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Why The New Battlestar Galactica Series Will Have To Be Very Differen
Filling the shoes of two previous series under the same name, a new Battlestar Galactica show will have to be different to distinguish itself. Both the 1978 original and the early 2000s version have the same backstory: Cylons as the main antagonists, an attack on the 12 Colonies, a search for a new home on Earth, and a battleship named Galactica protecting a fleet of civilian ships. The shows diverge in their handling of deeper issues such as the nature of the Cylons, the relationship of humans to technology, and what it means to be human. Battlestar Galactica, the original and the reboot, were both products of their time with tone and themes being drawn from world events. Another Battlestar Galactica reboot can't help but be influenced in the same way as its predecessor, which would make it very different from the shows that came before.
The status of the new project, or projects as the case may be, is still up in the air. Since 2020, producers Simon Kinberg (Dark Phoenix) and Dylan Clark (The Batman) are working with NBCUniversal on a Battlestar Galactica movie, and Sam Esmail (I Robot) is developing a television project for Peacock that will "explore a new story within the mythology while staying true to the spirit of Battlestar." Kinberg and Esmail are committed to creating a shared universe, though this is still a few years away. They have big shoes to fill. The evolution of Battlestar Galactica from the 1978 original to early 2000s series would dictate that any new imagining must evolve as well. It would need to provide a new take on established classics.
Battlestar Galactica Is About Humans' Relationship To Technology
On it's face, Battlestar Galactica is about the war between humans and Cylons, but on a deeper level it's also about humans' relationship to technology. In the original Battlestar Galactica, the Cylons were a reptilian race that was dying out. They had discovered humanity and determined that humans possessed the most efficient body plan, so they engineered sophisticated robots to serve them. Eventually the robots became fully sentient androids who destroyed their creators. They believed in the natural order of the universe. Battlestar Galactica's Cylons found that humans upset the balance of natural order and vowed to cleanse the universe of intelligent beings. To the humans, technology saved them, in that they were fleeing on a spaceship, but it also could spell their demise in the form of Cylon aggression. Interestingly, in a short-lived spinoff called Galactica 1980, set 30 years later, a team of experts was sent from Galactica to Earth to help those there advance their technology to protect them from the Cylons.
The rebooted Battlestar Galactica had a somewhat different problem. The Cylons were not an alien race but rather the creation of humans who also gained sentience and rebelled against their creators. To further complicate matters, the Cylons had created humanoid versions of themselves, making them indistinguishable from humans. In 2003 when Battlestar Galactica first premiered, sentient AI didn't seem as shockingly real a possibility as it does now. Movies such as The Terminator and Blade Runner explored this, but on Battlestar Galactica, the humans were stunned to learn that Cylons could look just like them. Technology had completely muddied the waters between "us" and "them," though in an interesting twist, the humans tried to use tech, in the form of Gaius Baltar's Cylon Detector, to tell the difference. Ironically, it was the absence of advanced tech that saved Galactica from immediate destruction. As an older battleship that had been decommissioned and was to serve as a military history museum at the time of the Cylon attack on the colonies, none of its systems were networked, thereby preventing the Cylons from launching a viral attack against it.
Each Battlestar Galactica Is A Product Of Its Time
The original Battlestar Galactica premiered in 1978, roughly one year after Star Wars hit the movie theaters. Battlestar Galactica received a great deal of criticism and was harshly labeled a knockoff of Star Wars, to the extent that 20th Century Fox filed a copyright infringement suit against Universal. In the long term, however, the show proved to be a stand-alone. In the '70s, there was great excitement about Americans having landed on the moon, provoking a hunger for movies and programing that dealt with outer space. Battlestar Galactica depicted The Quorum as corrupt and buffoonish, this drawn from the distrust of politicians post-Vietnam and Nixon's resignation. The machine-like nature of the Cylons evoked a fear of technology fueled by the nuclear proliferation of the Cold War.
The Battlestar Galactica reboot came on the heels of 9/11 and the War on Terror, both of which heavily influenced the tone and recurring themes of the show. In Battlestar Galactica, as in America, there was a massive, devastating attack followed by an extreme vigilance against "the enemy." The Cylons committed acts of terrorism and genocide. There was reminiscent imagery with Six protecting Baltar from the horizontal nuclear blast through a paned-glass window, and the Wall of Commemoration on Galactica with pictures of lost loved ones. President Roslin said, "The interesting thing about being president is that you don't have to explain yourself to anyone," which harkened to the unilateral powers of an American president during wartime. Battlestar Galactica tackled issues of terrorism, torture, and extralegal activities by turning those debates on their heads. In season 1, Starbuck tortured Leoban because he said he knew the location of a nuclear warhead hidden in the fleet that will soon explode. In season 3, under the Cylon occupation of New Caprica, the humans decided to use suicide bombing in an attempt to overthrow the vicious authority of the Cylons. Serious realities of the post-9/11 world were put into an entirely different context, rendering them morally gray.
What Would A 2020s Battlestar Galactica Have To Face
A new Battlestar Galactica should be just as the two before it: about humans and their relationship to technology and also a product of its time. Much has changed since 2009 when Battlestar Galactica finished its run. The technology of 2022 is, in many ways, much more personal, with smartphones, Apple watches, fitness trackers, and even smart mattresses that monitor heart rate and sleep patterns. Runaway tech in any of these would be insidious and treacherous. The 2020s see social media, virtual home assistants, smart homes, self-driving cars, and on the cutting edge there are neuromorphic chips, cognitive computing, AI, and quantum teleportation. A new Battlestar Galactica would need to address these advents and how humans relate to them.
Just as its two precursors, a new Battlestar Galactica would draw from the time. The world has experienced a great deal of uncertainty in recent years. A global pandemic created a public health crisis and an economic crisis in many countries. People were left feeling they had little control over their lives. The ensuing vaccination battles further divided an already divided America. Between the chaotic exit from Afghanistan and Russia invading Ukraine there has been crisis and violence in much of the world. The US in particular has seen an increase in mass shootings and an erosion of personal rights. A new Battlestar Galactica would likely explore these areas and, if the rebooted series is any indication, force us to examine things in a different light.
A Battlestar Galactica shared universe is still a few years away. The most recent iteration raised many important questions about the boundaries between good and bad, human and machine, past and present, origin and destiny. It asked questions and challenged assumptions on identity, power, and what it means to be human. A new Battlestar Galactica would need to rise to that and address contemporary concerns.
