When it was announced that Peacock was rebooting “Battlestar Galactica,” fans were a bit apprehensive. Sure, the creator of “Mr. Robot,” Sam Esmail, is producing the show, which is a good thing. But the last time the show was rebooted, in the early ‘00s, courtesy of Ronald D. Moore, the show reached new heights with critical acclaim and one of the smartest sci-fi stories to grace TV in decades. All that to say, it’s a tough act to follow, even for Esmail. But the new producer wants everyone to know that this new ‘Battlestar’ is going to be very different than what came before.
Speaking to Collider, Esmail was asked about the status of the reboot of ‘Battlestar.’ And while it appears the series is still in the early stages of development, Esmail knows the new show is going to be very respectful of what came before and won’t tread on previous territory.
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“We’re still working on the pilot,” said Esmail. “Look, it’s a big universe, it’s a big world, I want to respect the Ronald Moore ‘Battlestar.’ I spoke to him before I even took on the project to make sure that it’s all kosher with him, because the last thing I want to do is step on his toes, and the one thing we both agreed on is that it won’t be a reboot of what he did. Which I think we both wanted.”
He continued, “It’s still in the early phases of trying to figure out the world via the pilot. I think we’ve got the basic construction of the type of story we want to tell, the part of mythology that we’re gonna explore – because ‘Battlestar’ does have a rich mythology and again I have to give Ron a lot of credit for that – and so now we’re sort of closing in on what that pilot’s gonna look like.”
One thing that is known for sure is just how unsure the release pattern is going to be for the reboot. Nowadays, when you have a streaming series, everyone wants to know if it’ll be released weekly or in one big chunk to be binged. Well, for the new “Battlestar Galatica,” it’s going to be…both? Apparently, so.
“When I spoke to Peacock about it, and Mike Lesslie who’s an amazing writer – he’s the one who’s showrunning and writing the pilot – the one thing we got excited by is do we release an episode a week, [release all at once]?” Esmail explained. “For me it was like let’s get in there and tell the right story and it will tell us how many episodes. We may dump three episodes in a row because it’s a three-episode-long battle sequence that needs to be dropped in a row even though they’re three signifying chapters, and maybe each chapter is switching a point of view within that battle sequence. There may be a 20-minute episode that’s the backstory of one of the characters that gets dropped right after that.”
With streaming platforms becoming more and more comfortable with playing with structure and release schedules, it’s nice to see Peacock and Esmail come to terms with the idea that a TV series can be released however you want. There are no rules anymore, especially when the idea is that the show will live on the streamer for the rest of time and can be viewed however the person watching wants to view it.
But after complaints from fans about “The Boys” being released too slowly or “WandaVision” only giving us a tease of what’s to come, it’s great to see that Esmail and “Battlestar Galactica” are going to let the show dictate the release schedule.