Battlestar Galactica Dropping Its Original Premise Saved The Show From Near-Certain Cancellation
While Battlestar Galactica’s original premise would not have worked at all, the show mercifully opted to drop this conceit and focus on another side of its story entirely. Some shows are lucky enough to start as they mean to go on. Shows with iconic pilot episodes, like the small-town murder mystery/psychological horror Twin Peaks, often nail their unique special sauce early on, giving viewers a clear idea of what to expect in terms of tone, genre, plot, and style.
However, plenty of great shows needed to abandon their original premises completely to fulfill their true potential. The sitcom New Girl famously became far stronger after the show shifted its focus from Zooey Deschanel’s titular heroine Jess Day to her equally quirky roommates, while the animated comedy American Dad improved its reviews as the show moved away from satirizing the patriotism of its eponymous patriarch, Stan Smith, and instead centered the rest of his dysfunctional family.
There might be no better example of this phenomenon than the space opera subgenre. Many of the best episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation only arrived after the show switched its focus post-season 1, centering on conflicts between the ship’s crew and moving away from the original “planet-of-the-week” formula of its predecessor. The Expanse improved after broadening its scope beyond the conspiracy mystery plotting of season 1, and the iconic 2004 reboot of Battlestar Galactica needed to drop its original premise entirely to work as a series.
Battlestar Galactica's Original Premise Wouldn't Have Been Anywhere Near As Interesting
According to series creator Ronald D. Moore in a 2016 interview with the British movie magazine Empire, Battlestar Galactica’s 2004 SyFy reboot initially intended to focus on various spaceships in the Colonial Fleet, exploring its prisons, schools, and hospitals in each new outing. However, as this plan proved prohibitively expensive, it simultaneously became clear that the show’s lore required a stable set of main characters for viewers to get invested in.
Although Battlestar Galactica was technically a reboot of the 1978 series of the same name, the show's plot primarily focused on the aftermath of humanity’s war against Cylons as the series progressed. The ever-present threat that any of its human characters could secretly be a Cylon in disguise lent the series an air of paranoia and moral ambiguity that differentiated it from earlier, more idealistic space opera shows like Star Trek.
Although the one-season wonder Firefly had explored similar themes, the brevity of that show’s original run and the small size of its crew meant that the series lacked the immersive world-building of Moore’s reboot. In this regard, it makes sense that Moore thought exploring more of the ships in the Colonial Fleet could flesh out the world of the series even further. However, one of the reboot’s weakest episodes refuted this theory.
One Of Battlestar Galactica's Worst Episodes Is Proof
Season 2, episode 14, "Black Market," saw Jamie Bamber’s Apolo investigate the fleet’s previously unseen black market after sparking up an unexpected romantic relationship with a prostitute. Although this outing did start to explore the fleet a little more, it was not a success by any metric. Even the kindest critics could only call "Black Market” flawed but interesting, while the vast majority of both reviewers and fans online decry the outing as the worst episode of the reboot by far.
Confused, poorly written, muddled, and bland, “Black Market” was criticized for failing to add anything to the broader mythos of SyFy's Battlestar Galactica reboot series and for being a dull, uninspired outing even when viewed as a standalone, episodic effort. The episode proves just how much Battlestar Galactica’s original premise could have tanked the entire show had the reboot failed to wisely alter its course early on.