Fans of serious science fiction might debate about the various merits of Star Trek versus Star Wars—but there’s another big space franchise that nearly everyone agrees is just as awesome as it is smart. The 2003-2009 SyFy Channel version of Battlestar Galactica is not only a beloved contemporary genre series but also considered by many to be the best sci-fi show of all time. Aficionados know this is a minor miracle simply because the critically acclaimed reboot show was based on a 1978 show with a dubious legacy and mixed reputation among fans of the genre.
But what do you really know about the making of both this modern sci-fi classic and its cheesy progenitor? If the answer is not frakking very much, then pop culture historians and long-time science fiction journalists Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman are here to help!
Gross and Altman’s new book So Say We All: The Complete Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of Battlestar Galactica is the definitive behind-the-scenes book for all things BSG. As the title suggests, Gross and Altman have compiled and conducted interviews with nearly everyone associated with both the original Galatica and the popular reboot. From Lorne Greene’s thoughts about playing space commander in 1978 to Edward James Olmos explaining what Galactica has in common with Blade Runner, everything you never thought you needed to know about this enduring science fiction phenomenon is here in one book.
Without ruining the joy of reading their exhaustive and enthralling oral history of both versions of Battlestar Galactica (and all the spin-offs) here are seven big things you’ll learn about the show only by reading the oral history.
The creator of the original Battlestar Galactica was sued by George Lucas
Even hardcore fans of Battlestar Galactica can admit the original show riffed on various aesthetics from the original 1977 Star Wars, partly because special effects legend John Dykstra previously worked on Star Wars. Glen A. Larson was so worried about getting sued by George Lucas that he made changes to the show before they even started filming, including the decision to avoid using red laser blasts on camera; instead, the guns on Galactica simply flash and then have an explosion happen as a result. But Lucasfilm and Fox sued Universal claiming that Battlestar Galactica had “at least thirty-four similarities” to Star Wars, including the idea that the tech of the show copied the lived-in, gritty quality of the tech in Star Wars. Fox and Lucasfilm claimed this was a key innovation on their part, “contrary to the stereotypical sleek, new appearance of space-age equipment” in other science fiction at the time. Fox and Lucasfilm eventually lost, but the lawsuit actually continued well after the original 1978 Battlestar Galactica was no longer on the air.
Buy the Book
So Say We All: The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of Battlestar Galactica
We nearly had a Dragonriders of Pern Series instead of the Battlestar Galactica reboot
After working on Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Ron Moore also did the hugely popular show Roswell, which led to him helping develop a live-action TV version of the beloved Anne McCaffrey Dragonriders of Pern books. Obviously, this series never actually happened, but Moore says that much of the hand-held camera style which made the reboot Battlestar Galactica famous was originally developed for the Pern series. Interestingly, one of the reasons Moore didn’t do the Pern series is because he clashed with the CW about the nature of the scripts, and after a fateful meeting with Harlan Ellison, realized he didn’t want to become a sell-out.
Edward James Olmos freaked out the entire cast during the “So say we all!” scene
At the end of the 2003 Battlestar Galactica miniseries, when Adama tells the crew that they’re going to go off in search of the mythological planet known as Earth, he initiates a call-and-response moment that defines the entire series. The director of the episode, Michael Rymer, reveals in the book that though the line “so say we all” was written in the script, Commander Adama was only supposed to say it once. But actor Edward James Olmos had other ideas and decided to inject impromptu rage and motivation into the scene through unexpected repetition. The large group of cast members and extras had no idea what was going on, meaning, the moment when everyone decides to start chanting back at Adama is a real moment of a group of people being won over on an idea.
Tricia Helfer almost lost the part of Number Six to a more famous actress
Though the book never reveals the identity of the other actress considered for the role, it’s very clear that Tricia Helfer nearly lost out to someone who had more name recognition. During early production at the SyFy Channel (then still called The Sci-Fi Channel), many executives were against casting Helfer because she was a model with zero acting experience. In the book, Helfer notes that ironically, even though the studio wasn’t convinced she was right for the part, they nonetheless used her image almost exclusively to market the first season of the show. Helfer thinks that she became the “centerpiece for the posters” because “the red dress and the white hair stuck out in a show that was filmed dark and documentary style.”
