Peacock's Battlestar Galactica reboot is dead

At the height of the streaming wars, it felt like there was something of an arms race on the part of streaming services to lock up as much original content as they could, which meant going through their archives to mine whatever content they could for their subscribers. That led to some zany experiments, like DC Universe, a one-stop shop for all things DC Comics (which was shut down in September 2020) or Stargate Command (a one-stop shop for all things Stargate, which shut down in November 2019).

One of the projects that came out of that was a reboot of the SCI FI Channel's classic series Battlestar Galactica, to be helmed by Mr. Robot's Sam Esmail, and it appears that it's no longer in the works: according to Variety, Peacock isn't moving forward with the project.

NBC announced that it was putting the reboot into development back in 2019 for its then-upcoming streaming service, and ever since, there's been some caginess about what exactly it would be about, or how it would related (if at all) to Ron Moore's 2003 series. It was apparently a series that would have followed up the Moore version, with word coming a year later that it wouldn't be a restart, but something set in the same world. It's quietly simmered in the background ever since, with Esmail tackling an ambitious Metropolis reboot for Apple (which has since been canceled due to the 2023 Writer's Strike).

The series was designed to be part of Peacock's lineup of original programming, but it never reached the point where it was formally greenlit to a series. Earlier this year, word broke that Peacock had brought on Derek Simonds to serve as showrunner and writer for the project.

I've always been a little skeptical of this particular project, in no small part because Moore's reboot was an enormously transformative and consequential series when it first aired on the SCI FI Channel in 2003.

Following the survivors of a series of colonies that had been attacked by a race of robots known as the Cylons, that series was unlike anything that had aired in the genre to that point: a dark and serious series about genocide, the rule of law, and warfare that emerged in the immediate post-9/11 world.

I don't usually have an aversion to rebooting or continuing shows – Battlestar Galactica was itself a reboot! – but as I noted in the TO Slack channel, this reboot would have had to clear a very, very high bar. It wouldn't be impossible, but I had trouble seeing how a continuation would work, given that the (spoilers for a 20-year-old TV series) survivors ended up finding Earth.

This was also something that the Syfy channel itself tried to do: After Moore's series came to an end in 2009, the network launched a prequel series, Caprica, in 2010. Set decades before the events of Battlestar Galactica, it was designed to show off the events that led into it: the rise of the Cylons and some of the family dynamics that figured into the world and politics. It never quite hit with audiences, and was canceled after a season. A couple of years later, SyFy attempted another return with another prequel, Blood & Chrome, which was envisioned as a TV pilot, but which was eventually split up into 10 webisodes.

At the same time, NBCUniversal had been working on another Battlestar Galactica property: a rebooted film from Bryan Singer, which wouldn't have had any relationship to Moore's series. Singer has long since left the project, but the studio hasn't given up on the idea: in 2020, Simon Kingsberg signed on as a producer and writer for another rebooted film project. It sounds like the folks behind the concept will be shopping it around, but that's a pretty standard line to hear when a studio halts development. Maybe someone will pick it up, but I'm not holding my breath.

There are larger issues to tackling a Battlestar Galactica reboot that I think are likely to have thrown some roadblocks in the path here. Back in 2022, I noted that there seemed to be quite a bit of confusion stemming from NBCUniversal over the nature of the property and the various projects that were part of it. The most successful shared-universe projects, be it Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate or Marvel tend to have some level of coordination between their various parts: there's an understanding that these stories are part of a much larger canvas.

Battlestar Galactica certainly feels like it's part of a larger world, and its various spinoffs leaned neatly into that. But Caprica felt like it was something a little too far removed from the experience of its predecessor: were fans really looking for a show that was completely different in tone that explained some of the roots of the events of BSG? And while Blood & Chrome was more in line with the harder military SF of the show, were viewers going to go out of their way to watch something online?

I feel like Battlestar, Caprica, and Blood & Chrome arrived at the party a bit too early to really blossom into the bigger story that it could have become. Where I think about this new series that Peacock was developing, is the gravity of that original show really going to pull fans back two decades later for a continuation?

Maybe: it has worked in the past. Star Trek could be held up as a good example. But there were factors leading to Star Trek's revival that are unique to it: it exploded in popularity when it hit syndication and when it was played all the time on local channels. Battlestar has certainly had its reruns on the Syfy and on streaming services, but I don't think it's experienced the same level of fervor that Trek did. It's not hard to understand why: there are lots and lots of other options out there if you're a science fiction fan.

I think that NBC fumbled this one: Battlestar Galactica as a concept – survivors of a colony escaping to try and find their mythical homeland – is a sound one, but somewhat limited. The survivors escape and go somewhere, a story that was limited to that original show. I think the world could have supported a franchise along the lines of Star Trek, had NBC figured out some sort of succession plan to Moore's BSG when it went off the air in 2009, and figured out what the bigger world was.

And of course, there are a lot of unknowns here: we don't know what Esmail's BSG would have looked like or been about. I don't think I could see this series as being something like another fleet of ships escaping (and essentially running parallel to the series), and given where the series left off, I'd have a hard time seeing them leaving Earth again. But then again, those are the types of things that can surprise you and turn into a really excellent and compelling story (sort of like HBO's Watchmen, which was advertised in some weird, confusing ways, but which turned out to be really excellent.)

So, it's a shame that we can't see what Esmail and his partners would have come up with: to see if they'd be able to top that high bar that Moore's BSG left behind. If they couldn't, it would at least be interesting to watch the attempt. If they did, well, we'd really be missing out.