The Battlestar Galactica science fiction franchise, which began as a 1978 TV series, was "reimagined" in 2003 into a TV mini-series. The mini-series served as a backdoor pilot for a 2004 TV series.
Featuring re-imagined, more deeply portrayed favourite characters from the original series, each season of the show sees the crew of Galactica facing new adventures, challenges, failures and conquests as they travel through time and space trying to find what they're searching for.
The mini-series originally aired in the USA on the Sci Fi channel from 8-9 December, 2003. The full series premiered on 18 October, 2004 and ended in the USA on 20 March, 2009.
The mini-series aired in South Africa on M-Net from 8-22 July, 2005. The full series aired on M-Net Action (previously known as actionX) from 9 August, 2005 to 6 May, 2009. It later aired on TopTV's FOX FX channel. See "Seasons" below for seasonal broadcast dates and times.
Season 3 premiered on FOX FX on Tuesday 20 August 2013, at 20h30. New episodes broadcast weekly. There are 20 episodes in the third season.
Series Synopsis
The world ended with no warning, and all that was left ... was hope.
The Cylons were created by the people of the Twelve Colonies. Intelligent robots, they were used as slaves and soldiers to fight humanity's wars.
But the Cylons became sentient and they rebelled. Man and machine fought to a bloody stalemate, then the Cylons withdrew to a remote region of space.
A truce between the Twelve Colonies and the Cylons lasted for 40 tense and silent years. Each year, on the anniversary of the treaty-signing, humanity sent an envoy to the neutral ground of Armistice Station to meet with a Cylon envoy. For 39 years, no Cylon envoy came.
Then, on the 40th anniversary, a stunning blonde — a Cylon in human form — met the human envoy ... moments before the Cylons vaporized the station and launched a genocidal attack on the Twelve Colonies.
In one devastating day, billions of human lives were consumed by nuclear fires. Only those souls fortunate enough to be aboard starships were able to band together and escape and flee into deep space, led by the sole surviving Colonial warship, the battlestar Galactica.
The Galactica and its crew seemed to be unlikely saviors for humanity's fewer than 50,000 desperate survivors. The ship was old and had been about to be decommissioned and turned into a museum when the Cylon attack occurred.
In the aftermath its commanding officer, William Adama, found himself responsible for safeguarding the last remnants of the human race.
Meanwhile, the annihilation of the Colonial government on Caprica resulted in the succession of Laura Roslin, the Secretary of Education, to the presidency.
Driven by prophetic visions and political necessity, she set the fleet upon a quest that will take it into the farthest reaches of unexplored space ... in search of the mythical, lost "13th colony" — Earth.
Seasons
Mini-Series (3 episodes)
Channel: M-Net | Premiere: 8 Jul 2005 | Finale: 22 Jul 2005 | Fridays, 18h00
Season 1 (13 episodes)
Channel: actionX | Premiere: 9 Aug 2005 | Finale: 1 Nov 2005 | Tuesdays, 18h00
Channel: Fox FX | Premiere: 11 May 2011 | Finale: 3 Aug 2011 | Wednesdays, 20h40
Season 2 (20 episodes)
Channel: actionX | Premiere: 12 Jul 2006 | Finale: 22 Nov 2006 | Wednesdays, 20h00
Channel: Fox FX | Premiere: 7 Mar 2012 | Finale: 18 Jul 2012 | Wednesdays, 20h30
Season 3 (20 episodes)
Channel: actionX | Premiere: 18 Apr 2007 | Finale: 29 Aug 2007 | Wednesdays, 20h00
Channel: Fox FX | Premiere: 20 Aug 2013 | Finale: 31 Dec 2013 | Tuesdays, 20h30
Razor (Note: Razor aired in SA as the first two episodes of Season 4)
Channel: M-Net Action | Premiere: 16 Apr 2008 | Finale: 23 Apr 2008 | Wednesdays, 20h00
Season 4 (20 episodes)
Channel: M-Net Action | Premiere: 16 Apr 2008 | Finale: 6 May 2009 | Wednesdays, 20h00
The Plan
Channel: M-Net | Aired: 25 March 2011 | Friday, 21h30
Channel: M-Net HD | Aired: 25 March 2011 | Friday, 21h30
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