References to the Original Series

Part of the series on Battlestar Galactica References
References in	the Original Series Galactica 1980 the Re-imagined Series
References to	the Original Series Galactica 1980 the Re-imagined Series Caprica

This article discusses various references to the Original Series made by other works of note in various mediums including, but not limited to, television, film, or literary publications.

Film

Airplane II: The Sequel

• The music at the beginning of the movie is the Battlestar Galactica theme music.
• The theme music is played again during the shuttle launch.

Battlestar Orgasmica

• A 1992 pornographic film lampooning the Original Series.

Beverly Hills Cop III

• In the movie, Axel Foley is being chased through a series of rides, one of which is "Alien Invasion". The ride is similar to the Universal Studios' "Earthquake" ride, with the addition of Cylon Robots who shoot at the participants.

Darth Vader's Psychic Hotline

• The Battlestar Galactica can be seen behind Darth Vader.

Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam ("The Turkish Star Wars")

• The theme is played during the introduction.

• "Galactica" is written on the movie poster.

• There are poor imitations of Cylon Centurions.

El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie

1978 Battlestar Galactica movie poster hanging on the wall behind Badger in El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie.

• A framed Battlestar Galactica can be found on the wall in Badger's bedroom, where Jesse Pinkman rests after his escape from imprisonment.

Space Mutiny

Main article: Space Mutiny

• The shots of the fleet in space are taken directly from Battlestar Galactica.
• The spaceship Southern Sun is depicted via re-use of stock footage of Galactica itself.
• The ship's fighters are also called "Vipers."
• Space Mutiny's plot is also somewhat similar to that of Battlestar Galactica: a refugee fleet trying to find a new home, "mystical" elements, strange names for things, etc.

Ready Player One

• Aech possesses an original battlestar Galactica miniature in her garage.

Television

The A-Team

Dirk's A-Team 'Faceman' meets a Cylon.

• Dirk Benedict, who played Starbuck in Battlestar Galactica, plays Lt. Templeton "Faceman" Peck in "The A-Team". Face and Starbuck are very similar (handsome young officers, womanizers, humorous/roguish elements, etc).
• During the episode "Steel" of The A-Team, the A-Team attends a television convention. While there, a man in a Cylon Centurion suit walks past Face, who turns with a look of surprise on his face.
• In the second-through-fourth seasons of The A-Team, the clip of the Cylon walking past Faceman is played in the show's opening credits.

Ayrılsak da Beraberiz

1999-2004 Turkish sitcom. On an episode, the male protagonist was talking about Cylons while playing a video game.

Big Bang Theory

One of the geeks has a Colonial Warrior "flight suit" in his closet.

Buck Rogers in the 25th Century

• Also produced and developed by Glen A. Larson and Leslie Stevens.
• Some props and footage (e.g. Viper cockpits and the Lunar Avion) were taken directly from Battlestar Galactica.
• A Boray appears in the background of the Buck Rogers episode "Unchained Woman. "
• The prison on Buck Rogers episode "The Golden Man" could be the prison from "The Long Patrol."

Detailed comparisons

• The star fighters of the Earth Defense Directorate are Ralph McQuarrie's original concept designs for the Viper.
• In "Space Vampire," the derelict ship Demeter that crashes into the station is the model of the Gemini and Delphi freighters seen in both the Original Series and Galactica 1980.
• Colonial shuttle seen in episode "Journey to Oasis".
• In "Space Vampire," the medallion Rogers uses against a possessed Wilma Deering and the Vorvon is the Seal of the Lords prop Adama uses to unlock the Tomb of the Ninth Lord of Kobol in the "Lost Planet of the Gods" two-parter.
• The second season plot line had a crew seeking the lost tribes of Earth who had scattered after a catastrophic event.
• Cylon listening post is seen in episode "Planet of the Slave Girls"
• The shirt that was worn by Buck Rogers in "Unchained Woman" originates from the clothing worn by Farnes and Dipper in the episode "The Magnificent Warriors."

Evening in Byzantium

• Produced by Glen A. Larson, this TV miniseries made use of the Core Command set with little modification for a NATO command installation, but shot in such a way that it was not as well lit. One of the characters also makes use of a Stentofon phone.
• While not a direct "reference," the miniseries featured Edward James Olmos in a small role.

