Battlestar Galactica’s Ronald D. Moore Apparently Has One ‘Stipulation’ If The Franchise Is Rebooted Again, And This Makes A Lot Of Sense

Sometimes it’s easy to forget that the Battlestar Galactica series that aired on the then-Sci-Fi network from 2003 to 2009 (counting the opening miniseries) was a reboot of the original that aired for just one season on ABC in the late ‘70s. And like was frequently said in the 2000s series, which was created by Ronald D. Moore, “All of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again.” Meaning, there will come a day when Battlestar Galactica is rebooted again, and apparently Moore has a “stipulation” for the new version that, if you think about it, makes a lot of sense.

Granted, a Battlestar Galactica reboot is a long ways off, as last summer, Peacock scrapped the one it was putting together. However, while appearing on a “Hindsight” episode of The Sackhoff Show looking at Katee Sackhoff’s recent interview with Ronald D. Moore, Tricia Helfer, who played the various versions of Six on Battlestar, recalled her own conversation with Moore years back when the streaming series was still in development. She told the Starbuck actress and The Sackhoff Show producer Jeff Porter:

Moore told Helfer this off the record when he was done recording an appearance on Battlestar Galacticast, the rewatch podcast which she hosted with Marc Bernardin and concluded in 2020. At that time, Moore had already spoken with Sam Esmail, who was producing Peacock’s Battlestar Galactica reboot, and given his blessing. The only thing he stayed firm on what that Esmail’s take on the source material couldn’t include the human-looking Cylons, a concept he introduced in the 2000s Battlestar.

Within the mythology of Ronald D. Moore’s Battlestar Galactica, the robotic Cylons were led by a group of synthetic humanoid Cylons that had infiltrated human society in the Twelve Colonies. There were seven biological models (originally eight) initially introduced of which there were multiple copies, and then the existence of the Final Five was revealed, with these biological Cylons being the descendants of the Thirteenth Tribe of Kobol that has resided on the first Earth. This concept was one of the many ways that the 2000s Battlestar Galactica stood out from its predecessor, but it would have been off limits had the Peacock series moved forward, leading Katee Sackhoff to say:

To be fair, I get it. At its core, Battlestar Galactica requires the robotic Cylons to work, otherwise it strays too far from its roots. But the human-looking Cylons are a distinct feature of the 2000s series, and Ronald D. Moore undoubtedly feels like using them again in a reboot treads over too much of the same territory that his team covered. Like Sackhoff said, if you take them away, the reboot looks a lot different, but that’s for the better. It requires whomever is crafting the new version to get extra creative, just like Moore did over two decades ago.

Peacock’s Battlestar Galactica may have been shelved, but again, that doesn’t mean the franchise will never be rebooted. For a while, there was also a Battlestar movie in development, but there’s been no update on its status for several years. For now, remember that the 2000s series can be streamed with a Prime Video subscription.