to the ones already received for the miniseries, of which it won thirty-three in the timespan 2005-2009, besides numerous other media honors. Caprica added another seven nominations to the array, but this time only winning one of them. Remarkable was, despite the emphasis on the Human conditions for which the primary cast was acclaimed in the media, that none of them received an Emmy Award in the "Actor" categories, or were even nominated as such. This re-imagined BSG had in common with Star Trek – though for the latter Leonard Nimoy had become the only actor ever to be nominated for one, and that cast member of both franchises did receive other awards in the "Actor" categories, the Saturn Awards in particular.

Nonetheless, a rift started to appear between fans and critics after the main series had concluded its run 2009. The movie The Plan , produced back-to-back with the main series was received with mixed feelings by fans, feeling it failed to deliver on explaining what the titular "plan" of the Cylons, mysteriously referred to in all the title cards of the main series, exactly entailed. Even more sceptical were fans of the prequel series Caprica . Even though showrunner Ron Moore took care not to include the Battlestar Galactica moniker in front of the series title – just like the showrunners had done for the first three seasons of Enterprise before him – in order to differentiate the series from the main one, and that critics were by and large favorable in their assessment of the series, precisely for its focus on the Human condition, the majority of fans themselves were of a different mind – even though the series retained a small loyal fanbase of its own. Deeming the series, that featured virtually no space bound scenes, too far off the beaten track, viewership dropped from a high of 1.6 million viewers to less than 900,000 halfway through the series with rating droppings to match. In comparison, the main series started out with 3.1 million viewers. [38] But unlike their Star Trek counterparts had been with Enterprise and Star Trek Nemesis ( see below ), disenchanted BSG fans were not nearly as vehement or vocal in their disapproval, they simply tuned out or did not even to bother to tune in at all. Shy of five episodes, Sci-Fi – by then renamed to SyFy Channel – cancelled the series before all episodes were even aired, though they were included on the later home video releases. In this re-imagined BSG resembled Babylon 5 , the fierce Star Trek franchise competitor which had just finished its television run shortly before re-imagined BSG started its; Once the primary narrative had been told in both franchises' respective main series, fan interest started to wane sharply for the spin-off productions.

The by fans far better received movie Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome , drawing in 1.2 million viewers when it was first aired by SyFy channel on 10 February 2013 and placed as a bridging narrative between Caprica and the main series, turned out to be the final coda for the re-imagined live-action franchise. Moore had by then already left, though many of his former co-workers on the franchise, including those with the Star Trek pedigree, stayed on for the coda. It was partner David Eick who headed that very last forray into the franchise. And in this re-imagined BSG resembled Enterprise ; Facing dropping ratings and viewership, its last season saw a revival once other showrunners had taken over, though it did not save Star Trek prime from indefinite termination either for the time being.

Despite the critical acclaim, there were die-hard fans of the classic series, who denounced the re-imagined series right from the start, increasingly referring to the re-imagined franchise by the acronym "GINO" – Galactica In Name Only [39] (X) – and these fans were subsequently joined by others critical of the later BSG spin-off productions, Caprica in particular. It was precisely for this reason that Richard Hatch, the original Captain Apollo performer, was offered, and had accepted, a recurrent role – albeit cast as a different character, the terrorist turned politician Tom Zarek , a nod to the Irish IRA organization – on the revamped 2004 series in an effort to appease both sides of the fanbase by showing that he, the vocal defender of the original incarnation, endorsed and validated the re-imagined series, thereby gaining the distinction of becoming the only performer to appear in both BSG incarnations. ( Battlestar Galactica: The Complete Series Blu-ray-special feature, "The Last Frakkin Special") In this, it has resembled the fan criticism that befell The Next Generation prior to, and during its first season, and the subsequent appearance on the show by Leonard Nimoy, in his case reprising his original role as Spock and having already done pretty much the same for TNG what Hatch would later do for re-imagined BSG. ( TNG Season 5 DVD -special feature, "Mission Overview Year Five") And like in The Next Generation and beyond, more and more references to the original BSG, including the appearances of classic Cylon models and ships, were incorporated in re-imagined BSG too as production progressed, not only to appease the classic fanbase, but also because many production staffers were fans of the original as well, as was the case in Berman-era Star Trek , including Moore, Bonchune, Hutzel, and Drexler themselves.

Moore himself reacted to this criticism with humor when he made a cameo appearance in the "A Space Oddity" episode of the crime series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (S09E20, 2009) – incidentally co-written by his former Next Generation writing colleague Naren Shankar ; the subplot in that episode involved a young director/producer remaking an old science fiction series with a brand new concept, angering fans with Moore, as a convention attendee, being the first person to speak out in order to denounce the remake.

Incidentally, Richard Hatch himself became tied to the Star Trek universe as he was pegged by his friend Alec Peters to appear as the Klingon Kharn in the latter's fan film Star Trek: Axanar , having actually already appeared as such in the 2014 introductory twenty-minute teaser featurette to the film, Prelude to Axanar . However, Hatch's death in February 2017 precluded any further contribution to the Star Trek universe. [40]

The first season of the main series started its first-time run in January 2005 and overlapped that of Enterprise 's last, the only time both franchises did so in their histories. Received to great acclaim, re-imagined BSG soundly beat Star Trek in all ratings categories. [41] Prime universe Star Trek was at that time actually in deep trouble. Both Enterprise and the 2002 movie Nemesis were poorly received by the fanbase, because of perceived continuity and canon violations and the overall disappointment with story premises, which were considered weak and in violation of what they deemed " Roddenberry canon ". In countless contemporary internet blogs the more vocal fans vehemently voiced their displeasure, with the more fanatical ones even going as far as to organize an on-line petition to have Star Trek showrunners Rick Berman and Brannon Braga , both Ron Moore's former colleagues on Star Trek , removed from control. (See Demise of "The Franchise" in the prime universe ) It was now that the success of Moore's Galactica came into play.

Even though franchise management had already decided to terminate Star Trek prime for internal studio reasons, both cast and the production staff of Enterprise had not been informed of this yet and were being kept in the dark – even though they had their suspicions. When they were eventually formally informed, CBS Corporation management, headed by Les Moonves , used their former colleague's ratings successes against them as the in-house justification for the cancellation decision which was ordained by Moonves in person. However, Larry Nemecek has – after he had taken a closer look at the ratings and citing the changing television landscape of the early 2000s – noted,

"Here's the dirty little secret about Enterprise : It's the only year that Enterprise overlapped with Ron Moore's Battlestar Galactica , which we all know now was a breakout hit. It was great for Ron, it was great for that fandom. He reinvented an old show. Tons of new fans. They loved the darker, grittier storytelling. It's a very post-9/11 mood, broke out of the box. But Galactica was on Syfy, So even though you have UPN-slash-CW, which was a broken, crippled, little network here, which was like a cable net, not reaching 80 percent of the country, and Syfy is on cable. Syfy is a smaller pond, but it gets all the buzz, it gets all the attention. "Oh, my God, this huge breakout show. Why can't the Star Trek s do what Galactica is doing?" Well, the little secret is by the time you actually compare numbers to numbers, that last year of Enterprise overlapping with the first year of Galactica , when it was a breakout hit, Enterprise was still pulling in a million more viewers a week than Galactica . So you talk about franchise fatigue, you talk about poor, little shriveled-up Enterprise and the Star Trek franchise, and fans are deserting it in droves. Galactica was a huge, great breakout show. But it still didn't have the numbers that, uh..., the one year they had head-to-head competition-- Not to make it a competition between Ron and his former Star Trek franchise, but just seeing what people were watching, the numbers for Enterprise were still above what the "hit" Syfy show of the year was." ( Before Her Time: Decommissioning Enterprise , Part 3: "Final Approach")

Unwittingly and unintended, it was one of the very few times, if not the only one, that the one franchise directly influenced the other in a negative manner, even though it was not even the root cause, as implied by Nemecek. Worse still, an increasing number of Star Trek fans started to tune in on re-imagined BSG, and used the series as a prime example of how a proper science fiction show should be made, equally voiced vocally on countless internet blogs at the time as well. For a short period in time BSG eclipsed Star Trek in popularity, until the advent of the first 2009 alternate reality film, that premiered in the same year that the re-imagined BSG main series was concluded, and which managed to largely rekindle "Trekdom".

