Battlestar Galactica is an American science fiction television series created by Glen A. Larson that aired on the ABC network from September 17, 1978, to April 29, 1979.

ABC attempted to revive the series as a lower-budget spinoff, Galactica 1980, but it performed poorly and was cancelled after airing ten episodes.

The show spawned a media franchise which includes comics, theme park attractions, games, and a re-imagined series in early 2000s.

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 that expired long ago, presumably destroyed by their own creations.

After broadcast of the second episode, "Lost Planet of the Gods", however, Larson announced the format change to a weekly series, catching his writing and production staff off guard.

"Lost Planet" also introduced a costume change from the original, in that the warriors' dress uniform featured a gold-trimmed cape falling to upper thigh.

The original version of the warriors' dress uniform, a plain, mid-thigh-length cape, is documented in The Official Battlestar Galactica Scrapbook by James Neyland, 1978.

[7] Universal promptly countersued, claiming Star Wars had stolen ideas from their 1972 film Silent Running,[8] notably the robot "drones", and the 1930s Buck Rogers serials.

Such an accident came to pass on Christmas Day 1978, when a four-year-old child accidentally shot a pellet from a Cylon Raider toy into his mouth, where it lodged in his larynx and caused his brain to be deprived of oxygen.

A second incident involved the Colonial Viper toy which ended in emergency surgery to remove an inhaled pellet from a young boy's lungs.

CBS counter programmed by moving its Sunday block of All in the Family and Alice an hour earlier, to compete with Galactica in the 8:00 timeslot.

The series ... had been broadcast irregularly in recent weeks, attracting slightly over a quarter of the audience in its Sunday night time slot.

[16][verification needed] The cancellation led to viewer outrage and protests outside ABC studios, and it even contributed to the suicide of Edward Seidel, a 15-year-old boy in Saint Paul, Minnesota who was obsessed with the program.

[20] While primarily English, the Colonial language was written to include several fictional words that differentiated its culture from those of Earth, most notably time units and expletives.

The show's original music was composed and conducted by Stu Phillips, with the pilot score performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra.

In 2009, Bryan Singer was tapped to direct a feature film remake with production input from original series creator Glen A.

[25][26] Larson's death in 2014 caused a delay, but in 2016 Lisa Joy was assigned to be the screenwriter and the studio was considering Francis Lawrence to replace Singer as director.