The time jump in the season 2 finale came from writer burnout
While closing in on the end of season 2, showrunner Ronald D. Moore was so burnt-out that he told producer David Eick that he was “done.” The two writing partners had slightly boozy lunch which Eick says resulted in the brainstorm about ending the second season with the now-famous “one year later” cliffhanger. Essentially, if Ron Moore hadn’t been tired and so close to quitting, that epic ending may never have been conceived.
Ronald D. Moore and David Eick cancelled their own show
Though the writers of Battlestar Galactica had ongoing problems with Universal and the Sci-Fi Channel throughout the production of the first season, by the third season, the network was giving Moore and company less grief, mostly because the show was so critically acclaimed. In the book, Moore says that the network never really apologized or said: “you were right and we were wrong,” though they did ease up on worrying about whether or not the tone of the show was “too dark.” Even so, by the time the third season started, Moore and Eick jointly decided it was best to end things while the show was still good.
Starbuck’s true identity was made vague on purpose
One of the biggest debates about the finale of the rebooted Battlestar Galactica was the mystery of Starbuck’s return from the dead, and the subsequent non-explanation of her just suddenly not being there when Lee turns his back while standing on Earth. Was the second version of Starbuck a guardian angel? Moore says that the writers’ room “debated various options” and that in the end, he felt a “bigger statement” was made by not answering the question directly. Eick says that if it had been his decision alone he “probably wouldn’t have veered in quite as inexplicable a direction.” Still, pretty much everyone in the book agrees, at a certain point, explaining how Kara “Starbuck” Thrace came back from the dead would have ruined the entire tone of the show.
So Say We All: The Complete Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of Battlestar Galactica is available from Tor Books.
Ryan Britt is a longtime contributor to Tor.com. He is the author of Luke Skywalker Can’t Read, and the entertainment editor for Fatherly.
https://www.tor.com/2013/03/20/why-the-1978-battlestar-galactica-doesnt-suck/ is a 404.
And now it’s fixed. :-)
I’ve never really felt that Starbuck coming back was that ambiguous. It’s very clear that God of some kind exists in the show and is doing stuff, and we see Starbuck blow up, so the only possible explanation is a supernatural one. Whether she is an Angel or a ghost or whatever isn’t really important.
Slightly confused by:
when the book is subtitled “The Complete Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of Battlestar Galactica”.
To be fair, I haven’t read the book and it may give the reader the other actresses identity in all but name. But Fact #4 is still kinda noteworthy, given the title of the book.
Thw BSG reboot is, & always will be THE best sci-fi series ever brought to the small screen. I don’t care what part of it you look at, writing, acting, creative set design, or the ships themselves. It just doesn’t get any better. “So Say We All!”
I agree best sci fi show ever and I consider myself a Trekkie. So say we all!!
Gene Yohannan @@.-@ and Brie @5. I think Babylon 5 is a very close 2nd.
Thanks for reading my musings.
AndrewHB
Editorial note: The section that speaks of Tricia Helfer’s casting gets her name spelled correctly in the bolded header, however throughout the paragraph that follows gets her name spelled incorrectly by transposing a couple letters.
As much as I love BSG, I’m pretty bummed that a Ron Moore-created Dragonriders of Pern series never happened…
@7 Fixed–thanks!
I loved BSG – right up to the point that Starbuck came back as… whatever it was she came back as. For me, that was a bridge too far. I don’t need my sci-fi to be super-hard (and I certainly didn’t need BSG to be hard sci-fi), but the introduction of what was clearly supposed to be the existence of “god” and Starbuck being an angel of some kind… no. No, thanks. It didn’t fit the series at all. Felt completely out of left field.
“…here are seven big things you’ll learn about the show only by reading the oral history.”
You do realize this is factually inaccurate, right? We don’t need to read the book to learn these things, because you just told us about them.
Not only that, but the first item on your list is something you mentioned five years ago in your previous article, the one you linked to. Since the book hadn’t been published yet at the time you wrote that article, you obviously didn’t have to read it in order to learn about the lawsuit by Lucasfilm.
I devoured this show during its initial run and I agree that it’s one of the top SF series of all time. But some viewers at the time gave the show a hard time about the finale. The metaphysical/supernatural/religious themes were built in all along, they were just less foregrounded till toward the end of the series.
