Was Caprica always meant as a spin-off? And just how many colonies are there really?
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00Gods, now when it comes to Battlestar Galactica, there's enough myths going on inside the
00:04show, mixed in with legends and half-truths, that adding anything extra to that could just
00:09seem like overkill.
00:11And yet, it's kind of what we do as a species.
00:15With that in mind, I'm Sean Ferrick for WhatCulture, and here are 10 Most Notorious
00:20Battlestar Galactica Urban Legends.
00:23Number 10.
00:24Was Caprica always meant as a spin-off?
00:26Caprica, a prequel set 58 years before the events of Battlestar Galactica, ran for one
00:31season in 2010 before being cancelled due to low ratings.
00:35It charts the creation of the first Cylons by humans, before the androids turned against
00:40them and very nearly wiped them out.
00:41Given the obvious connections, you could be forgiven for thinking that Caprica has never
00:45been envisioned as anything other than a loyal spin-off.
00:48The truth, however, is a bit more complex.
00:50In 2006, 24 screenwriter Remy Aubuchon was already working on a film about artificial
00:56intelligence for Universal, completely unaware of any plans for a BSG prequel series.
01:01When the film proposal was ultimately rejected, Universal put Aubuchon in contact with BSG
01:07showrunners Ronald D. Moore and David Icke, who had begun thinking about a wider BSG universe.
01:12A meeting between the three men resulted in the basic outline of a show.
01:16Had that meeting not occurred, it is possible that what became Caprica would have been a
01:20show completely unrelated to BSG.
01:23As it was, Caprica ended up in development hell following disagreements between the Sci-Fi
01:27channel and Moore before a two-hour pilot was finally greenlit in March 2008.
01:329.
01:33Just how many Battlestars are there?
01:34It's easy to assume that, given that there are 12 colonies of Kobol, that there are only
01:3812 of the flagship Battlestars as well, one for each colony.
01:42This is something backed up by Encyclopædia Galactica, with the non-canonical companion
01:47to the original series that was published in 1979.
01:50It is also mentioned that 12 Battlestars were constructed in the beginning of the 2003 miniseries.
01:55However, to say that there have only been 12 is not true.
02:00In both the original and reimagined series, there was no definitive decision taken over
02:04how many Battlestars actually exist.
02:06Given the sheer length of the conflict with the Cylons, far more would have to be built.
02:11In the years before and during the war with the Cylons, up to 120 Battlestars are constructed.
02:16However, the majority are destroyed following an elaborate Cylon attack which involves remotely
02:22disabling each ship's command navigation program, a strategy that fails to affect Galactica
02:27given how it restricts itself to intra-ship systems only.
02:30At least 30 Battlestars, including the Atlantia, Triton, Solaria, and the Columbia, are lost
02:36in the first Cylon attack.
02:38This loss is what prompts Commander Adama and the Galactica to take charge of the Colonial Fleet.
02:438. Is there a Battlestar named Solaria?
02:46With so many Battlestars constructed and subsequently destroyed, exactly who and what is lost can
02:51be difficult to keep track of, as such fans have started filling gaps themselves, often
02:55borrowing from the offshoots of the original 1978 series.
02:58The Battlestar Solaria is but one example.
03:01A Battlestar by that name doesn't make an appearance in either the original or reimagined series.
03:06However, it is named in the 1978 novelisation of the original run's three-hour premiere,
03:12Saga of a Star World, written by Robert Thurston and the series' creator, Glenn A. Larson.
03:18Although the novel is not canon, the ship's existence in the wider BSG universe has been
03:23somewhat taken for granted despite no visual evidence to back this up.
03:28Since then, the Solaria has become something of a myth.
03:31Like most of the other Battlestars, Solaria makes use of Dr. Gaius Baltar's command navigation
03:35program, all but ensuring its destruction when said program is revealed to be an underhand
03:40Cylon tactic.
03:42Subsequently, while not appearing in the original run at all, the 2003 miniseries names the
03:46Solaria as one of the many Battlestars that is destroyed during the fall of the Twelve
03:51Colonies.
03:527.
03:53Was the reimagined series the first TV reboot attempt?
03:56As the reimagined series is the iteration that has gone down in history, it's easy
04:01to think of it as the only reboot of Glenn A. Larson's original show.