In contrast to the original incarnation, and the somewhat lackluster reception of The Plan and Caprica notwithstanding, Universal Studios was pleased with re-imagined BSG and entered into negotiations with creator Larson for a remake of the original 1978 theatrical feature in February 2009, one month before the re-imagined main series ended its run on 20 March. ("Universal in talks for 'Battlestar' movie", The Hollywood Reporter , 20 February 2009) Essentially slated to become a third live-action incarnation of the BSG franchise, Bryan Singer was for a second time contracted as director/co-producer in August 2009 for the project ("Bryan Singer to direct 'Battlestar' film", The Hollywood Reporter , 13 August 2009), who subsequently commented after a 12 August 2012 script rewrite, " It will exist, I think, quite well between the Glen Larson and Ron Moore universes. " [42] However, development was slow and Singer had to again leave the project due to other motion picture obligations. The project appears to be still in the development stage, as Universal has appointed a new team of producers, writers and director in 2016. [43] (X) [44] Creator Glen Larson was by that time no longer involved either because of his death in 2014.

Less well fared NBCUniversal's broadcaster SyFy Channel after re-imagined BSG had finished its run. As the first of its "SyFy Original Series", the broadcaster seemed to have been taken off-guard by its huge success, and failed to deliver afterwards in the public eye, causing the broadcaster to slip considerably in ratings for an extended period of time. It took the network over six years of arduous restructuring and formula rethinking in order to slowly finds its way up again. [45] Ironically, SyFy had in 2007 acquired the after-the-fact rights to Enterprise , which began airing on 8 January 2007 in its first US syndicated rerun, alongside the series some held responsible for its demise. Original network UPN had been terminated as well, shortly after it had cancelled Enterprise , once considered its flagship when that series premiered in 2000.

Similar in concept to the 2006 40 Years of Star Trek: The Collection Star Trek auction , the aforementioned Alec Peters managed to secure for his auction house Propworx, Inc. the commission from Universal to auction off the series' production assets, after the main series of re-imagined BSG had wrapped, in two specialized auctions held on 17-18 January, and on 8-10 May 2009 at The Pasadena Convention Center, followed up by a third, smaller 27 August 2011 one after Caprica too was cancelled in 2010. [46] Based on the strength of their BSG auctions, Propworx became in 2010 also the commissioned auctioneer for the assets of the defunct Star Trek: The Experience attraction as well. Also starting in that year were a series of smaller specialized Star Trek auctions, in which Propworx auctioned off the production assets retained/saved by former Star Trek production staffers, including those of concurrent former BSG production staffers such as Doug Drexler as well as Gary Hutzel in the more recent ones.

Science fiction icons lamenting being typecast

In the popular, heavily Star Trek referencing, sitcom The Big Bang Theory (S04E04: "The Hot Troll Deviation", 2010) lead actress Katee Sackhoff made an appearance as her Galactica alter ego Starbuck, conjured up by series' principal character Howard Wolowitz, who has the hots for Starbuck. Sackhoff/Starbuck, miffed at being the object of adolescent sexual fantasies – having already appeared as a figment of his overheated imagination in the prior episode "The Vengeance Formulation" (S03E09) – tries to gives Wolowitz romantic advise but is shortly thereafter joined by an equally imaginary George Takei in his Hikaru Sulu outfit from Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home , trying to do the same. Sackhoff/Starbuck starts bickering with Takei/Sulu, questioning his credentials to give Wolowitz romantic advise, while poking fun at Takei's homosexuality. Both, however, are also lamenting and exchanging notes on being typecast as science fiction icons Starbuck and Sulu respectively.

In stark contrast to the Star Wars and Babylon 5 franchises, rivalry between the fanbases of Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek had been comparatively light, if there was any to speak of at all. The reasons for this can be found in the disparity between the two basic premises, the fact that – the last season of Enterprise excepted – there had been no overlap of first time airings, the large overlap of former Star Trek production staff in re-imagined BSG, the circumstance that re-imagined BSG has served as a temporary refuge for "trekkies" disenchanted with Enterprise / Nemesis , or any combination thereof.

That the Battlestar Galactica fanbase has become more modest than its Star Trek counterpart, became evident in September 2015, when the webmaster of the original Battlestar Wiki, Joe Beaudoin Jr., announced, " Due to diminishing interest in BSG and the fact that most of the main contributors have since moved on, I am looking at the possibly of shutting down the website come early next year. " By March the following year the Wiki, at the time featuring 4,528 articles, had indeed gone dark. [47] Nonetheless, diligent fans by then had saved a large part of its contents on the Wayback Machine internet archive, but not all of it (featuring 3,534 articles, about a quarter was lost at first). Two new, from the ground up rebuilt, and different BSG wikis went up a year later (galactica.wikia.com and caprica.wikia.com), though featuring far less content. In early 2017 a cloned live version of the original archived Wiki was put back online as a reference source only at first, but became fully operational again on 11 May 2019 with all articles restored, courtesy Beaudoin himself .

The disparities between the two fanbases notwithstanding, there are several franchise licensees who have served both with their merchandise, which included such companies as, besides Quantum Mechanix, FASA (one of its very first product releases was a 1979 BSG role playing game, after which their subsequent and more succesful Star Trek: The Role Playing Game became modeled [48] ), Revell-Monogram ( modelkits ), Eaglemoss Collections (collectable display models and derivative reference books ), Bif Bang Pow! (toy figurines), and Galoob (collectable toy models).

Prolific Star Trek reference book authors Mark A. Altman and his writing partner Edward Gross have authored an exhaustive work on the history of the entire BSG live-action franchise as well, modeled after their recent The Fifty-Year Mission: The First 25 Years and The Fifty-Year Mission: The Next 25 Years Star Trek live-action franchise histories. The 720-page work, titled So Say We All: The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of Battlestar Galactica ( ISBN 1250128943 ), was released on 21 August 2018. "So Say We All" refers to an improvised expression introduced in the re-imagined miniseries by Edward James Olmos, going on to become a staple in the subsequent BSG productions. While not as widespread as Star Trek 's "Beam me up, Scotty " has become before, it became a popular pop-culture catchphrase as well.

This title was followed in 2020 by a reference book entitled Battlestar Galactica Shipyards ( ISBN 1858756111 ), and in 2021 by one titled Battlestar Galactica: Designing Spaceships ( ISBN 1858758009 ), both of them released by Eaglemoss and based on their similarly executed publications previously released on behalf of the Star Trek franchise. Additionally, the Sci-fi and fantasy convention company Creation Entertainment , has in equal measure organized specialized conventions for both franchises.

A major franchise partnership was formed in August 2021, when Universal conglomerate owner Comcast entered into a joint venture with Paramount Global to form the combined SkyShowtime streaming service , initially for an Autumn 2022 mainland Europe only launch. [49] [50] Simultaneously, a slightly more modest joint venture deal was agreed upon, when it was announced that streaming service Paramount+ would be housed under its own name by Comcast's British Sky Group Ltd. subsidiaries in three of the more substantial European language territories, the British Isles, Italy and the German language countries. [51] This meant in both cases that the Galactica productions were from now on streamed alongside those of Star Trek in those territories, including Enterprise whose demise Galactica had been credited with by Moonves and his CBS cronies. [52]

External links [ ]

• List of Former Star Trek Cast and Crew at Battlestar Wiki
• Battlestar Wiki (X) – incomplete archived original Battlestar Galactica wiki
• Battlestar Galactica at Wikipedia
• Battlestar Galactica – Richard Hatch's official website
• Galactica TV – behind-the-scenes info site with Ralph McQuarrie and Andrew Probert concept art
• Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica : Understanding Politics and International Relations at think.iafor.org , The Academic Platform
• 1 USS Voyager (NCC-74656-A)
• 2 Daniels (Crewman)
• 3 Star Trek: Prodigy

How Battlestar Galactica icon James Callis crashed Picard — and changed Star Trek canon

A fan favorite from 12 Monkeys and BSG reveals how he retroactively became a part of the Star Trek family.