• 
  Filming of the set used a large-format glass world map to frame footage of the re-used Core Command set (Evening in Byzantium).
• 
  An executive officer at the mid-tier on the re-used Core Command set (Evening in Byzantium).
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  An executive officer using a Stentofon phone on the re-used Core Command set (Evening in Byzantium).
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  Operators of the lower stations on the re-used Core Command set (Evening in Byzantium).

Family Guy

• At the end of the episode "Road to Europe," Peter and Lois are on the KISS show. At the end of the show, the host announces, "And now stay tuned for Battlestar Galactica Forum." He dons a Cylon Centurion helmet (complete with the red-eye) and continues, in a Cylon voice, "Welcome to Battlestar Galactica Forum."
• During the episode "Brian Goes Back to College" Peter, Quagmire, Joe and Cleveland all dress up as the A-Team. After Quagmire is introduced in the credits as "Faceman" Peck. He walks past a Cylon Centurion from the original show. A deliberate reference to the A-Team reference listed above.

Futurama

Cylon and Garfunkel (Futurama episode Bendin' In The Wind)

• In the episode "Bendin' in the Wind," the band "Cylon and Garfunkel" (consisting of Art Garfunkel and an original series Cylon Centurion) play at a charity concert for broken robots.
• In the episode "The Thief of Baghead, Langdon Cobb's butler LeRoy responds with the Cylon phrase "By your command."

Knight Rider

• Also produced by Glen A. Larson
• The red scanner on the front of KITT is a reference to the red "eye" of the Cylons from Battlestar Galactica.

Murder, She Wrote

• During the episode "Incident in Lot #7" (Season 8, episode 13) a person dressed in a Cylon outfit walks past Jessica Fletcher.

Mystery Science Theater 3000

• In the episode featuring Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, Tom Servo says "You know, if they cancel Battlestar Galactica I'm gonna kill myself" referencing the actual suicide by 15-year-old Eddie Seidel, Jr. when the show was canceled.
• A similar joke about the cancellation was made in the episode featuring the film "Laserblast" in season seven.
• Space Mutiny was also shown in an episode and the DVD made note of its use of Battlestar Galactica footage. Ironically, there are no jokes made on this. As writer/actor Paul Chaplin reflects: "We got a lot of Internet comment on how we didn't joke about how this movie used the Battlestar Galactica ship for the exteriors, and I have to admit, in retrospect we didn't joke about that at all. To quote the jury foreman at the end of The Producers: of this charge we are, in fact, incredibly guilty."
• In the episode featuring "Future War," host Mike Nelson dubs a spaceship seen in the film's opening "Dustbuster Galactica!"

Robot Chicken

The Cylon skit on Robot Chicken

• The Original Series Cylons were the focus of a short skit on the adult swim series Robot Chicken episode of Junk in the Trunk in which the original Cylon actors had so many problems walking around in their suits that they were constantly falling down.

Saturday Night Live

• In the SNL Digital Short "Space Olympics," footage of the destruction of the Battlestar Atlantia is used.

S.C.I.F.I. World

A Cylon sitting in Intergalactic Land

• In the weekday programming block for the Sci Fi Channel, Wednesday was Intergalactic Land which often aired Battlestar Galactica. Among the many commercials for Intergalactic Land and S.C.I.F.I. World in general are: a Cylon watching a game of PONG and Cylons with the laughing, drunk Spock shooting a Kirk below making him dance.

The Simpsons

• In the episode "Mayored to the Mob," an ad for a sci-fi convention announces, "Tag-team robot wrestling! It's the mighty robots of Battlestar Galactica, versus the gay robots of Star Wars!" The ad shows two Cylons beating up R2-D2 and C-3PO.
• In another episode, "Burns Verkaufen der Kraftwerk," Homer is bored late at night and takes out a Galactica jigsaw puzzle, delightedly saying "Oooooh, Battlestar Galac-tic-a!"
• An episode of the series is called "Saddlesore Galactica".

South Park

• In the episode "Imaginationland Episode II," one of the many fictional characters that come from the evil side of Imaginationland are original series Cylons.

