Battlestar Galactica (2004 — 2009)

Battlestar Galactica continued from the 2003 miniseries to chronicle the journey of the last surviving humans from the Twelve Colonies of Kobol, after their nuclear annihilation by the Cylons. The survivors are led by President Laura Roslin and Commander William Adama in a ragtag fleet of ships with the Battlestar Galactica, an old but powerful warship, as its command ship. Pursued by Cylons intent on wiping out the remnants of the human race, the survivors travel across the galaxy looking for the fabled and long-lost “thirteenth” colony: Earth. Unlike most space opera series, Battlestar Galactica has no humanoid aliens (the antagonists are man-made Cylon androids), the primary armaments used by both military forces utilize bullets, rail guns, and missiles instead of lasers, and the series intentionally avoids technobabble.

Instead, most of the stories deal with the apocalyptic fallout of the destruction of the Twelve Colonies upon the survivors, and the moral choices they must make as they deal with the decline of the human race and their war with the Cylons. Stories also portray the concept of perpetuated cycles of hate and violence driving the human-Cylon conflict, and religion, with the implication of a “God” whose possibly angelic agents appear to certain main characters (most notably Gaius Baltar). Over the course of the show’s four seasons, the war between the Colonials and the Cylons takes many twists and turns. Despite the animosity on both sides, the humans and a faction of the Cylons eventually form an uneasy alliance, in the wake of the Cylon Civil War.