The Cylons have invaded Star Trek.

Well, not quite. But in Episode 7 of Star Trek: Picard Season 2, former Cylon collaborator Gaius Baltar from Battlestar Galactica, the time-traveling “Witness” Athan Cole from 12 Monkeys , or — as we know him on our planet — actor James Callis appears in the form of Jean-Luc Picard’s therapist. But is he really Picard’s therapist?

Inverse caught up with this sci-fi legend to figure out how he gate-crashed the Final Frontier and what comes next. Spoilers ahead.

Patrick Stewart and James Callis in Star Trek: Picard , Episode 7, “Monsters.”

The biggest revelation in the Picard episode, “Monsters,” is that James Callis isn’t just playing some faux-Starfleet therapist living in the recesses of Jean-Luc’s mind. He’s also playing Maurice Picard, Jean-Luc’s father, in flashback. However, because most of this episode happens inside of Jean-Luc’s head, Callis clarifies that his character isn’t so clear-cut.

“It’s not strictly speaking his dad, is it?” Callis tells Inverse . “Because this is going on inside somebody's mind, it’s a tough psychological nut to crack.”

“It’s a question of dialing up the frequency and turning it all up.”

Callis also tells Inverse that when the casting call came through, he was unaware of the true nature of the role. Because Callis worked with Picard showrunner Terry Matalas on 12 Monkeys , one might assume that the part was made for him. But Callis confirms that’s not the case.

“I can't say that it was planned,” Callis says. “Nobody quite knew what they were looking for, which, in a sense, is much like the casting of Gaius Baltar. This is maybe one of those things, too.”

Number Six (Tricia Helfer) and Baltar (James Callis) in Battlestar Galactica .

For four seasons, Callis played Baltar on Battlestar Galactica , a character famous for his duplicitous and selfish nature but also for his surprising and complex turns. Picard Season 2 later reveals the “therapist” character to be Jean-Luc’s father, who may not have been the tyrant the younger Picard perceived him to be.

This isn’t to say Baltar or Maurice Picard are good guys, but James Callis has made an art form out of sci-fi characters who seem to project outer darkness while harboring an inner light. By the end of Battlestar , Baltar’s basic tendencies changed. In 12 Monkeys , we think Athan Cole is destined to be a wicked villain but becomes a hero. So, what makes Callis so good at this type of complex sci-fi character?

“The reason for me doing each specific job was actually terribly different in my mind. Playing somebody who is conflicted in some fashion, whatever the conflict is, well, we’re all vibrating the whole time,” Callis says. “So, I think it’s a question of dialing up the frequency and turning it all up.”

Callis also isn’t sure that all of his sci-fi characters are as similar as they might seem and is quick to point out that his 12 Monkeys character was very much a good guy. “I loved being able to do that,” he says. “I loved that Athan was the hero. That was so awesome.”

James Callis as Athan Cole, the tragic, time-traveling son of Cassie and James, destined to save his parents.

Before Callis’ appearance in Picard , we’d only seen Jean-Luc’s father Maurice in one TNG episode, called “Tapestry,” in which actor Clive Church remonstrates Jean-Luc in an illusion created by Q. But Callis’ approach to the character in Picard wasn’t about trying to bend over backward into the Trek canon. Nor did he overthink about how he and Stewart worked with Ronald D. Moore on BSG and TNG, respectively.

“It was such a gift to work with Sir Patrick Stewart. There is no one word or thing to describe it,” Callis says. “But because it was, as it were his brig, I didn't start a conversation where I said, ‘So Patrick, there was this one time on Battlestar ...’ It was not what we were doing.”

“If we’re going to get to space... we’re going to have to get on with each other.”

If it weren’t for the Battlestar reboot, it’s hard to believe there would have been an explosion of sci-fi TV post-2009. Back in 2017, one of Callis’ BSG co-stars, Rekha Sharma, appeared in Season 1 of Star Trek: Discovery , which at the time gave off major Battlestar vibes. Does the current ongoing renaissance of sci-fi TV have Battlestar to thank? And what is its relationship with Star Trek besides sharing a talent pool?

“ Battlestar was a one-off,” Callis says. “It’s possible to take elements from it and recreate it, but it was one-of-a-kind. Growing up watching the [original] Star Trek , the guys on the Enterprise were the good guys. When I was on the Galactica , I was not necessarily one of the good guys. There’s a moral gray area there.

He adds, “But in [Star Trek], it seems like that universe is evidently much more advanced. If we’re going to get to space and all wear uniforms and chat in other languages, we’re gonna have to get on with each other.”

James Callis and Tricia Helfer.

Now that Callis is part of the aspirational Star Trek canon and somewhat permanently a part of the Picard family tree , could he return to Trek again as Maurice or another Picard ancestor?

“Never say never,” Callis says earnestly. After a beat, with a sardonic tone worthy of Gaius Baltar, he adds, “Well, obviously, I pitched CBS with my idea for a spinoff, Mo Picard. I’m still waiting to hear back on that.”

Star Trek: Picard Season 2 is streaming on Paramount+.

• Science Fiction

Did You Know? The USS Enterprise cameod in Battlestar Galactica?

By chad porto | oct 19, 2022.

Star Trek and Battle Star Galactica have shared more than just actors.

Star Trek has birthed many science fiction franchises, and while some will like to pretend they weren’t influenced by the crew of the Enterprise, that’s just not true. One of the shows that were heavily influenced by Star Trek was the original Battlestar Galactica. While the format of the show was different, the idea of a space navy was right out of Trek.

More than that, the revival is very inspired by Star Trek and why shouldn’t it be? It was reimagined by one of Treks’ greatest architects, Ronald D. Moore. Moore took over the helm of the Battlestar franchise as part of SyFy’s plans to rebrand and bring the show to cable in the early 2000s. They did just that and created a landmark piece of science fiction.

Carried brilliantly by Edward James Olmos as Captain Adama, the show explored further beyond just the destruction of the 12 colonies and added lore to the Cylon enemies, while expanding on the themes of faith, reincarnation, and destiny. Sure, the fourth season got janky at times, but considering most shows lose their way ultimately, at least it ended when it did.

Moore didn’t just use Trek as a backbone for his storytelling, but he actually brought in several Trek actors to help tell the grander story. Yet, the Trek actor cameos weren’t the only ones the show was known for.

The USS Enterprise cameoed in Battlestar Galactica

Well, that’s not true, or at the very least may not be true. Let’s explain. In the original miniseries that launched the show in earnest, during the scene where the ships are escaping into space to look for a new home, a Starfleet Constitution Class ship can be seen flying in the background . It may not be the “Enterprise” in earnest, but it’s the same model of the Enterprise. So we’re gonna say it’s the Enterprise.

That wasn’t all though, since Moore worked so long and hard on Star Trek, it’s not surprising at all that he would stick even more nods to the franchise that made him a household name. There are also shoutouts to the Enterprise, with a Gemenon transport ship carrying the registry of 1701, which of course is the original Enterprise’s registry. Then there’s a room on the Galactica itself that bares the number 1701-D. This time referencing the USS Enterprise-D, the ship from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

This was the series Moore got his start on and was the body of work that gave SyFy the faith in him to lead this series.

Next. Ranking every Star Trek film in franchise history according to metrics. dark

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Videos » Entertainment » Star Trek Vs. Battlestar Galactica

Star trek vs. battlestar galactica.

References to the Original Series

This article discusses various references to the Original Series made by other works of note in various mediums including, but not limited to, television, film, or literary publications.

Airplane II: The Sequel

• The music at the beginning of the movie is the Battlestar Galactica theme music.
• The theme music is played again during the shuttle launch.

Battlestar Orgasmica

• A 1992 pornographic film lampooning the Original Series.

Beverly Hills Cop III

• In the movie, Axel Foley is being chased through a series of rides, one of which is "Alien Invasion". The ride is similar to the Universal Studios' "Earthquake" ride, with the addition of Cylon Robots who shoot at the participants.