The weirdness was always baked in. From the somewhat incoherent Mormon cosmology (the Lords of Kobol directly derived from God’s planet, Kolob), to the pantheistic references to Greek gods, to the less pronounced Egyptian influences (the original pilot helmet design), there was always a supernatural element present. Add in the mysticism of time being cyclical, “This has happened before and will happen again,” and there’s a serious mish-mash of ideas.
Bonus: consider the batshit concept of Satan himself showing up on the original show, then Apollo and Starbuck dying and coming back as literal angels, glowing white uniforms and all. Or “aliens” called Seraphs.
Loved the miniseries, and the first 2 seasons. The third season went a bit off the rails (“And They have a Plan” “Yeah, and eventually they’re gonna share it with the scriptwriters”) after “Exodus” (which was awesome), but the last season was pretty good.
I think B5 was more consistently good, but didn’t quite hit the highs that BSG did. I think if B5 had aired a decade later the networks would have been hands-off enough while providing enough money for it to be consistently great.
As many have already written B5 and BSG are the two best sci-fi series ever aired.
“The Expanse” may give these a run for the money but it’s never been as important to watch as B5 and BSG. “The Man in the High Castle” rocks too, though. Not many people have seen it compared to these others.
@12, @13: Those are spot-on assessments. Despite some clear flaws and clunker episodes, the writers managed to wrap up the final season into a story that was more or less coherent and consistent with ideas sprinkled throughout the tighter stretches (i.e. from the miniseries through the first couple of episodes of season 3). I wonder if this is perhaps more obvious to those who have watched it more than once, or (like me) didn’t start watching until the whole series was complete. (Although I can definitely see how those watching it in real time would have been frustrated by stretches of seasons 3 & 4.)
Personally I think it came close to, but did not quite surpass, B5, but it can be hard to choose between them: BSG had better production values and was more character-driven, but B5 had far tighter, more consistent storytelling. Methinks both shows are deserving of re-watches on this here website…
The episode when the Galactica jumps into the Planets atmosphere to rescue the others is probably the best episode of any show I have ever seen. LOVE IT!!!!!!!!!!!
I loved the BSG reboot and I adored B5. But Farscape really has a larger part of my heart. And while I haven’t watched the latest season of The Expanse, the books are among my favorites.
While much of BSG was entertaining, and the acting was good, in my opinion the story was too muddled and the show used bait and switch to keep us watching.
They had an entire 2 hour special called “The Plan”, which still did not in any way reveal a plan. I’ve heard people argue that it did and the plan was “Kill all the humans”, but kill all the humans isn’t a plan, it’s a mission statement.
Anyway, it’s annoying to me that I was promised some clever plan and the writer’s clearly never intended to deliver.
Also, while I agree the ending may have been consistent with other elements in the show, those earlier elements did not guarantee that the story had to go supernatural, and the ending was utterly anti-thetical to my taste. There’s a god, he/she/it has a plan, which repeats ad infinitum and it involves murdering billions of sapient beings on a regular basis. Why would you respect such a being in any way? It may be powerful, but it’s not admirable.
Also, the let’s all wander off into the wilderness without any technology is a stupid ending. It may play to the unsophisticated green impulse, but it is a recipe for a quick death. If they wanted to commit suicide they should have just flown into the sun with their ships.
Finally, I do and always have found shaking cam filming to be annoying. Fortunately, BSG used it in limited amounts, but Firefly did it first. This was not a BSG innovation.
The new BSG had some great moments. And some good qualities, but it was not even close to the best SF program made for television.
I soldiered on through three and a half years. I couldn’t watch the final 8 episodes. By the end of season 3 the series was a mess. By the point I stopped watching there were no characters left I could respect. All the ones I liked who had some actual character had been killed off. When Dualla offed herself that was the last straw for me. While the Cylons may have had a plan, it was obvious that the writers never did.
Nu BSG isn’t that great, it has aged badly -perhaps even worse than that old polyester uniform version; mainly because it was offensive television. It was made to be offensive, to deliberately offend the Star Trek audience, to offend people who watched 90s SF shows, and Ron Moore basically admits that. That, along with its close connection to the post 9/11 zeitgeist (and, lets be honest, most 9/11 reaction shows have aged badly as we see how morally bankrupt their characters) have robbed it of staying power.
