Battlestar Galactica gets a Reboot... again. Only on Peacock!

[tezunegari]

The new NBCUniversal streaming service that the company said Tuesday would be called Peacock will launch in April 2020 with original content that includes series reboots from the NBCU library among its fare. That list includes the return of a sci-fi classic: a new Battlestar Galactica, billed as an original series from Mr. Robot and Homecoming executive producer Sam Esmail.

Not much is revealed about the premise, but we hear Esmail is a huge fan of BG and told NBCU brass it was high on a list of titles he wanted to tackle under the mega new four-year overall deal he closed at NBCU’s Universal Content Productions earlier this year.

NBCU’s Universal produced the original Glen A. Larson-created Battlestar Galactica series for ABC, and NBC Universal TV produced the successful Ronald D. Moore-commanded revamp that ran from 2004-2009 on the then-Sci-Fi Channel. We hear Esmail had been in touch with Moore, who blessed the idea of him taking on the franchise, because of Esmail’s passion for Moore’s version of the show.

As for the premise, here is what is rumored as a possible plot of the series. In the seventh millennium A.D., in a galaxy very far away, a thousand-year-old war rages: that of humanity versus the Cylons, a mechanical race of beings. When the humans’ twelve planets are destroyed by a Cylon invasion force, the survivors flee in 220 spaceships following the Galactica — a gigantic battlestar spaceship — in a search for a “thirteenth” planet, an obscure little world known in folklore as “Earth.”

Esmail currently executive produces three series for UCP: Mr. Robot, which he created; anthology Briarpatch, starring Rosario Dawson (both for USA Network); and Amazon’s Homecoming. He already has a number of series in development at the studio, including two high-profile limited series: Metropolis, based on Fritz Lang’s 1927 science fiction classic, and Angelyne, starring his wife Emmy Rossum.

But there had been no word before today on Battlestar Galactica, the property that was created by Larson riding the success of the original Star Wars. The plot centered on the last group of humans on the verge of extinction after a series of wars with a robot race, The Cylons, destroyed the Twelve Colonies. All the humans are left in one remaining battleship group, anchored by the Galactica, as they search for their last option for survival: a fabled Thirteenth Colony known as Earth.

The series ran on ABC for just one season in 1978-79 starring Richard Hatch, Dirk Benedict and Lorne Greene as Commander Adama, followed by a short-lived sequel that lasted 10 episodes in 1980. But it did spawn several book and comics series, a board game and a video game as it gained cult status, if not commercial success.

Moore resuscitated the franchise with a three-hour Sci-Fi Channel miniseries in 2003 produced by Universal TV and starring Edward James Olmos in Greene’s commander role. Mary McConnell, Katee Sackoff and Grace Park also starred and the success led to a series order. That Battlestar Galactica, a critical hit, ran four seasons. A prequel spinoff to Moore’s series, Caprica, was canceled with five episodes remaining in its sole season. Several TV movies followed.

It’s unclear where in the BSG universe Esmail would go with the newly announced reboot. NBCU announced numerous Peacock-bound series with similar few details Tuesday, including reboots of Saved By the Bell, from 30 Rock executive producer Tracey Wigfield and featuring original cast members including Elizabeth Berkley and Mario Lopez, and Punky Brewster starring Soleil Moon Frye.

New and original series, movies and library titles are all part of the Peacock mix. The streaming service will launch with more than 15,000 hours of content, the company said.

And yet another streaming service... (who'll get the international distribution rights,Netflix or Amazon?)

[LadyTevar]

Fuck 'em. Not gonna bother.

[Solauren]

What Lady Tevar said.

But, could this be the start of a trend of the big networks moving to their own streaming service, cutting off local stations from content?

[bilateralrope]

Honestly, I like this trend of the companies paying to create TV shows hosting the shows on their own streaming services. It beats the mess I've had trying to figure out which of the NZ streaming services are offering which show.


Though time will tell which ones I'm permanently subscribed to and which I only subscribe when they have an interesting show to watch.

[LadyTevar]

Honestly, I like this trend of the companies paying to create TV shows hosting the shows on their own streaming services. It beats the mess I've had trying to figure out which of the NZ streaming services are offering which show.


Though time will tell which ones I'm permanently subscribed to and which I only subscribe when they have an interesting show to watch.

It's already getting to the point people won't want to pay for multiple streaming.

[Elheru Aran]

What Lady Tevar said.

But, could this be the start of a trend of the big networks moving to their own streaming service, cutting off local stations from content?

That's probably not gonna happen for some time, but what you might start seeing is more local stations going TO streaming. So if you have a NBC subscription, you can pick the 'Local Broadcast' to catch your news (or perhaps the local broadcast is a default setting, determined by your info) and then you can just pick whatever you want to watch. Something like that.

