Battlestar Galactica is an American military science fiction television series, and part of the Battlestar Galactica franchise. The show was developed by Ronald D. Moore as a re-imagining of the 1978 Battlestar Galactica television series created by Glen A. Larson. The series first aired as a three-hour miniseries (comprising four broadcast hours) in December 2003 on the Sci-Fi Channel. The television series debuted in the United Kingdom on Sky1 on October 18, 2004, and premiered in the United States on the Sci-Fi Channel on January 14, 2005.
The story arc of Battlestar Galactica is set in a distant star system, where a civilization of humans live on a series of planets known as the Twelve Colonies of Kobol. In the past, the Colonies had been at war with a cybernetic race of their own creation, known as the Cylons. With the self-serving and venal help of a human named Gaius Baltar, the Cylons, some now in human form, launch a sudden sneak attack on the Colonies, laying waste to the planets and devastating their populations. Out of a population numbering in the billions, only approximately 50,000 humans survive, most of whom were aboard civilian spaceships that avoided destruction. Of all the Colonial Fleet, the eponymous battlestar Galactica appears to be the only military capital ship that survived the attack. Under the leadership of Colonial Fleet officer Commander William "Bill" Adama and President Laura Roslin, the Galactica and its crew take up the task of leading the small fugitive fleet of survivors into space in search of a fabled refuge known as Earth.