04:04However, Ronald D. Moore's acclaimed creation is, in fact, not the first attempt at reviving
04:10Battlestar Galactica for television, nor will it be the last, as revealed in 2020.
04:14Larson himself was talking about a continuation of the show as early as the 1980s, but it
04:18took another ten years for the prospect to get any closer to becoming reality.
04:23In 1998, Richard Hatch, who played Captain Apollo in the original series, tried to revive
04:28the show himself with a sequel titled The Second Coming.
04:32Hatch racked up at least $50,000 of debt trying to get the project off the ground, and even
04:36released a trailer, but the project never got any further.
04:39Larson, meanwhile, was working on his own reboot, focused on the Battlestar Pegasus.
04:44It was set to be produced by Todd Moyer, but when Moyer's 1999 adaptation of Wing Commander
04:50bombed at the box office, the idea was abandoned.
04:53Pegasus would later play a key role in the reimagined series from the second season onwards.
04:586.
04:59What are the Cylons, an Allegory to Al-Qaeda?
05:02The reimagined Battlestar Galactica is heavily influenced by 9-11, and the political climate
05:07of the real world is felt in every corner of the show.
05:11The tactics that the Cylons use, including the apparent hijacking of the commercial passenger
05:15vessel the Olympic Carrier, directly reference the attacks.
05:19It is too simple, however, to bow to the idea that the Cylons and Al-Qaeda are directly
05:24allegorical.
05:25In a 2006 Rolling Stone interview, Ike warned against such a straightforward interpretation,
05:31saying they, the Cylons, have aspects of Al-Qaeda, and they have aspects of the Catholic Church,
05:37and they have aspects of America.
05:39While the Colonials have a belief system more akin to the polytheistic religion of the Roman
05:43Empire, the Cylons' insistence on the existence of one true god is closer to Catholicism than
05:50anything else.
05:51Moore, meanwhile, stated, back in 2005, that there was as much a parallel to the demise
05:56of paganism in Europe as there was to the modern War on Terror.
06:00Battlestar Galactica is a show of such complexity and depth that straightforward comparisons,
06:05while inviting, prove almost always to be only one part of the narrative.
06:10The undertones of its story are pulled from a wide variety of sources.
06:14Number 5.
06:15Did Marvel publish a BSG comic without permission?
06:18Marvel Super Special Number 8, created by Roger McKenzie and artist Ernie Colon, is
06:23a comic tie-in of the original Battlestar Galactica, later adapted into a three-part
06:28special adapting the TV show in its entirety.
06:31Officially, this is the first of Marvel's adaptations of BSG.
06:34Emphasis on officially.
06:36The same comic was originally published with artwork by Marvel's Bob Larkin, except Marvel
06:42had not acquired the rights for the likeness and script from Universal.
06:45When they found out, Universal were on the phone to Marvel, ordering them to pull the
06:49comic until they had given their approval.
06:51The studio subsequently gave the thumbs up, but not until after hundreds of thousands
06:55of copies of the original had been pulped.
06:58So far from being the first comic tie-in with BSG, Marvel Super Special Number 8 is instead
07:04the first comic tie-in that Marvel actually had permission to publish.
07:08The editor responsible, Richard Marshall, later left Marvel.
07:11As an aside, the pilot script from which the illicit comic was adapted from originally
07:16saw Dr. Gaius Baltar killed off.
07:18In both the original and remastered series, Baltar survives and is given a much more prominent
07:23role to play in the story of the colonists' survival.
07:26Number 4, has Triad always been a card game?
07:29Far from being a total revision, more in Ike's Battlestar Galactica contains some throwbacks
07:33to the original series.
07:35One example is a card game called Triad, which uses a 55-count deck of hexagonal cards and
07:40Pyramid, a close-quarter sport that is a sort of fusion between football, basketball, and rugby.
07:46Starbuck and Anders bond over a game of Pyramid in Resistance, the fourth episode of season 2.
07:51You would be forgiven for thinking that these are just direct lifts from the 1978 series,
07:56except Moore accidentally swapped the two around.
07:58So in the beginning, Pyramid was in fact the card game, and Triad was the sport.
08:04The cards used to have pyramids on them, but in the reimagined series, these seem to have
08:08been replaced with stars.