Darth Vader's Psychic Hotline

• The Battlestar Galactica can be seen behind Darth Vader.

Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam ("The Turkish Star Wars ")

• The theme is played during the introduction.
• "Galactica" is written on the movie poster.
• There are poor imitations of Cylon Centurions . [1]

El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie

• A framed Battlestar Galactica can be found on the wall in Badger's bedroom, where Jesse Pinkman rests after his escape from imprisonment.

Space Mutiny

• The shots of the fleet in space are taken directly from Battlestar Galactica .
• The spaceship Southern Sun is depicted via re-use of stock footage of Galactica itself.
• The ship's fighters are also called "Vipers."
• Space Mutiny' s plot is also somewhat similar to that of Battlestar Galactica : a refugee fleet trying to find a new home, "mystical" elements, strange names for things, etc.

Ready Player One

• Aech possesses an original battlestar Galactica miniature in her garage.

• Dirk Benedict , who played Starbuck in Battlestar Galactica , plays Lt. Templeton "Faceman" Peck in "The A-Team". Face and Starbuck are very similar (handsome young officers, womanizers, humorous/roguish elements, etc).
• During the episode " Steel " of The A-Team , the A-Team attends a television convention. While there, a man in a Cylon Centurion suit walks past Face, who turns with a look of surprise on his face.
• In the second-through-fourth seasons of The A-Team , the clip of the Cylon walking past Faceman is played in the show's opening credits.

Ayrılsak da Beraberiz

1999-2004 Turkish sitcom. On an episode, the male protagonist was talking about Cylons while playing a video game.

Big Bang Theory

One of the geeks has a Colonial Warrior "flight suit" in his closet.

Buck Rogers in the 25th Century

• Also produced and developed by Glen A. Larson and Leslie Stevens .

p*Some props and footage (e.g. Viper cockpits and the Lunar Avion ) were taken directly from Battlestar Galactica .

• A Boray appears in the background of the Buck Rogers episode "Unchained Woman. "
• The prison on Buck Rogers episode "The Golden Man" could be the prison from "The Long Patrol."

Detailed comparisons

• The star fighters of the Earth Defense Directorate are Ralph McQuarrie 's original concept designs for the Viper.
• In "Space Vampire," the derelict ship Demeter that crashes into the station is the model of the Gemini and Delphi freighters seen in both the Original Series and Galactica 1980 .
• Colonial shuttle seen in episode "Journey to Oasis".
• In "Space Vampire," the medallion Rogers uses against a possessed Wilma Deering and the Vorvon is the Seal of the Lords prop Adama uses to unlock the Tomb of the Ninth Lord of Kobol in the " Lost Planet of the Gods " two-parter.
• The second season plot line had a crew seeking the lost tribes of Earth who had scattered after a catastrophic event.
• Cylon listening post is seen in episode "Planet of the Slave Girls"
• The shirt that worn by Buck Rogers in "Unchained Woman" worn by Dipper in the episode The Magnificent Warriors
• At the end of the episode " Road to Europe ," Peter and Lois are on the KISS show. At the end of the show, the host announces, "And now stay tuned for Battlestar Galactica Forum." He dons a Cylon Centurion helmet (complete with the red-eye) and continues, in a Cylon voice, "Welcome to Battlestar Galactica Forum."
• During the episode " Brian Goes Back to College " Peter, Quagmire, Joe and Cleveland all dress up as the A-Team. After Quagmire is introduced in the credits as "Faceman" Peck. He walks past a Cylon Centurion from the original show. A deliberate reference to the A-Team reference listed above.

• In the episode " Bendin' in the Wind ," the band "Cylon and Garfunkel" (consisting of Art Garfunkel and an original series Cylon Centurion) play at a charity concert for broken robots.
• In the episode " The Thief of Baghead , Langdon Cobb's butler LeRoy responds with the Cylon phrase "By your command."

Knight Rider

• Also produced by Glen A. Larson
• The red scanner on the front of KITT is a reference to the red "eye" of the Cylons from Battlestar Galactica .

Murder, She Wrote

• During the episode "Incident in Lot #7" (Season 8, episode 13) a person dressed in a Cylon outfit walks past Jessica Fletcher.

Mystery Science Theater 3000

• In the episode featuring Santa Claus Conquers the Martians , Tom Servo says "You know, if they cancel Battlestar Galactica I'm gonna kill myself" referencing the actual suicide by 15-year-old Eddie Seidel, Jr. when the show was canceled.
• A similar joke about the cancellation was made in the episode featuring the film " Laserblast " in season seven.
• Space Mutiny was also shown in an episode and the DVD made note of its use of Battlestar Galactica footage. Ironically, there are no jokes made on this. As writer/actor Paul Chaplin reflects: "We got a lot of Internet comment on how we didn't joke about how this movie used the Battlestar Galactica ship for the exteriors, and I have to admit, in retrospect we didn't joke about that at all. To quote the jury foreman at the end of The Producers : of this charge we are, in fact, incredibly guilty." [2]
• In the episode featuring " Future War ," host Mike Nelson dubs a spaceship seen in the film's opening "Dustbuster Galactica!"

Robot Chicken

• The Original Series Cylons were the focus of a short skit on the adult swim series Robot Chicken episode of Junk in the Trunk in which the original Cylon actors had so many problems walking around in their suits that they were constantly falling down.

Saturday Night Live

• In the SNL Digital Short " Space Olympics ," footage of the destruction of the Battlestar Atlantia is used.

S.C.I.F.I. World

• In the weekday programming block for the Sci Fi Channel , Wednesday was I ntergalactic Land which often aired Battlestar Galactica . Among the many commercials for Intergalactic Land and S.C.I.F.I. World in general are: a Cylon watching a game of PONG and Cylons with the laughing, drunk Spock shooting a Kirk below making him dance.

The Simpsons

• In the episode " Mayored to the Mob ," an ad for a sci-fi convention announces, "Tag-team robot wrestling! It's the mighty robots of Battlestar Galactica , versus the gay robots of Star Wars !" The ad shows two Cylons beating up R2-D2 and C-3PO .
• In another episode, " Burns Verkaufen der Kraftwerk ," Homer is bored late at night and takes out a Galactica jigsaw puzzle, delightedly saying "Oooooh, Battlestar Galac-tic-a!"
• An episode of the series is called " Saddlesore Galactica ".
• In the episode " Imaginationland Episode II ," one of the many fictional characters that come from the evil side of Imaginationland are original series Cylons.

Star Trek: Voyager

• In the episode " Flesh and Blood ," both the Ovions and Borays are mentioned.
• Tylium is used in both "Flesh and Blood" and " Workforce ".

Star Wars: The Clone Wars

• The droid TJ-912 replies with " By your command " after accepting an order from Count Dooku in the episode " Nightsisters ."

Superhost / WUAB Channel 43 Skit

A skit entitled Battleship Ethnica spoofs the Original Series, with characters such as Commander Anemia (Marty Sullivan, the Superhost himself), Appalling (Bill Rees), Starcent (Jeff Seymour) and Tapoica (Jo Ann DePompei) being attacked by the Nylons, lead by Tarbo (Henry Bookerstein) and Juniper (Super Boss). The Nylon plan is revealed at the end of the skit as it is a Large Mac (a large hamburger) begins eating the battleship Ethnica.

The skit runs approximately 03m09s in length, and features opening credits utilizing Cylon Raider toy models, a U.S. naval battleship as Ethnica , and various other hodge-podge crafts including TIE fighters from Star Wars and the Goodyear blimp . [3]

Tripping the Rift

• The episodes "Mutilation Ball" and "Love Conquers All...Almost" feature a character named 'Commander Adam.'
• The episode "Totally Recalled" features a character named Baltar, who owned an android-manufacturing corporation called Baltar Industries. Despite his name, however, CEO Baltar looks like Lucifer .

