50 Fun Facts About Battlestar Galactica

Who created the original 1978 Battlestar Galactica?

A Latter-day Saint, he wove Mormon ideas into the show: a council of twelve, a lost thirteenth tribe and a planet called Kobol, an anagram of Kolob.

Which Bonanza star led the cast of the 1978 series as Commander Adama?

Richard Hatch played Apollo and Dirk Benedict played Starbuck; Hatch returned to the reimagined series as the terrorist-turned-politician Tom Zarek.

In June 1978, which studio sued Universal claiming Battlestar Galactica had stolen 34 ideas from Star Wars?

Universal countersued, claiming Star Wars had itself borrowed from its 1972 film Silent Running and the Buck Rogers serials.

After how many episodes was the original series cancelled due to high costs and falling ratings?

ABC tried a cheaper follow-up, Galactica 1980, which lasted ten episodes; Richard Hatch turned down a script for it.

In the 1978 series, who created the Cylons?

The reimagined series flipped this: its Cylons are humanity's own creation, which is the whole point of the show.

Who developed the 2004 'reimagined' Battlestar Galactica?

A Star Trek veteran, he ran it with David Eick after the three-hour December 2003 miniseries and won a Peabody for it.

The humans of the reimagined series live on a group of planets known as what?

Kobol is the ancestral homeworld the colonists left; the fleet later finds it and its Tomb of Athena on the way to Earth.

Roughly how many humans survive the Cylon attack on the Colonies?

The running tally on Roslin's whiteboard became one of the show's grimmest recurring images.

Why did Galactica survive the attack when the rest of the fleet was crippled?

Its outdated, un-networked computers were immune to the Cylon virus that disabled the newer battlestars.

Which actor plays Commander William Adama in the reimagined series?

An Oscar nominee for Stand and Deliver, he was Blade Runner's Gaff and Miami Vice's Lieutenant Castillo before taking the bridge.

What was Adama's callsign as a young Viper pilot?

The web series Blood & Chrome follows the young Adama during the First Cylon War.

Before the attack, President Laura Roslin held which cabinet post?

She was 43rd in line; her swearing-in aboard Colonial One deliberately echoed Lyndon Johnson's after the Kennedy assassination.

Mary McDonnell, who plays Roslin, was Oscar-nominated for playing Stands With A Fist in which film?

Her second nomination was for Passion Fish; she was also the First Lady in Independence Day.

Which actress plays Kara 'Starbuck' Thrace?

The gender switch drew a backlash, including from original Starbuck Dirk Benedict; she later played Bo-Katan in The Mandalorian.

According to a prophecy, Starbuck is the 'Harbinger of Death' who will do what?

She dies, comes back inexplicably, and in the finale leads the fleet to a new planet before vanishing.

Which scientist unwittingly gives the Cylons access to the Colonial defence mainframe?

James Callis plays him; a Number Six later produces photos of him carrying a device into the mainframe on Caprica.

Which actress plays Six, the blonde humanoid Cylon who seduces Baltar?

The copy who compromised the colonies is nicknamed 'Caprica Six' and treated as a hero by other Cylons.

Grace Park plays the Eight model, whose copies include Boomer and which other Raptor pilot?

Athena marries Helo and their daughter Hera becomes the key to the whole series.

Which slur do some humans use for the Cylon Centurions?

'Skinjob' is reserved for the humanoid models, borrowed from Blade Runner, in which Olmos also appeared.

Brother Cavil, the priest played by Dean Stockwell, is which numbered Cylon model?

Dean Stockwell plays him; he hides the identities of the Final Five from the other models.

Which four of the Final Five are revealed in the season three finale 'Crossroads'?

The fifth, Ellen Tigh, is resurrected in 'No Exit' with her memories as creator of the numbered models restored.

In the first regular episode, '33', how often must the fleet jump to stay ahead of the Cylons?

The crew go days without sleep and finally have to destroy one of their own ships; the episode won the 2005 Hugo Award.

Baltar wins the presidency from Roslin by promising to do what?

The settlement is a disaster: the Cylons arrive, occupy the planet, and season three opens as an allegory of Iraq.

Which second surviving battlestar, commanded by Admiral Helena Cain, joins the fleet in season two?

Michelle Forbes played Cain, and the 2007 TV movie Razor told the ship's story before it met Galactica.

Which two-hour TV movie about Admiral Cain's battlestar took up the first two slots of the season four order?

It aired in November 2007 and got a limited cinema run; the rest of the season was split in two by the writers' strike.

