Battlestar Galactica Reboot Already Has One Great Thing Going For It

Peacock is planning a Battlestar Galactica reboot with a unique release strategy that could be a great sign for the show. Reimagining Battlestar Galactica is a huge challenge as it already embodies so much lore from previous iterations and spin-off works such as the decades-spanning book series. However, executive producer Sam Esmail is working with Peacock on an idea that might help to reshape Battlestar Galactica in the 2020s.

The original Battlestar Galactica television series came to screens in 1978 from the mind of Glen Larson. It was briefly revived in 1980, but the 2003 miniseries was the franchise’s true on-screen resurrection as it sparked the full 4-season Battlestar Galactica TV show that many people know today. There was a long struggle between the 1980 revival and the more modern series with Richard Hatch—Apollo in the 1978 series and Tom Zarek in the 2003 series—championing for the return of the franchise. Since the end of the 2003 Battlestar a prequel series has been made, Caprica, but it was canceled after just one season meaning that Peacock’s Battlestar Galactica will be the first new series in over a decade.

In an interview (via Collider), Sam Esmail explained that during discussions with Peacock and showrunner Mike Lesslie, they planned an unprecedented release structure. While streaming services have led to plenty of shows moving away from the strict weekly model, choosing instead to either drop a full season at once or release the first 2-3 episodes right out of the gate to hook people in, Esmail wants to take things a step further. Throughout the release window of Peacock’s Battlestar Galactica reboot, Esmail wants to drop different numbers of episodes depending on how it best serves the story.

He gave the example of releasing 3 episodes at once because they were different angles of the same battle scene. Additionally, Esmail doesn’t want to see the writers constrained by expected runtimes and instead wishes to have episodes that vary in length as needed. This means that while some episodes might be a full hour long, shorter episodes about characters’ backstories might only require 20 minutes. All of this will allow the story to dictate the format, rather than struggling to encapsulate Battlestar Galactica’s sprawling and complex narrative and lore into a reductive framework.

What Sam Esmail wants to do with Peacock’s Battlestar Galactica takes the success of some other recent shows to a new extreme. Particularly with the Disney+ programming, it is evident that the idea that a TV show needs to be 24 episodes and contain filler content to reach that goal is going away. Several of Disney’s new TV shows have included shorter episode counts with Loki only being 6 episodes while WandaVision was 9, and the runtime for the episodes, while not as disparate as suggested by Esmail for Battlestar Galactica, have ranged from barely 30 minutes to full hour-long episodes as the story has needed them.

Sam Esmail’s approach to Peacock’s Battlestar Galactica TV series promises great potential for a show that needs to allow for complex narrative work alongside extensive space battles. However, this all relies on his plans truly coming to fruition. So far it seems that Peacock’s upcoming series is still in the planning stages with only some of the writing commenced so far and news has been thin on the ground as to how the show might be progressing. Hopefully, as production continues to resume around the pandemic, Sam Esmail’s plans for Battlestar Galactica’s release structure will see the light of day sooner rather than later.

About The Author

Faefyx Collington
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Faefyx Collington (They/Them) is a senior features writer for Screen Rant. They’re a British writer of both fiction and non-fiction, focussing on science fiction, fantasy, and mystery for the former and on culture, gender, and current affairs for the latter.
Never content to settle to one thing, Faefyx is also a co-host and producer of the podcast and video series “Unramblings,” and can occasionally be found making music around the internet as well.
Having acquired degrees on both sides of the Atlantic, Fyx has settled (for the moment) in the southern United States where they live with their spouse and an entirely appropriate number of cats.

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