Battlestar Galactica getting rebooted (again) for NBS's streaming service

Maybe it's a stupid question, but why did 9/11 stop the project? Maybe it seemed like the story of a civilization swept away seemed too morbid in that period?

 

Actually it did air and it wasn't a movie. It was a pilot for a series that wasn't picked up, and after they decided not the move forward with the series, they aired the pilot as a one off special, I think around Halloween. I watch and enjoyed it, and was disappointed we never got more of it.

 

I think that was one of the major factors, yes. TOS BSG had an element of Perl Harbor baked into its DNA, with the whole sneak attack thing. But it was over 30 years after the event occurred. 9/11 has been forever considered a Perl Harbor-like attack and the dark tones of such a sneak attack, even a fictional one, seemed a little too on-the-nose at the time. Ironically, only a year or so later, after things had cooled, RDM used that same concept to sell his version to Universal, contributing to its generally darker tone. That, plus his own lackluster experience with Voyager in the preceding decade, he really wanted to embrace the dark to portray a more realistic picture of humans, on their own, in the middle of nowhere, trying to survive complete annihilation from a foe that thoroughly hates their very existence.

Ah! My mistake. I misread the information about it. Makes sense.

 

Thanks!
By the way, this is the most comprehensive article on Singer's BSG that I have been able to find online.

The BSG That Almost Was

 

That's a good one. It's a shame a lot of the photos seem to be broken. It has become ancient history now.

 

I wonder if a straight continuation of the original series would have worked. Even if fans thought so at the time, BSG wasn't exactly as famous as Star Trek and sci-fi series are expensive. But of course we will never know

 

Yeeeeeep!

 

After having gone back and done the research, 5 years was an extremely kind assessment on my part…

 

Thanks Lord of Kobol for Wayback Machine!!!
You can find all the images here

https://web.archive.org/web/20200202003140/https://tombsofkobol.com/bsg/bsg-desanto-01.html

 

I'm trying to empathize with a studio executive (AH!) and I can understand their hypothetical doubts. Galactica fandom isn't exactly comparable to that of Star Trek, Star Wars or Doctor Who. The nostalgia effect alone can do little. And look how the Quantum Leap relaunch/reboot went. And I imagine that a new BSG would be expensive to produce. RDM's version was successful because:

1) it was absolutely enjoyable even by those who hadn't even heard of BSG TOS
2) It was, well, good!

Personally I think that a straight sequel would be a failure and the big shots who have to decide know this too. Yet another reboot? Why? I think this hypothetical money could be invested in something that has a better chance of success.

 

Do you remember when the RDM reboot was announced and fans of the classic series exploded in uncontrollable fury? All twelve of them? Really, they actually believed that TOS Galactica was a Star Trek-like phenomenon and they could not understand why it was not done as a sequel.

And even when they did TNG it wasn't a straight sequel of TOS! But they still wanted a bona-fide continuation of the original BSG with the same characters!

 

My absolute favorite was one reviewer who had a real bee in his bonnet about nuBSG leaning towards contemporary touches in production design, and his sarcastic amazement that, in “Flesh and Bone,” they used a metal space-bucket instead of a normal plastic one with the floppy metal handle.

 

Battlestar Galactica showed fandom a better way

After screening the footage — which was met with boos — Moore took increasingly heated questions from fans, one of whom asked, point-blank, whether he would take their criticisms into consideration if the miniseries was a success and the new Battlestar was ordered to series. Moore answered, “No.” He and his team had their own vision for the show, their own story they wanted to tell, and the fans could either take it or leave it.

Twenty years later, Moore and Eick’s Battlestar Galactica has totally eclipsed the original. Though mostly ignored by the Emmys (this was before they paid attention to genre shows), BSG was a critical darling that garnered mainstream attention, a Peabody Award, and an invitation for its stars and creators to address the United Nations. It still ranks among one of the greatest TV shows of all time.

In short, the fans were wrong, and if Moore had bowed to their demands, we’d all have missed out on something special.

Yeah, fans are the worst. I mean, look at Star Wars ones!

 

Or Star Trek ones.

I think TNG was extremely fortunate to have started before the invention of the internet, otherwise it would have been completely destroyed by a democratized fanbase. When everyone has a voice, it gets real loud, real quick. The irony there is, SNW is now one of the most popular (if not THE most popular) present-day Trek incarnations. The fans back in '87 wanted more TOS-era Trek, as they felt it would be more popular than a whole new crew 80 years into the future. As it turns out, they may have been right after all.

 

Agreed. I have always felt that G1980 greatly diminished many of the hidden gems that laid within the DNA of TOS.

 

Battlestar rebooted....as Star Trek?

 

Did any of this make it into the follow up comics that have been published?

 

I'm still waiting to find out how I subscribe to NBS.