It isn’t a show for something, just a show which aims to be not something else. That can get you by the first pass, especially if you are quick enough in getting your show to screen, but it lacks any sort of staying power. You get to watch it and give a hearty haw-haw to the offended people, but once you’ve done that; what is left? That is where NuBSG is, it has nothing at the heart of it except not being Star Trek or not being “Your parent’s BSG” and it delivers that in a way that is frankly horrific as per the times it was made in.
@18. Jeff: “let’s all wander off into the wilderness without any technology is a stupid ending”
This ties in to the Biblical themes seeded earlier. The Bible stories of Adam and Eve make no sense when you consider that a much larger population is needed for genetic diversity. Otherwise all offspring will be the product of incest. After Cain kills Abel, he runs off to another tribe, where he marries and has a family. Where the heck did those other people come from if Adam and Eve were the first and only had two sons?
Anyway, there’s a Cain in BSG and, I guess, the Adamas can become the new Adams, blending in with the existing proto-humans. Or the ragtag fleet crews can become those other tribes early humans encounter. So the series ending perhaps tried too hard to reconcile the religious themes with evolution, or to create a worldview in a SF show that was ultimately religious/mythical.
@20. random22: “It was made to be offensive… and Ron Moore basically admits that.”
This begs for a citation. I’ve never heard that and I doubt you can make a successful show if that’s your starting intent.
While I liked BSG 2003, it is certainly not the best sci fi tv show of all time. Maybe if we consider only the first two seasons and even that is a stretch for me. I personally think the best BSG episode is the first one: 33. Parts of Season 2 were good but some episodes were genuinely puzzling and the character development was weird and seemed against what had been revealed before. I struggled through season 3 – and I’m not actually sure if I ever watched all of the last season. I remember gritting my teeth with my now husband as we soldiered through the last couple of episodes, determined to finish a series that we had once genuinely loved and no longer did.
As others have mentioned, the shows that I hold up as exemplars of sci fi tv are B5 and Farscape, the latter of which just edges out B5 for me. Sure, there are some rocky episodes in Farscape, but I still think it holds up after all this time.
Much as I enjoyed BSG, I would have loved to see a Dragon Riders of Pern series which is one of my most favourite SF book series. Shame.
@20: ‘NuBSG’ was never ‘offensive to ST fans’. That’s a blanket argument that can’t be applied to millions of people unanimously. I remember a lot of ST fans complaining on the forums, but… and I should know a little something of this as I was one of the ST fan on the forums… many of us were never offended by ‘NuBSG’ and loved it as well as ST.
I think I vaguely remember the quote you are referencing and I took a very different meaning from it. I believe it dates from one of Moore’s more stressed-out moments when he had five bajillion things to do at once and a studio that was riding his back, and whilst I don’t remember the words, I believe it translated to me as ‘fans of ST who don’t like BSG don’t have to, it’s not for them.’
Still, I would love to get a Pern adaptation.
@23
I’ve always told people to watch the mini-series and “33” and if you aren’t hooked, don’t bother with the rest.
The worst thing about this show was the Bob Dylan song “All along the Watchtower” and course of the show that seemed to set it far in the future but then inexplicably took it to the past with no links whatsoever to a song from the future. “Ancestral memory”? Nope.
It was a show that started well but went off the rails, probably undone by five words that were stuck into the credits sequence (apparently without much thought): “And they have a plan.”
What those five words did, unfortunately, was turn a show that otherwise would have merely been a very effective SF soap opera into Puzzle Television. Through the first two seasons, people watched BSG looking for clues, trying to piece together how the Opera House sequences fit with Gaius’ hallucinations fit with Rosalin’s prophecies, etc., etc. When the truth that became sadly apparent in the third season was that there wasn’t any cohesive plan, it was just things happening and then other things happening.
Which is fine. By all means. But I can say from personal experience and conversations with other fans that it left a number of viewers feeling cheated. Baited-and-switched.
It didn’t help that the finale was a mess that ended with an SF trope so cliched that it was supposedly banned by at least one SF magazine in their submissions policy. (I have never been able to peg which magazine or editor it was, but supposedly they informed authors in their guidlines that no matter how well-written the story was, if it ended with some version of “His name was Adam… and her name was Eve,” you were getting it back.)