Star Trek: Voyager

• In the episode "Flesh and Blood," both the Ovions and Borays are mentioned.
• Tylium is used in both "Flesh and Blood" and "Workforce".

Star Wars: The Clone Wars

• The droid TJ-912 replies with "By your command" after accepting an order from Count Dooku in the episode "Nightsisters."

Superhost / WUAB Channel 43 Skit

A skit entitled Battleship Ethnica spoofs the Original Series, with characters such as Commander Anemia (Marty Sullivan, the Superhost himself), Appalling (Bill Rees), Starcent (Jeff Seymour) and Tapoica (Jo Ann DePompei) being attacked by the Nylons, lead by Tarbo (Henry Bookerstein) and Juniper (Super Boss). The Nylon plan is revealed at the end of the skit as it is a Large Mac (a large hamburger) begins eating the battleship Ethnica.

The skit runs approximately 03m09s in length, and features opening credits utilizing Cylon Raider toy models, a U.S. naval battleship as Ethnica, and various other hodge-podge crafts including TIE fighters from Star Wars and the Goodyear blimp.

Tripping the Rift

• The episodes "Mutilation Ball" and "Love Conquers All...Almost" feature a character named 'Commander Adam.'
• The episode "Totally Recalled" features a character named Baltar, who owned an android-manufacturing corporation called Baltar Industries. Despite his name, however, CEO Baltar looks like Lucifer.

Welcome to Eltingville

• In the Trivia Off, two of the questions are: "How many brains does a Cylon commander have?" and "What was Galactica 1980's time-slot?"

Music

• On the music video for Purple Disco Machine and Kungs song "Substitution," there is a Cylon Centurion with a rifle. It is referred to as "Robot" in the closing credits. Probably for copyright reasons.

Commercials

• Footage of the Battlestar Atlantia exploding is used in a Jack in the Box commercial for Cheesy Macaroni Bites.

Games

Escape Velocity Nova

• In this computer game, carrier ships can be equipped with squadrons of snub-nosed, delta-winged, laser-armed 'Viper fighters.'

Homeworld

• The computer game Homeworld revolves around a race of people who were exiled from their homeworld by a cruel empire to a distant desert planet many thousands of years ago. After their planet of exile is obliterated by their ancient enemy the survivors take to the stars on a long and perilous journey across the galaxy in search of their ancient homeworld, Hiigara. A rumor persists that Homeworld’s development began as a Battlestar Galactica computer game which developer Relic Entertainment failed to acquire a license for.

StarCraft

• In this computer game, units often answer with quotes from movies. Some of the Protoss respond to orders with the phrase, "By your command".
• The game's humans have been exiled from Earth, and live in a confederacy of colonies; these colonies are, throughout the game, decimated by the Zerg and Protoss - the latter of which are feudal, cybernetically-enhanced aliens, like the Cylons.

FreeSpace 2

• One of the Vasudan pilots respond to orders with the phrase, "By your command".

Space Attack & Space Battle

• Mattel's game, Space Battle for Intellivision and its M-Network counterpart, Space Attack for the Atari VCS/2600 platform, were originally slated to be games based on the Battlestar Galactica series. However, the project was changed to be more generic, due to unknown reasons. The "flying saucers" in the game are actually Cylon Raiders, since they did not change graphics; this change is mostly imperceivable, due to the lack of detail that could be used in graphics of the platforms of that era.

VGA Planets

• In this shareware game, two of the predefined races are modeled after the Cylons and Colonials: Robotic Imperium and the Missing Colonies of Men.

Literature

More Information Than You Require

• John Hodgman claims that the original Battlestar Galactica was a "re-imagining" of the classic Battlestar Galactica radio program of the 1920s.

Ready Player One

• Colonial Vipers are one of the spaceships featured in the OASIS computer simulation.

Shatnerquake

• In Jeff Burk's Bizarro novel Shatnerquake, someone at ShatnerCon is wearing an Original Series T-shirt.