Which composer scored more than 70 episodes of the reimagined series?

Richard Gibbs did the miniseries; the score used taiko drums, duduk, erhu and bansuri, and even spawned a ballet in Hagen, Germany.

Which Dylan song, in a Hendrix arrangement, plays over the closing montage of 'Daybreak'?

Its notes turn out to be the jump coordinates that Starbuck enters to take the fleet to Earth.

In the finale, the fleet's survivors settle on a new planet and do what with their ships?

The surviving Centurions get the last Basestar and jump away; the planet turns out to be our Earth 150,000 years ago.

The 'Daybreak' rescue mission is launched to retrieve which child from the Cylon colony?

The half-human, half-Cylon girl is being studied for how Cylons might reproduce; the colony sits beside a black hole.

Where are the angelic Baltar and Six walking in the very last scene?

They watch robots and gadgets and repeat the show's refrain: all of this has happened before, but does it have to happen again?

Which prequel spin-off, set 58 years before the main series, shows how humanity first built the Cylons?

It follows the Adama and Graystone families and lasted a single season in 2010.

Blood & Chrome, following the young Adama in the First Cylon War, was first released in 2012 as what?

The ten-minute episodes went out on Machinima.com before Syfy stitched them into a TV movie in February 2013.

Which prestigious broadcasting prize did the reimagined series win?

It also collected 19 Emmy nominations, winning three for visual effects and sound editing.

Which international body hosted a Battlestar Galactica retrospective in March 2009?

The panel discussed the show's treatment of terrorism, torture and human rights; Olmos famously declared 'so say we all' to the room.

Where was the reimagined series filmed?

The city doubled for Caprica and hosted the standing Galactica sets from the miniseries onward.

The reimagined series has no humanoid aliens and its weapons fire what instead of lasers?

The show also deliberately avoided technobabble, one of Moore's reactions to his years on Star Trek.

Which original-series actor returned in the reimagining as the political extremist Tom Zarek?

He had played Apollo in 1978 and became vice-president under Baltar in the new show.

Which ex-ILM effects artist handled the original 1978 series' visual effects through his company Apogee?

His team had stayed in Van Nuys rather than follow Lucas north to San Rafael, and eventually surrendered its equipment to ILM.

Which Canadian actor plays Colonel Saul Tigh, Galactica's hard-drinking XO?

Tigh loses an eye on New Caprica and turns out to be one of the Final Five, to his considerable disgust.

Starbuck's actress later played which Mandalorian character in The Mandalorian?

She had already voiced the character in The Clone Wars and Rebels before playing her in live action.

Season four's 20 regular episodes were split into two halves because of what?

The gap was bridged by the webisodes The Face of the Enemy; the finale aired on 20 March 2009.

Before Galactica, the reimagined series' developer was a producer on which Star Trek series?

He joined DS9 in its third season and rose to co-executive producer; he later created Outlander and For All Mankind.

Time magazine described the reimagined series as a gripping allegory of what?

Sleeper cells, civil-liberties crackdowns and a prisoner-torture scandal all featured; the New Caprica arc read as an occupied Iraq.

Where do the first group of survivors settle in the finale's flash-forward?

Modern humans are shown to descend from the colonists, their Cylon allies and the tribal humans already there.

What did Glen A. Larson originally call the premise that became Battlestar Galactica?

Larson said he conceived it in the late 1960s, and as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints he wove Mormon themes into the show.

The 1978 pilot's ABC premiere was interrupted by a special report on the signing of what?

Two-thirds of the way through, viewers cut to Begin, Sadat and Carter at the White House; the interruption did not happen on the West Coast.

In which sound format was the $8 million 1978 pilot released to cinemas?

An edited version hit cinemas in Canada, Japan and parts of Europe in July 1978, months before the TV premiere, to help recoup its huge cost.

In the original series' Colonial vocabulary, what unit of time is a 'centon'?

The invented lexicon ran from micron (under a second) through centar (hour), secton (week) and yahren (year), plus insults such as 'daggit dribble'.

To save money, Galactica 1980 recycled a Cylon attack sequence from which 1974 disaster movie?

The low-budget sequel was set mostly on contemporary Earth and aired on Sunday evenings against 60 Minutes, and fans quickly abandoned it.

Which British broadcaster co-funded the reimagined series and premiered it in October 2004?

North America had to wait until January 2005 on the Sci-Fi Channel, though NBC aired an edited pilot miniseries five days before that premiere.