Battlestar Galactica

Happy 40th anniversary to Battlestar Galactica.

It began as a blatant Star Wars ripoff - the pilot was called Saga Of A Star World and they got Ralph McQuarrie in to do concept art and design sketches and John Dykstra to head the model photography - with a twist borrowed from a classic episode of The Twilight Zone. But the nature of TV at the time had it veer more towards a Star Trek planet-of-the-week show almost immediately. (It also had female Viper pilots, putting it ahead of the original trilogy... though everybody involved seemed really reluctant about it.)

And then another creative team did something very different with the core concept in 2004. And they had a plan. Well, sort of. Originally intended to be fairly episodic as well, it became much more serialised, as well as much more grounded (with a few sometimes jarring exceptions) as a series focused on one consistent threat, and thematically about how people deal with life in a state of war.

Along the way, it’s inspired gaming directly and indirectly like an official RPG for the 2004 revival and a hit board game balancing resource management and guessing who’s really a Cylon, and a blockbuster LARP first played on an actual naval ship.

I binged it while planning my own military-SF-about-one-threat game The Stars On Fire, for example. I also stole bits of the percussive Bear McCreary soundtrack for the revival for game trailer videos, and if I ever do one for Vampire: The Dark Ages I’ll go for one of the mad bagpipes bits...