September 11, 2001
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The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center complex in New York City and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001 impacted two Battlestar Galactica revival projects directly and indirectly.
The terrorist attacks created fatal logistical and morale obstacles to the Fox Network-supported continuation series produced by Bryan Singer and Tom DeSanto in 2000. The attacks halted production when travel and other restrictions immediately after the attacks made it impossible to work. Morale was also greatly affected. By the time that morale and logistical concerns were resolved, Singer had other production obligations to fulfill that conflicted with the revival. Without Singer as leader for the project, financial support for the revival was soon withdrawn.
A division of Universal tapped Ron D. Moore to work on a new series with co-executive producer David Eick, which debuted in 2003.
The new series takes advantage of the viewer's memories of the 9-11 attacks, starting from its pilot miniseries, where viewers and characters alike hear of the attacks on the Colonies, but only hear rumor and speculation for the most part in the initial confusion of the attack. Viewers are not allowed to see the widespread nuclear destruction of Caprica and other colonies, enhancing the viewer's disorientation.
Moore and Eick, in the behind-the-scenes special, "Battlestar Galactica: The Lowdown," note that the vagueness of the destruction of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol was deliberately intended to spark viewer's emotions of the terrorist attacks and the malaise and sensations of doom those events wrought from people.
The series itself often use elements that give visual cues to places and objects seen after the September 11 attacks, such as the memorial hallway and a picture of a wounded soldier by an attacked city.
Moore and Eick also mirrored tragic scenes from earlier US history to further increase the sensation of doom in the miniseries. The hasty presidential inauguration of Laura Roslin on Colonial Heavy 798 cinematically resembles a similar inauguration for US President Lyndon B. Johnson on the presidential aircraft Air Force One after the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The assassination of Sharon Valerii was filmed to closely resemble the well-known footage of Lee Harvey Oswald's assassination.