08:10Such is the popularity of both games since Moore and Ike's series was released that
08:14it's easy to forget this.
08:15Further entrenching the error, as fact, is the release of Triad playing cards that fans
08:20of the show can buy.
08:21Pyramid has been recreated by some faithful fans and rules are available online, but it's
08:26safe to say it hasn't taken off quite in the same way as Quidditch, for example.
08:30Number 3, the Final Five are Cylons, right?
08:33The Final Five are a collection of Cylon humanoids whose existence has been forgotten even by
08:39most of the Cylon race.
08:40The final season of Battlestar Galactica features the question of what a Cylon really is as
08:45one of its key themes.
08:46Stemming from this disconcerting and, as it turns out, unpredictable investigation is
08:51one peculiar theory that the Final Five are not Cylons at all.
08:56The Final Five are later identified as descendants of an ancient tribe of robot humanoids created
09:01by humans thousands of years ago.
09:03They seem to be either creations of the Lords of Kobol in their image, or immortal skinjob
09:09resurrections of the Lords themselves.
09:11Either way, the Final Five needing to be created and recognised by other Cylons in order to
09:17be Cylons is not actually true.
09:19If this sounds complicated, it's because it is.
09:21Moore tried to clarify things by saying, the conceptual framework in which these guys are
09:26Cylons, it all sort of works once we laid down their individual backstories, but they
09:31are different fundamentally.
09:33Whether this actually helps to clear up any confusion is debatable, but it certainly puts
09:36the rumour of the Final Five not being Cylons to bed.
09:40Number 2.
09:41Is Starbuck a native Caprican?
09:43One of Battlestar Galactica's flagship characters, and one who has been described as one of the
09:48most complex female protagonists in TV history, Kara Starbuck-Thrace is a fan favourite.
09:54In the reimagined series, we only ever see Starbuck on Caprica, on Galactica, or in the
09:59skies shooting down Cylons, but her origins are never actually revealed.
10:03Was she born and raised on Caprica, as the show would lead us to believe?
10:06The series bible, published by Moore in 2003, reveals that Starbuck was actually born on
10:10Picon, one of the other twelve colonies.
10:13However, growing up as a military brat meant she spent most of her childhood moving between
10:17the different military bases and installations.
10:19As such, she spent very little time on Picon, and isn't particularly attached to it.
10:23It could be that Starbuck is like Baltar in considering themselves a naturalised Caprican,
10:28having lived there for the largest part of her life.
10:30However, while such an explanation is plausible, it's never answered beyond a shadow of a doubt.
10:35Of greater importance, though, is the sense of belonging and loyalty that Starbuck exercises
10:39in the presence of her crewmates, traits that have helped to make her character legendary.
10:44Number 1.
10:45Was Blood and Chrome always meant as a webseries?
10:48To date, the most recent TV entry in the BSG universe, Battlestar Galactica Blood and Chrome,
10:54focuses on Commander Adama in his youth, and just after he graduated from Flight Academy.
10:59It was first released as a ten-episode series on the now-defunct Makinima Inc.
11:04This was not, however, the path that Blood and Chrome was always going to take.
11:08Syfy first made the announcement in 2010 that a two-hour pilot had been greenlit for production.
11:13A year later, their president of original programming, Mark Stern, suggested that the
11:17show could in fact be a webseries instead of giving it a more conventional TV slot.
11:22A deadline confirmed in March 2012 that the series would be online only, despite Richard
11:27Hatch and Janus Benson, a writer on the reimagined series, both saying that they believed a TV
11:33deal was still on the table.
11:34It was not to be, and while Blood and Chrome was certainly not always envisioned as an
11:38online release, that is ultimately how it ended up.
11:41Still, all the episodes were later combined into a movie which was broadcast on Syfy in
11:46February 2013.
11:47DVD and Blu-ray releases of the series followed shortly after.
11:51That's everything for our list.
11:52Do you reckon we missed anything?
11:53Let us know in the comments below.
11:54Thank you very much again to the original author of this article, make sure you give
11:57it a check out, and thank you very much to our wonderful editor for making this look
12:01pretty.
12:02Everyone remember that you can catch us over on Twitter at WopCulture, and you can catch
12:05myself at Sean Farrick on Twitter as well.
12:08Make sure that you look after yourselves and you look after everyone around you.
12:11So say we all.