Welcome to Eltingville

• In the Trivia Off, two of the questions are: "How many brains does a Cylon commander have?" and "What was Galactica 1980's time-slot?"
• On the music video for Purple Disco Machine and Kungs song "Substitution," there is a Cylon Centurion with a rifle. It is referred to as "Robot" in the closing credits. Probably for copyright reasons.

Commercials

• Footage of the Battlestar Atlantia exploding is used in a Jack in the Box commercial for Cheesy Macaroni Bites. [4]

Escape Velocity Nova

• In this computer game, carrier ships can be equipped with squadrons of snub-nosed, delta-winged, laser-armed 'Viper fighters.'
• The computer game Homeworld revolves around a race of people who were exiled from their homeworld by a cruel empire to a distant desert planet many thousands of years ago. After their planet of exile is obliterated by their ancient enemy the survivors take to the stars on a long and perilous journey across the galaxy in search of their ancient homeworld, Hiigara. A rumor persists that Homeworld ’s development began as a Battlestar Galactica computer game which developer Relic Entertainment failed to acquire a license for.
• In this computer game, units often answer with quotes from movies. Some of the Protoss respond to orders with the phrase, " By your command ".
• The game's humans have been exiled from Earth, and live in a confederacy of colonies; these colonies are, throughout the game, decimated by the Zerg and Protoss - the latter of which are feudal, cybernetically-enhanced aliens, like the Cylons.

FreeSpace 2

• One of the Vasudan pilots respond to orders with the phrase, " By your command ".

Space Attack & Space Battle

• Mattel 's game, Space Battle for Intellivision and its M-Network counterpart, Space Attack for the Atari VCS/2600 platform, were originally slated to be games based on the Battlestar Galactica series. However, the project was changed to be more generic, due to unknown reasons. The "flying saucers" in the game are actually Cylon Raiders , since they did not change graphics; this change is mostly imperceivable, due to the lack of detail that could be used in graphics of the platforms of that era. [5]

VGA Planets

• In this shareware game, two of the predefined races are modeled after the Cylons and Colonials: Robotic Imperium and the Missing Colonies of Men.

More Information Than You Require

• John Hodgman claims that the original Battlestar Galactica was a "re-imagining" of the classic Battlestar Galactica radio program of the 1920s. [6]
• Colonial Vipers are one of the spaceships featured in the OASIS computer simulation. [7]

Shatnerquake

• In Jeff Burk 's Bizarro novel Shatnerquake , someone at ShatnerCon is wearing an Original Series T-shirt. [8]

• In the first numbered Star Trek: The Next Generation novel Ghost Ship , the ship on the cover is actually the upside down battlestar Galactica .
• In the The Original Series novel Ishmael , Apollo and Starbuck make an appearance on page 13 (as well as Han Solo ) with the description: "a pair of brown-uniformed pilots from some down-at-the-heels migrant fleet ".
• The swear word, frak (as well as "frakkin'"), makes an appearance in the 1996 Star Wars novel of Shield of Lies .

That Is All

• In a list of 700 Ancient and Unspeakable Ones ( Elder Gods and other beings who return, appear, or awaken in 2012 for Ragnarök ), John Hodgman lists number 471 as "Count Iblis , the Avenger " referencing Patrick Macnee 's other role as John Steed in the 1960s British spy television series The Avengers . [9]
• In the audio book version, the "Count Iblis, the Avenger" entry is played in reverse . [10]

A Writer's Reference

• On the use of a semicolon between items in a series containing internal punctuation, the example sentence is: "Classic science fiction sagas are Star Trek , with Mr. Spock and his large pointed ears; Battlestar Galactica , with its Cylon Raiders; and Star Wars , with Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, and Darth Vader." [11]

Acme Novelty Library

• Rusty Brown has a poster of the original Battlestar Galactica hanging in his bedroom. [12]
• On a car ride to a flea market, Chalky White tells Rusty Brown about how he wants to collect the original Battlestar Galactica action figures before the 25th anniversary rerelease of the director's cut. At the flea market, Chalky asks Rusty to look for a "Colonial Warrior in VG or VG+ Condition with Cloth Vest." [13]
• At dinner with Chalky White and his wife, Rusty Brown talks about his Battlestar Galactica action figure collection. Chalky White presents him with the Colonial Warrior action figure he has been looking for. [14]

A Battlestar Galactica poster in Rusty Brown's bedroom.

Chalky White talks about collecting the Battlestar Galactica action figures.

Rusty Brown complains about the unavailability of BSG action figures.

Doctor Who Magazine

• In the Eighth Doctor comic strip "Ophidus," Izzy Sinclair remarks how the Andrallis Nebula looks like the opening credits of Battlestar Galactica . [15]
• In Dork! #3 , a subculture of Generation X calls itself the "Lost 13th Gen Tribe" referencing both Neil Howe 's book 13th Gen: Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail? and the Original Series' Thirteenth Tribe .

Futurama Comics

• In issue 44 "The Fry and the Furious," one of the spaceship crashes featured in the documentary Gruesome Crashes is the original Galactica sinking into an ocean.

Scud: The Disposable Assassin

• In issue 7, a Cylon centurion whose name/nickname is Redeye is driving a truck.
• In issue 21, Voo-doo Ben's computer has By your command on its desktop.
• In the same issue, there can be seen a Colonial Viper flying alongside Drywall's car.

Related imagery

Redeye is driving a truck.

Voo-doo Ben's computer awaiting his command.

A Colonial Viper seen next to Drywall's car.

• In The Return of Tag & Bink: Special Edition , when Palpatine arrives on the Death Star II , his honor guard includes two Cylon Centurions.

Webcomics/Comic strips

Brewster rockit: space guy.

• In a comic strip of various cereals, an exogorth (the space slug from Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back ) is seen preferring "Frosted Min-Fleets". The ships on the cover are Cylon Raiders.

General Protection Fault

• In the comic for Monday, June 21, 1999 , whilst at the Space Con, Fooker disappears as Nick and Ki pass the Battlestar Galactica booth.

Sluggy Freelance

• In the comic for Sunday, August 10, 2003 , the webcomic presents the Battlestar Galactica musical, The Cylon King .

Judge John Hodgman

• In the episode "Gavelbangers Ball" , John Hodgman joked about how the Skype connection turned the defendent's words into "weird Cylon noises". [16]
• In the first segment of the second live episode "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Slob and B.F.F.-R.I.P. , John Hodgman jokes that one of the quirky science fiction writers keeps Battlestar Galactica action figures in their R2-D2 lunch box and uses a Boxey action figure dipped in ink to write. [17]
• In the Season 3's episode 6 , Baltar tells Cylon Jim and Cylon Phil to capture Captain Apollo. While Cylon Jim says "By your command," Cylon Phil says he has a conflict in time since he's auditioning for a role in the musical Oklahoma! .
• In the Season 3's episode 9 , Baltar tells Cylon Jim and Cylon Phil to destroy the Battlestar Galactica but Cylon Jim and Cylon Phil have more complaints for the Imperious Leader.