But increasingly a lot of people aren't bothering with broadcast television anymore; I don't. If they get any local channels, it's via whatever their provider gives them, not airwaves. So that's why I think they might start broadcasting stuff via streaming rather than airwaves.

[Elheru Aran]

Honestly, I like this trend of the companies paying to create TV shows hosting the shows on their own streaming services. It beats the mess I've had trying to figure out which of the NZ streaming services are offering which show.


Though time will tell which ones I'm permanently subscribed to and which I only subscribe when they have an interesting show to watch.

It's already getting to the point people won't want to pay for multiple streaming.

Give it time, TVs will get 'smart' enough that they're basically like low-end PCs, and with stuff like Alexa incorporated, you can use all-in-one services like Fire TV or Roku to watch whatever on the same TV. Still have to pay for separate services, but it's easier. We'll see a sort of return to the status quo where there's only a few really big providers (Netflix, Hulu, Prime, etc) plus stuff that's sort of like all the extra channels on cable TV that's there if you want it.

[Iroscato]

Looking forward to pirating this. Fuck the "every studio having a separate streaming service" business model.

I did hear tell that it won't actually be a reboot, but exist within the nuBSG continuity which I have more truck with. I really need to finish the series actually, I was enjoying it but the heavy religious overtones was doing me in a bit.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I am tentatively interested but I will reserve judgment until we get more details or a trailer.

Though from the description given of a thousand-year war, I'm pretty sure this will be oBSG revamped not nBSG. Which is fine with me, I'm already writing a fanfic with old-school Battlestars with frickin laser beams, seeing something like that but with modern VFX would be cool.

[bilateralrope]

Honestly, I like this trend of the companies paying to create TV shows hosting the shows on their own streaming services. It beats the mess I've had trying to figure out which of the NZ streaming services are offering which show.


Though time will tell which ones I'm permanently subscribed to and which I only subscribe when they have an interesting show to watch.

It's already getting to the point people won't want to pay for multiple streaming.

That's always the case when you've got competition. Most people won't be buying from every competitor. So now they get to make a choice about which shows they think are worth paying for.

[Gandalf]

Then the less successful ones are eaten by more successful competition, making choice easier.

[bilateralrope]

True. I just hope that some combination of government intervention and some of the companies being too big to easily buy keeps a monopoly from forming.

[ray245]

I am tentatively interested but I will reserve judgment until we get more details or a trailer.

Though from the description given of a thousand-year war, I'm pretty sure this will be oBSG revamped not nBSG. Which is fine with me, I'm already writing a fanfic with old-school Battlestars with frickin laser beams, seeing something like that but with modern VFX would be cool.

I'm not sure if the write-up was done by someone who clearly understood which series the new remake will be basing off from, or did the writer just copy and paste the first stuff they can find on google/wikipedia.

What I hope for in the nnBSG is they include some alien civilisation. Or at the very least various OTHER human civilisation spread across the galaxy for the rag-tag fleet to deal and interact with. Otherwise it will be a boring universe in the long run.

nBSG suffered from a problem of not having a decent expanded universe because there is nothing else besides the Cylons and humans. It reduced the stories available to tell. You can't have stories about other aliens refusing to allow the colonials to migrate into their worlds out of xenophobia, nor can you have stories of space geo-politics.

Given that migration has become a bigger issue in recent years, having a sci-fi series about a bunch of refugees actually dealing with societies that don't accept them can make it quite relevant in the current political context.

[Gandalf]

nBSG suffered from a problem of not having a decent expanded universe because there is nothing else besides the Cylons and humans. It reduced the stories available to tell. You can't have stories about other aliens refusing to allow the colonials to migrate into their worlds out of xenophobia, nor can you have stories of space geo-politics.

Sure you can. Have the fleet more fractured and focus on those fractures more than the drama on Galactica.

Given that migration has become a bigger issue in recent years, having a sci-fi series about a bunch of refugees actually dealing with societies that don't accept them can make it quite relevant in the current political context.

Couldn't that be done by having the fleet come across another ship (like with Pegasus) filled with people from an unpopular part of society?

[ray245]

Sure you can. Have the fleet more fractured and focus on those fractures more than the drama on Galactica.

Unless you have more than one battlestar, any splinter fleets will be weaker than the main fleet and are probably doomed in the long run. It doesn't exactly make them viable societies.

I would rather have alien civilisation that might have been former allies of the colonials ( the oBSG implied the Cylons and the Colonials were the 2 major superpowers in the region, with the colonials getting involved in the war against the Cylons by coming to the aid of their allies), strong enough to avoid complete extermination by the Cylons, but not powerful enough to resist diplomatic pressure of the Cylons to harbour the colonials in their worlds.

There is some small hints of that in oBSG, and I would have loved to see a writing team make full use of this to actually craft out a viable galaxy with different aliens and civilisations.

Couldn't that be done by having the fleet come across another ship (like with Pegasus) filled with people from an unpopular part of society?