Babylon 5 was, as others have already said, a far more consistently-good show (at least after the first season), and by the end of its run Farscape was very, very good. Blake’s 7 is also a solid contender for best SF series. Star Trek and The Next Generation were iconic, of course, and Deep Space 9 developed into a very strong show fairly quickly. And if you stretch beyond space opera, The Prisoner and the first seven seasons of The X-Files might have something to say about the top-ranked SF show.
Meantime, while the revived BSG was solid through its first two seasons, in retrospect (I think someone else has already said something like this, and I agree) it was mostly downhill after “33,” their very first series episode. So BSG certainly deserves a high listing, but anyone who thinks it was the best SF series of all time… I mean, I hate to say a subjective aesthetic judgement is wrong… however in this case….
@27. czx: The song was explained as originating on the Earth where the Final Five Cylons originated, and where they worked on resurrection technology. This Earth was destroyed in nuclear armaggedon. The reboot is set in the next temporal cycle after. This one too will end and then repeat. That next cycle looks a lot like our present day. We see Baltar and Six looking at images of Japanese robots, with the implicit message that this will lead to new AI and a new race of Cylons.
As a sci-fi fan going back to when Space: 1999 was on first broadcast, the BSG series felt like bait-and-switch to me. It started as this tense story of a civilization trying to survive dire circumstances, with the gritty style and constant focus on the number of survivors and the lack of resources suggesting it was aiming for a level of realism, as exemplified by the episode “33.” When it became clear that the Cylons were pursuing the humans with a vast fleet and were holding off on destroying them, the situation — like the marketing — suggesting that the Cylons were driving humanity for a compelling purpose that would gradually be unveiled. But as the series wore on it became clear that the sci-fi elements were largely a gloss pulled over a theme-of-the-month, with characters changing from fighter pilots to bureaucrats to lawyers as the script demanded, endlessly bickering with friends and family members to create new conflict.
I suspect the tendency of the stories to bombard the audience with surprise developments — like Starbuck’s resurrection — that weren’t based on any prior elements in the series made it easier for a casual audience to follow. (As opposed to the admitted more tedious worldbuilding of Babylon 5, where many of the slower-moving episodes from season one set the stage for the developments and revelations of later episodes and seasons.)
@@@@@ 30
As a rule of thumb, any plot whose advancement depends on people not sitting down and having a calm conversation like adults, but instead is founded on strained misunderstanding, overheard and misinterpreted snippets, and contrariness, had better be a sitcom farcical one. Drama should not be built on that foundation. If it can be solved with adult conversation then it has no place in a dramatic show.
Same with building a plot based on, instead of a simple conversation, people hemming and hawing cryptically as they meander to a point, but then get cut off before they can spit it out. That is another writers trick that fits in a 1980s Britcom but not in a drama show.
OK, I confess! I HATED it!. It started out with so much promise, then degenerated into a seemingly endless soap opera featuring the politically correct issue of the day. I always assumed Science Fiction was supposed to be FUN! BSG sacrificed the child-like delight of discovery in favor of “gritty realism”. I get enough “gritty realism” every day; Sci-Fi should move us into new worlds of awe and wonder. BSG failed to deliver that.
Best Sci-Fi series ever? No, just no. I enjoyed BSG, but I don’t think it was the best ever. The first two Seasons were excellent! “The One Year Later” bit just seemed the show “Jumped the Shark” to me. 3rd season was so so, The 4th season began to get back on track, I feel they could have ended the series after Episode 10, it would have been a bummer ending, but no they let it go for another 10 episodes and got a silly end to the show. SMH!
@21. Sunspear
” So the series ending perhaps tried too hard to reconcile the religious themes with evolution, or to create a worldview in a SF show that was ultimately religious/mythical.”
That’s putting it mildly. There was no in-story reason for the characters to all wander off into the wilderness. It was a completely unbelievable ending. I could see some of htem being so clinically depressed and weary that it seems like a good idea at the time, but not any large number of them. If the remainder of humanity had become a cult that would willingly drink the poisoned cool aid then that should have been developed in the story.
This was just dragging the characters in a stupid direction to make a trite point that someone running the show thought was sooooo cule.
Please excuse the harsh tone, but that ending just galls my bladder.