Battlestar Galactica

Overview

Battlestar Galactica (2003) is a television series airing on the SciFi Channel in the United States. The series premiered in December 2003 as a two-part miniseries. The first season of the show began airing in October of 2004. The series has run for four full seasons, with production wrapping on the fourth and final season in the summer of 2008. The final 10 episodes of the series will begin airing in January 2009. The main showrunners are Executive Producers Ronald D. Moore and David Eick.

The series is a reimagination of Glen A. Larson's original Battlestar Galactica, which aired in 1978.

Premise

The twelve colonies (planets) of Kobol create a race of robots, called Cylons, to serve at their pleasure. The Cylons revolt against their masters and war ensues. The war ends in an armistice and the Cylons move to their own home world. Forty years later the Cylons return and annihilate the colonies, unleashing a nuclear holocaust that kills millions and nearly wipes out the entire human race. The show chronicles the journey of the spaceship Battlestar Galactica as it leads a fleet of several thousand survivors fleeing the Cylons and searching for the mythical planet Earth.

Tone

Battlestar Galactica is a dark, gritty serialized drama exploring issues of morality, democracy, religion, and war and is heavily influenced by post 9/11 politics and society. From Executive Producer Ron Moore:

"When I was first approached about the project, David [Eick] called me and asked if I would be interested in doing a remake of the show, which I had watched in its original broadcast... I thought about it over the weekend and rented the original pilot on DVD and watched it. I was struck by a couple of things. One of them was that it was an extraordinarily dark premise... The entire civilization is wiped out. All of humanity is reduced to essentially one warship called the Galactica, and a rag-tag fugitive fleet of a few civilian ships. I was watching it in 2002, in the post-9/11 world. That premise had a completely different resonance for me and I felt that the project itself would have a different resonance for the audience. This was going to be an opportunity and a challenge to write something that would be meaningful in science fiction... We could really explore humanity and what happens to people in the face of an unimaginable catastrophe. You wake up one morning and your world has changed forever. What happens to you. What do you do? How do you react to it? What does it say about you? I realized that Battlestar Galactica was something different in today's world, and it was a chance to explore things that I wanted to explore in science fiction. So I called David back and said I'd love to remake it." [1]

Online Presence

Battlestar Galactica enjoys a strong, loyal fan base and there are several online communities and resources. Top destinations include:

• Galactica Sitrep. Top-notch, in-depth, well-written fan blog.
• Battlestar Wiki. Comprehensive, fan-based wiki.
• Battlstar Blog Livejournal Community.
• Official SciFi Channel Site. Includes forums, episode podcasts, Ron Moore's blog, and David Eick's video blog.
• Battlestar Galactica coverage from Entertainment Weekly.
• Maureen Ryan's The Watcher (Chicago Tribune).

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