Battlestar Galactica showed fandom a better way
Twenty years ago, writer-producer Ronald D. Moore refused to give a crowd of angry, disappointed science fiction nerds what they wanted.
This was Galacticon in Los Angeles, a conference organized by actor Richard Hatch in honor of the 25th anniversary of Battlestar Galacticathe first broadcast. Hatch had spent the past eight years amassing fans of the 1978 space opera in which he played the daring colonial warrior Apollo, hoping to convince Universal that the property was ripe for a revival. And Hatch wasn't messing around – according So we all say: the complete, uncensored, unauthorized oral history of Battlestar Galactica by Mark A. Altman and Edward Gross, Hatch spent $50,000 out of his own pocket to make a proof-of-concept short film called Battlestar Galactica: The Second Coming. It was essentially a pilot for a sequel series that would see him and a few other actors from the original reprise their roles alongside a new generation of characters. The second coming was exactly the kind of “legacy sequel” that would become popular years later in the 2010s, and fans fully supported it, with many even donating their own costume, prop, and visual effects expertise to the project . A trailer was shown at conventions in 1999 to what Hatch described as standing ovations.
What Moore showed for fans at Galacticon in October 2003 was met with a considerably cooler reception. (“Polite, but hostile,” like Kate O'Hare described it in the LA Times.) Moore had come up with five minutes of footage of the completely new film Battlestar Galactica miniseries that was set to premiere on cable in December. The audience knew better than to get their hopes up, and that includes Moore. He and co-producer David Eick's script for the miniseries was leaked before filming had even begun, and fans had been voicing their dismay ever since. Moore and Eick's Battlestar Galactica bore little resemblance to the heartfelt and pulpy original from 1978. This was a grimy, naturalistic military science fiction show with lots of blood, sex and dark politics. It rejected the existing continuity and, most unforgivably of all, rearranged it Galactica's roguish pilot Starbuck as a woman. As far as most of the assembled fans were concerned, this was not the case Battlestar Galactica.
After screening the footage – which was met with boos – Moore fielded increasingly heated questions from fans, one of whom asked point-blank whether he would consider their criticism if the miniseries were a success and the new film a success would become. Battlestar was ordered to go into series. Moore replied, “No.” He and his team had their own vision for the show, their own story they wanted to tell, and the fans could take it or leave it.
Twenty years later, Moore and Eick's Battlestar Galactica has completely overshadowed the original. Although largely ignored by the Emmys (this was before they paid attention to genre shows), BSG used to be a critical treasure that received mainstream attention, a Peabody Award and an invitation for its stars and creators to do so address the United Nations. It still belongs there one of the best TV shows of all time.
In short, the fans were wrong, and if Moore had heeded their demands, we would all have missed something special.
Something like that feels like it could never happen in today's pop culture ecosystem. This isn't to say that Hollywood studios weren't foolish or cowardly in the early 2000s, an era in which every recognizable property was remade or rebooted. If anything, they showed a desire to try new things with the recognizable brands they operated. Audiences expected remakes to justify themselves by putting some sort of spin on the source material, and for the remakes to have their own identity – like Zack Snyder's. Dawn of the deadJ.J. Abrams' Star Trekor, hell, Steven Soderbergh's Ocean's Eleven – are the ones who have stood their ground. Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy and the Daniel Craig Bond films were products of this environment, new interpretations of familiar characters that new audience, even at the risk of alienating fans of the old versions.
Image: Sony Images
Image: Warner Bros. Pictures
These types of risks were possible in part because, unlike today, franchises were allowed to do so die, or at least go into hibernation for longer periods. Moores Battlestar Galactica was the first significant installment in the series in over twenty years. Both Batman begins And Casino royale were produced years after their respective franchises had burned out Batman and Robin And Die another dayrespectively. Contrary to the modern trend, there was a big incentive not to pick up where the previous entries left off. If a decade passed without another sequel in a film series, it was assumed that series was over and attempts to reopen a saga that had ended on a high note, as Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, were seen as a novelty that was greeted with some skepticism. Since the revival of a nostalgic brand was not taken for granted, audiences who might have been reluctant to accept a new version could at least give it a chance on the grounds that it was “better than nothing” , and might be pleasantly surprised.
Moreover, it was expected that even unbroken continuities would be accessible to new viewers, as there was no infrastructure that would allow the general public to easily become entangled in lengthy or complicated mythologies. Before the advent of DVD box sets, DVR, and video on demand, viewers weren't even considered to have seen every episode of a show they were watching, let alone the show or shows that spawned it. Many fandoms had well-maintained online hubs where they could brush up on the history or production of their favorite franchises, but there was no Wikipedia — let alone individual Wikipedia pages for every show on television — and no movie-explanation mill .
Fandom itself has changed radically since the birth of social media, as have studios' relationships with it. While some Hollywood storytellers have been communicating with fans on the Internet since the days of UseNet and AOL groups – including Moore himself while running Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – fans have much better access to the people who create their favorite media, and these interactions now take place in locations with much higher traffic. It's not just the die-hards who gather in forums to talk, develop opinions and promote agendas for other die-hards. Posts appear, hashtags become popular, and think pieces go viral into the feeds of more casual fans—or, just as importantly, to non-fans whose only impression of the work in question comes from fan discourse. YouTube, TikTok, and Patreon have made it possible, even lucrative, to be a full-time fan of something, and these influencers create enough content to keep fans constantly engaged between official releases. It's never been easier or more mainstream to pick a brand you like and make it your entire personality, and studios now essentially view these fandoms as an unpaid arm of their marketing department. In 2003, online obsessives and angry conference guests were not considered to represent the majority of the public. Now these fans Are the public, but also as part of the product. In the unimaginably vast sea of content, you won't get anywhere without their breath in your sails.
Image: Universal Pictures Home Entertainment
This illustrates why properties should not be allowed to rest long enough for demand for a new version to arise. As content slows down, so does fan engagement, and without an active fandom, who's going to create the groundswell of online excitement surrounding the next iteration when it do arrive? If it's different, who's to say they'll like it? It's safer to keep the engine running, even if what it produces isn't exciting or approachable enough to attract new people. Keeping the fans you have happy becomes everything, and blandness ensues.
The 2003 Battlestar Galactica miniseries, and the ongoing series that debuted the following year, never played it safe; In fact, the narrators seemed to enjoy their audience's discomfort. Despite originally being a remake of a 1970s nostalgia romp whose iconography was featured on lunchboxes, Ron Moore and David Eick didn't treat their show as a “sci-fi property.” It was a drama, aimed more at viewers who generally didn't watch “geek stuff” than at those who did. Protecting the brand or creating a perpetual profit machine wasn't a priority, and then they did did expanding the franchise with a spin-off, it was with an even less conventional series, the family drama Caprica. Caprica may not have found a sustainable audience, but it was an attempt to turn interest in a cosmic war epic into interest in something completely different, rather than simply more of the same.
Naturally, Universal started developing a new version again Battlestar Galactica in 2009, before Moore's series had even completed its final season, in an effort to keep the brand hot. When the now disgraced director Bryan Singer was attached to directing, the new BSG It was teased that the film somehow “existed between” the classic and reimagined versions, a strategy that certainly suits modern IP management. The project has been in development hell for over a decade now, bouncing back and forth between creatives and the big and small screens, without a word of progress since 2020. I'm grateful for this. With any luck, the cameras will be rolling by the time a new one arrives Battlestar Galactica movie or series, it will be twenty years since the show I love ended, and there will be a real hunger for its rebirth. And if we are Real Luckily, whoever is in charge of it has their own vision and will stick to it whether I like it or not.