It doesn't allow the main protagonist to be the unpopular people in the eyes of others. I would prefer stories that offers a POV of the people who are denied asylum, and not a pov of the people denying asylum to others.

[Elheru Aran]

Introducing aliens to BSG would be pretty controversial, I think, given that AFAIK there was never any appearance of aliens in either the old or new series. The series is pretty much focused on humans vs Cylons, and introducing a third faction would dilute that.

One viable way to explore it might be to roll with the notion that the Gods of Kobol were actually alien progenitors, but *that* is a pretty hoary sci-fi cliche...

[Iroscato]

Stargate is an example of a franchise that was able to successfully expand well beyond the scope of its genesis - SG1 introduced several new races and factions who weighed in on the original humans vs Goa-uld (who weren't even named in the original movie) conflict. But the difference was the movie already had an alien in it, I suppose. I don't know how they would go about a similar expansion in BSG as the entire point of the show was to tell the story of how humans came to live on Earth. Also it's a flat out retelling of the Book of Mormon from what I understand so that might limit it.

[Bedlam]

Introducing aliens to BSG would be pretty controversial, I think, given that AFAIK there was never any appearance of aliens in either the old or new series. The series is pretty much focused on humans vs Cylons, and introducing a third faction would dilute that.

One viable way to explore it might be to roll with the notion that the Gods of Kobol were actually alien progenitors, but *that* is a pretty hoary sci-fi cliche...

I think there might have been some in oBSG, although I don't think much was said about them. I remember something about a neutral party world in the first episode which had a sort of Cantina feel with all sorts of rubber faced alien types in it which I think sold our hero's out to the Cylons. Maybe they were supposed to be human offshoots but I sort of recall them being aliens.

[Eternal_Freedom]

The Oovions showed up in the initial few episodes. There is also mention of "The Delvian Empire" in "Living Legend" that was a separate civilisation of sentient beings wiped out by the Cylons.

[ray245]

There's also the ship of the lights aliens. The idea of there being no aliens whatsoever is very much a creation of nBSG. In hindsight, the lack of any alien civilisation is a big reason why nBSG failed to have a bigger universe.

Even if there is no aliens, there is plenty of lost human civilisations to play with. oBSG played around with this concept with the Terrans, people from the mining worlds and etc.

[Knife]

IIRC, the old BSG novel talked about how the Colonials were in a war with the Cylon's because they stood up to the Cylon's when they were attacking another culture. Also, the Cylon's in the OBSG were robots created by actual reptilian Cylon race who has since died out but their war machine continued on without them. Then there were the bug guys on episode 2 of the show who were taking humans from the casino on the surface and entombing them (to eat?) in the catacombs below. Starbuck and Apollo find this out and saved Caseopea.

[WhiteLion]

I liked BSG on average, alternating moments that were very engaging with moments of fatal boredom. In any case, I think I'll definitely see it

[LadyTevar]

Introducing aliens to BSG would be pretty controversial, I think, given that AFAIK there was never any appearance of aliens in either the old or new series. The series is pretty much focused on humans vs Cylons, and introducing a third faction would dilute that.

One viable way to explore it might be to roll with the notion that the Gods of Kobol were actually alien progenitors, but *that* is a pretty hoary sci-fi cliche...

I think there might have been some in oBSG, although I don't think much was said about them. I remember something about a neutral party world in the first episode which had a sort of Cantina feel with all sorts of rubber faced alien types in it which I think sold our hero's out to the Cylons. Maybe they were supposed to be human offshoots but I sort of recall them being aliens.

In oBSG, the first planet they came to belonged to an insectoid race that mined the fuel spaceships ran on, and also ran a casino that hid the fact the insectoids were kidnapping victims to use for food. Besides the insectoids (which iirc were a hive-mind), there were several aliens in the Casino, like a singer with 4 eyes and two mouths (possibly more arms?). The singer breaks Starbuck's drink glass by singing two notes together.

As for the Beings of Light, Apollo and Starbuck find Count Iblis at the wreck of a starship. We never fully saw what was inside the ship, but there were bodies that looked non-Human. The Beings of Light confirm that Iblis has full reign over what he does to those who believe and follow him (free will?), and IIRC imply Iblis had done this to many other races, including the lizard Cylons.

Speaking of Cylons, the Cylon Emperor was cast in the image of the original Lizards with the pointed face and feather/fur cloak.

[Adam Reynolds]

I really wonder what they could do that wouldn't feel repetitive at this point. One idea I think might have some merit is something akin to the Reaper cycle in Mass Effect, in which it is actually made a plot point that this story has already occurred before more than once.

[FaxModem1]

Well, they could pull a Westworld, and have everything from the perspective of the Cylons, and have the humans being guys you want to see wiped out by the machines because of how awful they treat the cylons.