Battlestar Galactica (1978 TV Series) - Plot Summary

Plot Summary

For more details on this topic, see Destruction of the Twelve Colonies.

In a distant star system, the Twelve Colonies Of Mankind were reaching the end of a thousand-year war with the Cylons, warrior robots created by a reptilian race which expired long ago, presumably destroyed by their own creations. Humanity was ultimately defeated in a sneak attack on their homeworlds by the Cylons, carried out with the help of a human traitor, Count Baltar (John Colicos). Protected by the last surviving capital warship, a "battlestar" called Galactica, the survivors fled in any ships that were available to them. The Commander of the Galactica, Adama (Lorne Greene), led this "rag-tag fugitive fleet" of 220 ships in search of a new home. They began a quest to find the long-lost thirteenth tribe of humanity that had settled on a legendary planet called Earth. However, the Cylons continued to relentlessly pursue them across the galaxy.

The era in which this exodus took place is never clearly stated in the series itself. At the start of the series, it is mentioned as being "the Seventh Millennium of time", though it is unknown when this is in relation to Earth's history. The implication of the final aired episode, "The Hand of God", was that the original series took place after the Apollo 11 moon landing in July 1969 (as the Galactica receives a television transmission from Earth showing the landing). The later Galactica 1980 series is expressly set in the year 1980, though it is also claimed that the voyage to Earth took 30 years which contradicts the Apollo moon landing transmission which was only 11 years earlier.

Larson incorporated many themes from Mormon theology into the shows.

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