" Hour of Slack "

• In "The Hour of Slack" episode #794, the theme music is played at the beginning of first Post 4 X-Day episode. [18] It is also the first track on the CD "4X-DAY". [19]

Hartsfield Atlanta International Airport

• From the opening of the midfield terminal in 1980, until its refurbishment in 1996, the computerized announcement voices were referred to by fans as Cylon and Logan's Run voices.
• All programs made by Mozilla feature an oscillating status bar which, in the code, is called a "cylon."
• ↑ http://www.cuneytarkin.com.tr/images/dka/dka1.jpg
• ↑ Chaplin, Paul. Episode 820 - Space Mutiny ( backup available on Archive.org) . Retrieved on 20 November 2009.
• ↑ CHANNEL - WUAB TV CH 43 - SuperHost - BattleShip Ethnica Skit ( backup available on Archive.org) (in ). Retrieved on 29 May 2021.
• ↑ YouTube - Jack in the Box commercial "crashes" ( backup available on Archive.org) . Retrieved on 20 November 2009.
• ↑ Digital Press' interview with Hal Finney ( backup available on Archive.org) (in ). Retrieved on 17 October 2007.
• ↑ Hodgman, John. More Information Than You Require . ISBN 9780525950349, p. 232.
• ↑ Cline, Ernest. Ready Player One . Random House. ISBN 0307887436X, p. 48.
• ↑ Burk, Jeff. Shatnerquake . Eraserhead Press. ISBN 1933929820, p. 19. “""I never really... took notice," said Shatner as he took a nine-by-twelve photo from the next person in line, curiously wearing a Battlestar Galactica shirt."”
• ↑ Hodgman, John. That Is All . ISBN 978052595242, p. 821.
• ↑ 700 Ancient and Unlistable Ones - YouTube ( backup available on Archive.org) . (4 October 2012). Retrieved on 11 November 2012.
• ↑ Using Semicolons - Writing Center - IUP ( backup available on Archive.org) . Retrieved on 11 November 2012.
• ↑ Ware, Chris (September 2005). The Acme Novelty Library Final Report to Shareholders and Rainy Day Saturday Afternoon Fun Book (in English). Pantheon. ISBN 9780375422959, p. 15.
• ↑ Ware, Chris (September 2005). The Acme Novelty Library Final Report to Shareholders and Rainy Day Saturday Afternoon Fun Book (in English). Pantheon. ISBN 9780375422959, p. 87.
• ↑ Ware, Chris (September 2005). The Acme Novelty Library Final Report to Shareholders and Rainy Day Saturday Afternoon Fun Book (in English). Pantheon. ISBN 9780375422959, p. 90.
• ↑ (2006) Scott Gray Doctor Who: Oblivion (in English). Panini Books. ISBN 1905239459, p. 5.

• ↑ Hour of Slack 794—Post 4XD ( backup available on Archive.org) . (18 March 2003). Retrieved on 17 October 2007.
• ↑ SubGenius Devival CDs ( backup available on Archive.org) . (2 April 2007). Retrieved on 17 October 2007.

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Ep 280: Powerfully Uncomfortable (Battlestar Galactica S1E4)

Greatest trek, episode 280.

5th July 2024

When a recon drone Cliffhangers its way into Flattop’s face, there’s suddenly a deficit of Viper pilots aboard Audrey II. But after Starbuck tosses out a whole ten-piece order of nuggets, Commander Adama advises a different order.

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Episode notes

When a recon drone Cliffhangers its way into Flattop’s face, there’s suddenly a deficit of Viper pilots aboard Audrey II. But after Starbuck tosses out a whole ten-piece order of nuggets, Commander Adama advises a different order. Do all Italian eateries have a secret bunker? What side of Boomer’s face is the mole actually on? Should Ben keep or close the gap? It’s the episode that resets the number of days without a workplace accident to “0”.

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The unofficial, irreverent and filthy aftershow for all the new Star Trek television: Discovery, Picard, Lower Decks, Short Treks, Prodigy, Strange New Worlds, and anything else they throw at us. Each Friday after a new episode of Star Trek, Adam and Ben recap, review and roast all the New Trek. Check out our other show, The Greatest Generation , a Star Trek podcast by a couple of guys who are a little bit embarrassed to have a Star Trek podcast!

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Every Star Trek Character Played By Suzie Plakson

Tony todd’s 3 star trek roles explained, star trek’s 10 greatest klingons.

• K'Ehleyr (Suzie Plakson) - Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 4, Episode 9, "Legacy"
• Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis) - Star Trek: TNG, Season 7, Episodes 25 & 26, "All Good Things..."

Writer and producer Ronald D. Moore racked up an incredible body count, killing off several big-name Star Trek characters during his tenure on TNG and DS9 . Given the high stakes of a life in Starfleet, death is a constant companion to every serving officer. It's not just the ill-fated Star Trek redshirts either, as many regular and recurring characters have also fallen in action. Many regular and recurring characters have given their lives, from the sacrifice of Captain Spock (Leonard Nimoy) in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock all the way to the death of Lieutenant Hemmer (Bruce Horak) in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds .

Ronald D. Moore has been the writer and orchestrator of many of these dramatic deaths between joining Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1989 and leaving Star Trek: Voyager in 1999. Tellingly, Moore's last story idea for Star Trek was Voyager , season 6, episode 3, "Barge of the Dead", which killed off Miral Torres, mother of Lt. B'Elanna Torres. Moore's frustrations with Voyager inspired Battlestar Galactica , and forced him to leave the franchise he'd been an integral part of for ten years. As well as leaving behind some of Star Trek 's best episodes, Ronald D. Moore also left a trail of bodies in his wake.

Ronald D. Moore's First Star Trek Episode Foreshadowed His DS9 & Battlestar Galactica Future

Ronald D. Moore learned lessons on Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine that ultimately led to his Battlestar Galactica reboot.

8 Honorable Mention: Captain Lisa Cusak (Debra Wilson)

Star trek: ds9, season 6, episode 25.

Captain Lisa Cusak (Debra Wilson) was not a big-name Star Trek character, but she had a profound effect on the crew of the USS Defiant in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine . In DS9 season 6, episode 25, "The Sound of Her Voice", the crew respond to a distress signal from the captain of the crashed USS Olympia. As the Defiant makes its way to the source of the signal, Chief Miles O'Brien (Colm Meaney) is able to respond to Cusak, and they bond over their similar family backgrounds. Cusak also chats with Captain Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks) and Dr. Julian Bashir (Alexander Siddig), becoming a friend and confidant.

Debra Wilson is a prolific voice actor who also played Captain Trij in Star Trek: Prodigy and Z'oto in Star Trek: Lower Decks .

Devastatingly, Sisko, Bashir, and O'Brien eventually locate Cusak's body on an L-class planet in the Rutharian sector. The USS Olympia's captain had been dead for three years, and the environmental distortions caused by metreon radiation enabled her to converse with the Defiant crew in the future. "The Sound of Her Voice" is a powerful example of how Ronald D. Moore can make the audience care deeply about a character so that their death hits so much harder .

7 K'Ehleyr (Suzie Plakson)

Star trek: tng, season 4, episode 7, "reunion".

Ambassador K'Ehleyr (Suzie Plakson) was the first Star Trek character to be killed by Ronald D. Moore. The former lover of Lt. Worf (Michael Dorn), K'Ehleyr, made two appearances in Star Trek: The Next Generation, in season 2, episode 20, "The Emissary", and season 4, episode 7, "Reunion". As the mother of Worf's son Alexander , K'Ehleyr's death is particularly harrowing and oddly mirrors the death of Marla Aster (Susan Powell) in Ronald D. Moore's first Star Trek script, TNG season 3, episode 5, "The Bonding". The death of K'Ehleyr fundamentally impacts Worf, too, forcing him to take the life of Duras (Patrick Massett).

Star Trek: The Next Generation

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Star Trek: The Next Generation is the third installment in the sci-fi franchise and follows the adventures of Captain Jean-Luc Picard and the crew members of the USS Enterprise. Set around one hundred years after the original series, Picard and his crew travel through the galaxy in largely self-contained episodes exploring the crew dynamics and their own political discourse. The series also had several overarching plots that would develop over the course of the isolated episodes, with four films released in tandem with the series to further some of these story elements.

Although it was initially Star Trek: The Next Generation 's producer Michael Piller's idea to kill off K'Ehleyr, it was Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga who had to pull the trigger. Reflecting on the power of K'Ehleyr's death in "Reunion", and its effect on both Worf and the audience at home, Ronald D. Moore is quoted in the book, Captains' Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Trek Voyages by Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman. Read Moore's quote about killing off K'Ehleyr below:

"...it worked because you cared about her, and we made an effort not to do it capriciously and for no reason, just to get her off the show so Worf wouldn't have to deal with her. [...] Anybody who watches that episode is moved and outraged by the killing of K'Ehleyr. You're mad, and you have that same need for vengeance that Worf does."

What do a Vulcan, a Klingon, a Q, and an Andorian have in common? Actress Suzie Plakson has played them all in her Star Trek guest appearances.

6 Anti-Time Future Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis)

Star trek: tng, season 7, episodes 25 & 26, "all good things...".

Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga killed off another of Worf's romantic partners in the Star Trek: The Next Generation finale, "All Good Things". In the scenes set in the TNG finale's anti-time future, it's revealed that Counselor Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis) died from an unknown illness. Deanna's death drove a wedge between Worf and Commander William T. Riker (Jonathan Frakes), leaving them estranged for over 20 years. The audience never see Deanna die, but the fact that the aftermath is still felt decades later is another example of his skill at delivering cruel Star Trek deaths .

Moore and Braga's decision to kill off Troi in "All Good Things" was an astute shorthand to reveal not just the stakes of averting the anti-time future, but to also reflect how important she was to Worf and Riker.

Thankfully, Star Trek: Picard revealed that Deanna Troi was alive and well over 20 years after the end of Star Trek: The Next Generation . However, Moore and Braga's decision to kill Troi off in "All Good Things" was an astute shorthand to reveal not just the stakes of averting the anti-time future, but to also reflect how important she was to Worf and Riker. There's a genuine relief once Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) returns to the present to see that Deanna and Worf are still together, and crucially, that Troi is still alive.

5 Kurn (Tony Todd)

Star trek: ds9, season 4, episode 15, "sons of mogh".

Ronald D. Moore clearly loves to torture Worf, as he also killed off his brother Kurn (Tony Todd) in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine season 4, episode 15, "Sons of Mogh". Unlike the deaths of K'Ehleyr and Troi in Star Trek: The Next Generation , Moore does something more philosophical when it comes to Kurn's death . Ostracized from the Klingon Empire due to his brother's refusal to back the Klingon and Cardassian War , Kurn sought to end his life with honor rather than live in disgrace. While Worf is initially willing to murder his brother, he is barred from doing so by Captain Sisko.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, also known as DS9, is the fourth series in the long-running Sci-Fi franchise, Star Trek. DS9 was created by Rick Berman and Michael Piller, and stars Avery Brooks, René Auberjonois, Terry Farrell, and Cirroc Lofton. This particular series follows a group of individuals in a space station near a planet called Bajor.

Unable to convince Kurn that he can weather the storm of the House of Mogh's disgrace, Worf eventually seeks other means to help his brother. At the end of "Sons of Mogh", Kurn is genetically altered and given a new identity - Rodek, son of Noggra. The deception involving Kurn and Rodek is never mentioned again in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine , even after Worf is welcomed back into the Klingon Empire. Presumably, Rodek was never altered back into Kurn, meaning that for all intents and purposes, Ronald D Moore killed Worf's brother in DS9 's "House of Mogh".

Legendary horror actor Tony Todd played three different characters in Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager.

4 Vedek Bareil (Philip Anglim)

Star trek: ds9, season 3, episode 13, "life support".

Not content with killing off Worf's love interests, Ronald D. Moore is also the man who killed off Vedek Bareil (Philip Anglim), love interest for Major Kira Nerys (Nana Visitor). In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine season 3, episode 13, "Life Support", Bareil is critically injured in a shuttle accident on the eve of crucial peace talks between Bajor and Cardassia. Bareil's dream to finally obtain peace, and reparations for the Cardassian Occupation of Bajor is achieved, but at the cost of his life.

While breaking the story of "Life Support", the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine writers' room considered killing off Chief O'Brien, as Colm Meaney was rumored to be departing the show.

Bareil was killed off because Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 's writers didn't believe his relationship with Kira was working. However, as he did with K'Ehleyr in Star Trek: The Next Generation , Ronald D. Moore ensured Bareil's death had meaning, and wasn't a sensationalist way to get rid of a character . By dedicating his last days to helping Kai Winn (Louise Fletcher) with the Cardassian peace talks, Vedek Bareil leaves a lasting legacy, even if DS9 's villainous religious leader takes all the credit.

3 Kor (John Colicos)

Star trek: ds9, season 7, episode 7, "once more unto the breach".

Ronald D Moore can also count Klingon Dahar Master Kor (John Colicos) as one of his confirmed kills, having written Star Trek: Deep Space Nine , season 7, episode 7, "Once More Unto The Breach". In the episode, Kor convinced Worf to vouch for the old Klingon warrior to join the IKS Ch'tang. However, Kor's advancing years meant that he made critical mistakes, bringing him great dishonor. Kor's rivalry with General Martok (J.G. Hertzler) meant that the old warrior was relieved of duty for his errors, but he eventually proved himself in a daring final act.

Ronald D. Moore based the story of "Once More Unto the Breach" on the mystery surrounding Davy Crockett and the Battle of the Alamo.

Kor was the sole pilot of the IKS Ning'tao, and flew it into the heart of enemy territory, keeping ten Jem'Hadar ships distracted so that Worf, Martok and the Ch'tang's crew could rendezvous with the USS Defiant. When John Colicos first returned to Star Trek in "Blood Oath", he was adamant that Kor should not die . Five years later, Ronald D. Moore gave Kor a death befitting a Star Trek legend and heroic Klingon warrior.

Star Trek has many great Klingon characters from Kor to Worf and Kruge to Torres. But who are the best Klingon warriors that Qo'noS has to offer?

2 Chancellor Gowron (Robert O'Reilly)

Star trek: ds9, season 7, episode 22, "tacking into the wind".

The tumultuous friendship between Lt. Commander Worf and Chancellor Gowron (Robert O'Reilly) comes to a brutal end in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine season 7, episode 22, "Tacking into the Wind". With Gowron becoming increasingly reckless and vindictive, Captain Sisko and Worf realize that extreme measures must be taken if the Federation Alliance is to win the ongoing Dominion War . In the original draft of "Tacking into the Wind", Gowron survived his encounter with Worf, but Moore felt that there had to be more of an impact that reflected the past decade of Klingon storytelling. In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion Moore stated:

"Yeah, these guys are corrupt, and Worf has put up with that for a long time. They talk a good game about how honorable they are, but they're not capable of living up to their ideals. That's an important thing to say, so let's say it ."

Therefore, Worf finally challenging Gowron to a duel was him confronting the Klingon Empire's corrupt ideals. Worf killing Gowron in battle is a huge moment for his arc in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine , as it allows him to reconcile his complicated relationship with the Klingon Empire, while placing it in the hands of his most trusted ally, General Martok. Once again, Ronald D. Moore's eye for a good story informs the killing off of an iconic Star Trek character .

1 Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner)

Star trek generations (1994).

Arguably, Ronald D. Moore's gift for marrying devastating character deaths with a strong story abandons him in Star Trek Generations . Co-written with his frequent Star Trek collaborator Brannon Braga, Generations used the mysterious death of Kirk to bridge the gap between Star Trek: The Original Series and Star Trek: The Next Generation . The central idea was that the mystery surrounding the Nexus and Kirk's death on the USS Enterprise-B would then be solved by Captain Jean-Luc Picard and the crew of the USS Enterprise-D.

Kirk sacrificing his life to save the crew of a starship Enterprise that isn't even his own is heroic.

The problem, however, is that Kirk's actual death on Veridian III doesn't have the impact or meaning that it should have. Kirk sacrificing his life to save the crew of a starship Enterprise that isn't even his own is heroic. However, rather than send Kirk back to that heroic moment at the end of Star Trek Generations , Moore and Braga opted for him to be crushed under a bridge and buried under a cairn. It's never been clear in the established Star Trek canon which of Kirk's deaths remains on the official record, but Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga's first attempt in Generations ' prologue is definitely the most heroic one.

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Battlestar Galactica Reboot: Release Date Estimation, News & More

A new reboot of Battlestar Galactica has been officially announced! Get the most recent news about the upcoming BSG series, including a projected release date.

If you're a fan of sci-fi shows like The Expanse or Stargate and haven't watched Ronald D. Moore's Battlestar Galactica (BSG) , it's definitely worth your time. Despite what the title might suggest about concentrating only on space battles, the series delivers much more: it boasts an excellent plot and outstanding storytelling, making it arguably the best sci-fi series of the century so far. Even if you have another favorite, Battlestar Galactica deserves a place in everyone's top three sci-fi shows.

