Battlestar Galactica: The Biggest Challenges The Reboot Faces

Back in 2019, Peacock announced that they were working on a reboot of Battlestar Galactica, this is a huge undertaking and the streaming service has set itself up for some big challenges. News on the production has been sparse since the initial announcement with fears that the Battlestar Galactica reboot series might be trapped in development hell already. The Battlestar Galactica franchise has a huge following of devoted fans, so any new adaptation will need to honor what has come before while also doing something new.

Battlestar Galactica is set in a universe where human civilization lives on twelve planets called the Twelve Colonies of Kobol. In the past, the humans had created a race of androids called the Cylons who had started a war with the humans before signing an armistice and not being seen for several decades. The early-2000s series begins with the return of the Cylons who have planned a sneak attack against humanity and wipe out most of the population. This comes with the revelation that there are now humanoid Cylon models that have infiltrated the human colonies and the battle for human survival begins in a race across the stars.

While not all viewers were satisfied with the finale to the early-2000s Battlestar Galactica, the series told a complete story leaving some to wonder why the series would need a reboot. However, the franchise has always grown with some audience members hungry for more leading to books, spin-offs, and webisodes. Ultimately, the Peacock reboot of Battlestar Galactica will presumably be released someday, but here are the biggest challenges that it will have to battle against to be successful.

Battlestar Galactica Has Been Rebooted Before

The Battlestar Galactica that first aired with a mini-series in 2003 was itself a reboot. The franchise was originally created by Glen A. Larson who came up with the idea for the show in the 1960s while drawing on Mormon theology. It was not until the late 1970s that the show was picked up for production and the original Battlestar Galactica ran for one season before being canceled. In 1980, a revival show was produced that saw the Colonial fleet discovering and protecting modern-day Earth. Galactica 1980 failed to find a foothold for a number of reasons and was canceled after ten episodes. In the years afterwards, multiple attempts were made to create a sequel series, often spearheaded by the late Richard Hatch who played Apollo in the original show.

It was not until over two decades later that Battlestar Galactica managed to produce a long-running and successful series. Setting out to produce a reboot or revival now requires showrunners to be able to identify what it was about the early-2000s TV show that captured viewers in a way that earlier versions had not. However, some audiences will have seen all iterations of Battlestar Galactica and may have different ideas of what parts of the story are iconic and indispensable, making it a challenge to please a wide audience with the Battlestar Galactica reboot.

The difficulty with this has already been shown by Battlestar Galactica’s attempted spin-off series. Caprica, a 2010 spin-off, was a prequel to the main series detailing the origins of the Cyclons on Caprica and the events that led to the First Cyclon War. While it aired shortly after the conclusion of Battlestar Galactica, the show failed to achieve high ratings and SyFy canceled Caprica after only one season. In 2012, Syfy had the creator behind the 2003 Battlestar Galactica, Ronald D. Moore,begin work on a spin-off title Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome that was set during the First Cylon War, but decided against creating full TV series, instead airing what had been created as a webseries.This makes it clear that fans of Battlestar Galactica are unlikely to tune in to a show purely because it is associated with the franchise and that the new show will have to work hard for viewer retention.

Related: Who Battlestar Galactica’s Edward James Olmos Almost Played In Star Trek

The Battlestar Universe Has Established Lore

From the show in the 1970s to the Battlestar Galactica of the early-2000s and the various spin-offs and side stories (such as Razor), the Battlestar Universe has built up a healthy body of lore. Much of this takes place through prophecy that surrounds the twelve Colonies, the lost thirteenth Colony, and the planet Kobol. However, series like Caprica explored these ideas further and gave a history to the battle been monotheism and polytheism and a deeper origin for the birth of the Cylons.

The new Battlestar Galactica destined for Peacock is currently being helmed by executive producer Sam Esmail (Mr. Robot) who has said that the show will be less of a reboot and instead take place in the same continuity as the early-2000s Battlestar Galactica. This suggests that Esmail will be looking for a writer with extensive knowledge of the original show who can ensure that a lot of the extensive lore is maintained. However, this leaves the new Battlestar Galactica series with a difficult challenge: deciding which parts of the lore to consider canon, and which parts (such as, potentially, Caprica) to ditch. Audiences familiar with all the series might be disappointed to see elements they loved not considered canon, whereas if the writers keep all of the original lore intact then the new show might become too opaque for new viewers to get into.

The Battlestar Galactica Is Being Produced By Peacock

The new Battlestar Galactica series will be coming to NBC Universal’s streaming service, Peacock. Peacock was originally created as part of a restructure in January 2019 and became available to the public in April 2020 with Battlestar Galactica already announced for the service. The streaming service offers both a premium subscription version and a free ad-based version with limited content.

NBCUniversal’s Peacock is still a young contender in the ever-escalating streaming wars, and despite its free version as of July 2021 it only had 54 million users compared to Netflix’s 209 million paid users. Peacock might be hoping that a new Battlestar Galactica series will be a draw for more people to sign up to the streaming service. However, many viewers feel they are already signed up to too many services, free or not, so being on an unfamiliar platform might serve as just one more hurdle for an adaptation that will already be fighting an uphill battle for acceptance.

About The Author

Faefyx Collington
(487 Articles Published)

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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