Battlestar Galactica is an American military sci-fi television series. It is part of the Battlestar Galactica TV series. Ronald D. Moore developed the show and David Eick executive produced it. The series is a reimagining of Glen A. Larson's 1978 Battlestar Galactica television program. The series' pilot aired in three-hour segments on December 2003. It was followed by four seasons on Sci-Fi Channel. The series ended its run on March 20, 2009. Mary McDonnell and Katee Sackhoff are among the cast. Tricia Helfer, Tricia Helfer, Edward James Olmos, Mary McDonnell and Tricia Callis also star in the series.
Critical acclaim was received at the time and thereafter, including a Peabody Award from the Television Critics Association's Program of the Year Award, placement in Time's 100 Best TV Shows of All-Time, 19 Emmy nominations and three Emmy wins for sound editing and visual effects. The New York Times listed the show as one of its "The 20 Greatest TV Dramas since The Sopranos" in 2019, a period that many critics refer to as "the golden age" of television.
Battlestar Galactica takes place in a distant starsystem, where a civilisation of humans lives on a group planet known as the Twelve Colonies. The Colonies were at war in the past with the Cylons, an android race created by them. The Cylons launch an unexpected sneak attack on the Colonies with the help of Gaius Baltar (a human scientist). This causes destruction to their planets and decimates their population. There are only about 50,000 survivors of the attack, out of a population that numbers several billion. Most of them were on civilian spaceships that were not directly affected by the initial attacks. The Battlestar Galactica, which appears to have been the only military capital ship that survived an attack by the Colonial Fleet, is the only one. The Colonial Fleet officer Commander William "Bill" Adama, President Laura Roslin (McDonnell) lead the Galactica and its crew into space to search for a small fugitive colony called Earth.