The series , which is a reboot of the original Battlestar Galactica show from 1978, ended in late 2009 after four seasons, so almost 15 years ago.

BSG was so popular that in addition to the series, two movies ("Razor" and "The Plan"), an online miniseries ("The Face of the Enemy"), a spin-off ( "Caprica" ), and a prequel film, which was originally intended to be the pilot for another spin-off ("Blood & Chrome"), were produced.

Since then, numerous BSG fans have been eagerly awaiting the franchise's return, and their wishes have been granted: Peacock officially announced another reboot in 2019.

However, we haven't heard much about the BSG reboot for a long time since then, probably because of the pandemic and the Writer's Strike - but lately, there has been some interesting news, which proves the reboot is very much alive.

Latest News About The Battlestar Galactica Reboot

Bsg reboot gets new showrunner.

It has been known for some time that Sam Esmail will be producing the BSG reboot. Esmail is well-known for his acclaimed series Mr. Robot, and if you have a current Netflix subscription, you may have seen his latest movie, Leave the World Behind.

It was expected that Esmail would also become the showrunner, but at the beginning of the year it turned out (via Deadline ) that Derek Simonds will run the show instead, besides his work as author and executive producer. Derek Simonds created The Sinner, a quite popular Netflix crime series.

BSG Reboot: First Plot Details And Theories

We're apparently still several months away from getting concrete details about the reboot's story and characters, but at least we have some hints about the show's direction. According to Esmail (via The Hollywood Reporter ) , Artificial Intelligence will have a big influence on the reboot's story , which indicates that the conflict between humanity and Cylons will be a lot more complex than the generic humans vs. robots narrative.

Apart from that, we expect the BSG reboot to pick up on the "Cycle of Time" which is so iconic for the franchise. Because as it has always been said " All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again" , it makes a lot of sense that the BSG reboot will find itself in such an iteration.

Battlestar Galactica Reboot: Release Date Estimation

While an official release date has not been confirmed, we can estimate the timeline based on a remark from Esmail. In late 2023, he stated that they would "probably go to pilot soon." Assuming filming starts a few months later and factoring in post-production time, we expect the BSG reboot to debut in early 2025.

About Battlestar Galactica From Ronald D. Moore

Battlestar Galactica is a space opera television series that aired from 2004 to 2009, starting with a miniseries that premiered in 2003. The show follows a space fleet consisting of about 50,000 humans who are fleeing from their twelve home planets after a genocide by a race of robots called the Cylons – robots that humanity created in the first place. The survivors are led by the last remaining warship, the Battlestar Galactica, on a quest to find a new home called Earth.

Throughout the four seasons of Battlestar Galactica , humans and Cylons engage in a tense struggle for survival, and the lines between friend and foe as well as between being human and being artificial become increasingly blurred as characters are forced to make difficult moral choices. The show explores themes of faith, politics, and humanity's relationship with technology, while also incorporating action-packed space battles and complex character relationships.

Battlestar Galactica: Similar Shows

If you're looking for a sci-fi series with similarities to Battlestar Galactica, we recommend giving these two shows a try:

Stargate Universe

Stargate Universe is about a group of soldiers, scientists, and civilians stranded on an ancient spaceship named the Destiny, billions of light years away from Earth. The Destiny's limited energy capabilities make it impossible for the team to return home. As they grapple with survival aboard the ship, the protagonists confront numerous challenges, such as limited resources, malfunctioning technology, and hostile aliens.

With its dark setting and character-driven focus, Stargate Universe is obviously inspired by BSG. The story itself might also remind you a bit of Star Trek: Voyager.

The Expanse

The Expanse is set hundreds of years in the future. Mankind has successfully in colonized Mars and various parts of the solar system, yet tensions remain high, with different planets constantly on the brink of war.

The Expanse is often called "Game of Thrones in space," so if you enjoyed GoT and like science fiction, this series should be right up your alley.

You can stream all seasons of both The Expanse and Stargate Universe on Prime Video with an Amazon Prime membership , in the US.

Do you agree that BSG is the best sci-fi show out there, and what are your hopes and expectations on the reboot? Let us know in the comments!

Ever since he got his first Game Boy in the late 90s, Kim was into video games. Besides many other games, he has a fable for Zelda and a love-hate relationship to World of Warcraft. Apart from work, you will find him playing football, watching sci-fi-shows, enjoying video games or just hanging around with friends. ...

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"Culture Of Fear": Battlestar Galactica's Lucy Lawless Recalls Intense Filming Environment

• Lucy Lawless recalls the intense environment on Battlestar Galactica due to a fear of being killed off.
• Lawless, known for Xena: Warrior Princess and other roles, disagrees with the approach as an executive producer.

Battlestar Galactica recurring guest Lucy Lawless recalls the intense environment of the sci-fi series, sharing her view that the actors were in a state of insecurity. A legend in the realm of genre television, Lawless is known to many for her influential role as Xena, The Warrior Princess . But she's also had stints on The X-Files , the Spartacus shows, and the reimagined BSG , where she portrayed D’Anna Biers for 16 episodes.

While promoting the new season of her show My Life is Murder , Lawless reflected on some of her most notable performances in an interview with Business Insider . When it came time to discuss her time with BSG , the actor shared her view of the fact that actors were in a constant state of fear and uncertainty because their characters might be killed off. She also talks about why now, as an executive producer on My Life is Murder , she doesn't agree with that approach. Read the full quote below:

"It was difficult coming in, because they felt if I was coming in, then one of them was on the way out," she said. "They were really nice people so I could tell it wasn't because they were awful, but there was a little bit of a culture of fear. And that was a shame." "In my opinion, the actors were kept in a state of insecurity, which I don't agree with as an executive producer. I don't agree with that at all. "Because they didn't want any spoilers getting out there at the time people didn't know if they were going to be killed off, and they were extremely nervous. So there was a culture of anxiety on that show," she said. "You're filming all day in the dark. You get to work in the dark, you are in space all day, and then you come out, and it's dark again," she said. "That isn't conducive to a very joyful, lighthearted environment, because human beings need the green of trees and the blue of the sky and all that stuff to be truly mentally happy and nourished on some level."

Battlestar Galactica Had Some Memorable Character Exits

The sci-fi series didn't shy away from killing off major characters.

Over the course of its run, which stretched from 2003 to 2009, BSG included several surprising character departures. Taking one example, Louanne "Kat" Katraine (Luciano Carro) was given a hero's death. Carro was getting a steadily increasing on-screen presence, which made it all the more surprising when Louanne died after being exposed to a fatal amount of radiation in the sci-fi show's season 3.

These twists and turns were not without impact, as the reimagined Battlestar Galactica often gets cited as one of the best shows of its era.

Several of the supporting cast were also given shocking exits, whether it was Billy Keikeya's sacrifice in season 2 to pave the way for Paul Campbell's BSG departure or the demise of Callandra Tyrol (played by Nicki Clyne) in the wake of a horrifying revelation. These twists and turns were not without impact, as the reimagined Battlestar Galactica often gets cited as one of the best shows of its era.

Battlestar Galactica's 10 Most Devastating Death Scenes

Battlestar Galactica began with a death toll of around 50 billion, which steadily rose, claiming the lives of heroes and villains in devastating ways.

The sci-fi space opera even won a number of awards, including a Peabody Award, the Television Critics Association’s Program of the Year Award, and three Emmy victories from a total of 19 nominations. But it also sounds like, at times, the Ronald D. Moore take on Battlestar Galactica could be stressful and came at something of a cost for the supporting and recurring guest group that Lawless was a part of.

Source: Business Insider

Battlestar Galactica

Cast Alessandro Juliani, Tahmoh Penikett, Aaron Douglas, Grace Park, Tricia Helfer, Katee Sackhoff, Edward James Olmos, Mary McDonnell, Michael Hogan, Kandyse McClure, Jamie Bamber, James Callis

Release Date October 18, 2004

Genres Drama, Action, Adventure

Network SyFy

Franchise(s) Battlestar Galactica

Writers Ronald D. Moore

Directors Michael Rymer, Michael Nankin

Showrunner Ronald D. Moore