When Ronald D. Moore and David Eick’s re-imagined Battlestar Galactica first arrived in 2003, it was as a two-part, three-hour miniseries on the Syfy channel. Delivering mass genocide almost immediately via the cylons, the BSG miniseries pulled no punches in its premier, thrusting viewers into a chaotic scramble for humanity’s survival.
With a handful of ships surviving the attack, a single battlestar remains intact only because its retiring captain, Bill Adama, refused to have it retrofitted with the latest networking technology. With the ship decommissioned and preparing to be entered into a museum, it quickly becomes clear that Adama’s foresight saved the Galactica. As he and his crew begin efforts to reconnect with the remaining military, they realize they are humanity’s only survivors, and they’re on the verge of extinction.
Battlestar Galactica Wastes No Time Getting Straight to the Point
Image via NBC
Undoubtedly one of the most riveting television premiers in history, Battlestar Galactica‘s dark debut promised early on that it would take sci-fi fans places no other space opera dared to go before. Within the first few minutes, viewers learn that a 40-year armistice has existed between humans and cylons. The cylons left to find their own planet, and no one has heard from them since.
Every year, the Colonial Military sends an officer to a space station designated to foster diplomatic relations with the cylons, but the cylons never show up. Until now. Last humanity knew, their creations were sentient chrome Centurions that had risen against them. When Tricia Helfer’s Six enters the station to break the terms of the armistice, the soldier there would never have expected that this beautiful woman is a cylon.
As she struts toward him, passing the table he’s seated at and approaching him directly, Six asks what quickly becomes the most important question of the entire series: Are you alive? With the Centurions standing by, he confirms that he is alive. She tells him to prove it, then leans in to kiss him. As the camera pans away, outside the space station, the cylon ships loom, and then the attack launches as she confirms, “It has begun.”
The space station explodes in spectacular fashion, seemingly killing every being within. When fans see the same woman on Caprica working with scientist Gaius Baltar, they do a double take. How can she be in two places at once? Brilliant, arrogant and self-absorbed, Baltar has no idea this woman he’s been working with and sleeping with is using him to infiltrate Caprica’s defense systems. Even when she confesses to him that she’s a cylon in the moments before his world explodes, Baltar can’t believe his own part in the destruction of the Twelve Colonies.
Image via NBC/Courtesy Everett Collection
With Battlestar Galactica‘s miniseries, viewers are instantly drawn in by the realization that no one can be trusted. Viewers know that it’s impossible to tell human from cylon, but the characters in the series don’t realize this at first. Knowing the truth, however, doesn’t make anyone less suspicious for viewers. Instead, it creates a lingering sense of paranoia that follows the survivors all throughout the series.
Even as cylon models are identified, there are always more hidden in the shadows, and they could be anyone. Twelve in total, or so Six tells Baltar before the attack on Caprica. As six of the first seven are identified, fans spend a significant part of the series that followed the miniseries trying to identify the ones missing.
The existence of the Final Five, plus one boxed cylon, forced the viewer to regard every single member of the series with suspicion. Add to that a significant number of mysteries surrounding nearly everyone introduced, and it becomes impossible to tell human from cylon until there is solid confirmation one way or the other.
Humanity’s Nigh Impossible Survival Odds Kept BSG Viewers Enthralled
Image via NBC
From the moment the Battlestar Galactica miniseries begins, the very real possibility of human extinction is made clear as day. They’ve lost their colony of worlds. Billions of people are dead. Resources are scarce. When newly-appointed President Laura Roslin begins counting the survivors, it feels hopeless.
With less than 50,000 survivors by the end of the miniseries, humanity’s odds are bleak. They need to find a new planet to call home, and so begins their search for the prophesied planet Earth. With Adama, who puts no stock in prophecy, facing a dying President Roslin clinging to it like a lifeline, tensions aboard the Galactica don’t seem like they could get any higher, but they do.
Not only are they fighting cylons at every turn, but terrifying questions always hang at the back of everyone’s mind. How long before they run out of food and water? What if they run out of fuel? What if rampant disease breaks out? Couple all of that with that simple question Six asked the military representative in the first few minutes of the miniseries, and it’s impossible not to wonder if what humanity’s survivors are doing can actually be considered living.
From start to finish, Battlestar Galactica never stops forcing its viewers to look into the darkness. Every glimpse of hope is overshadowed by despair in a seemingly endless expanse of stars that couldn’t care less if humanity survives or not. It is that very darkness that continued to draw BSG viewers back, week after week. It set the bar for other bleak and realistic science fiction television series to follow, virtually changing sci-fi TV forever.
Battlestar Galactica
Release Date
2003 – 2003-00-00
Network
SyFy
Barclay Hope
Transport Pilot
Edward James Olmos
Commander Adama
Katee Sackhoff
Kara ‘Starbuck’ Thrace
Mary McDonnell
President Laura Roslin
