Episode 138: Battlestar Galactica, 20 Years Later

Three humanoid Cylons, played by Lucy Lawless, Tricia Helfer and Grace Park.

One of the greatest science fiction shows on TV debuted twenty years ago: the rebooted version of Battlestar Galactica. This show broke new ground in depicting realistic politics — and a nuanced view of a society of artificial people. How does it hold up? To find out, Charlie Jane went back and watched the entire series — here's what she found.

Notes, citations, etc.

Battlestar Galactica on IMDB

Here’s the original 1970s show that was rebooted

Creator Ron Moore had previously worked on Star Trek and  he had been very public about disliking the fact that Voyager seemed not to take seriously the implications of its premise

The BSG reboot launched during the early days of prestige TV

Before BSG, authors like William Gibson and Amy Thomson (Virtual Girl) showed A.I.s having relationships with each other

In recent years, we've gotten Westworld, Murderbot, Ex Machina, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Person of Interest, Almost Human, Real Humans, the Monk & Robot books, The Life Cycle of Software Objects and Annalee’s own books, among others

BSG’s handling of the Cylons plays into a lot of femme fatale tropes