Star Trek

The upside down battlestar Galactica

• In the first numbered Star Trek: The Next Generation novel Ghost Ship, the ship on the cover is actually the upside down battlestar Galactica.
• In the The Original Series novel Ishmael, Apollo and Starbuck make an appearance on page 13 (as well as Han Solo) with the description: "a pair of brown-uniformed pilots from some down-at-the-heels migrant fleet".

Star Wars

• The swear word, frak (as well as "frakkin'"), makes an appearance in the 1996 Star Wars novel of Shield of Lies.

That Is All

• In a list of 700 Ancient and Unspeakable Ones (Elder Gods and other beings who return, appear, or awaken in 2012 for Ragnarök), John Hodgman lists number 471 as "Count Iblis, the Avenger" referencing Patrick Macnee's other role as John Steed in the 1960s British spy television series The Avengers.
• In the audio book version, the "Count Iblis, the Avenger" entry is played in reverse.

A Writer's Reference

• On the use of a semicolon between items in a series containing internal punctuation, the example sentence is: "Classic science fiction sagas are Star Trek, with Mr. Spock and his large pointed ears; Battlestar Galactica, with its Cylon Raiders; and Star Wars, with Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, and Darth Vader."

Comics

Acme Novelty Library

• Rusty Brown has a poster of the original Battlestar Galactica hanging in his bedroom.
• On a car ride to a flea market, Chalky White tells Rusty Brown about how he wants to collect the original Battlestar Galactica action figures before the 25th anniversary rerelease of the director's cut. At the flea market, Chalky asks Rusty to look for a "Colonial Warrior in VG or VG+ Condition with Cloth Vest."
• At dinner with Chalky White and his wife, Rusty Brown talks about his Battlestar Galactica action figure collection. Chalky White presents him with the Colonial Warrior action figure he has been looking for.

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  A Battlestar Galactica poster in Rusty Brown's bedroom.
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  Chalky White talks about collecting the Battlestar Galactica action figures.
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  Rusty Brown complains about the unavailability of BSG action figures.

Doctor Who Magazine

Izzy Sinclair compares the Andrallis Nebula to Battlestar Galactica.

• In the Eighth Doctor comic strip "Ophidus," Izzy Sinclair remarks how the Andrallis Nebula looks like the opening credits of Battlestar Galactica.

Dork!

• In Dork! #3, a subculture of Generation X calls itself the "Lost 13th Gen Tribe" referencing both Neil Howe's book 13th Gen: Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail? and the Original Series' Thirteenth Tribe.

Futurama Comics

A scene from Gruesome Crashes, an Ittoldyouso Production.

• In issue 44 "The Fry and the Furious," one of the spaceship crashes featured in the documentary Gruesome Crashes is the original Galactica sinking into an ocean.

Scud: The Disposable Assassin

• In issue 7, a Cylon centurion whose name/nickname is Redeye is driving a truck.
• In issue 21, Voo-doo Ben's computer has By your command on its desktop.
• In the same issue, there can be seen a Colonial Viper flying alongside Drywall's car.

Related imagery

• 
  Redeye is driving a truck.
• 
  Voo-doo Ben's computer awaiting his command.
• 
  A Colonial Viper seen next to Drywall's car.

Star Wars

• In The Return of Tag & Bink: Special Edition, when Palpatine arrives on the Death Star II, his honor guard includes two Cylon Centurions.

Webcomics/Comic strips

Brewster Rockit: Space Guy!

• In a comic strip of various cereals, an exogorth (the space slug from Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back) is seen preferring "Frosted Min-Fleets". The ships on the cover are Cylon Raiders.

General Protection Fault

• In the comic for Monday, June 21, 1999, whilst at the Space Con, Fooker disappears as Nick and Ki pass the Battlestar Galactica booth.

Sluggy Freelance

• In the comic for Sunday, August 10, 2003, the webcomic presents the Battlestar Galactica musical, The Cylon King.

Podcasts

Judge John Hodgman

• In the episode "Gavelbangers Ball", John Hodgman joked about how the Skype connection turned the defendent's words into "weird Cylon noises".
• In the first segment of the second live episode "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Slob and B.F.F.-R.I.P., John Hodgman jokes that one of the quirky science fiction writers keeps Battlestar Galactica action figures in their R2-D2 lunch box and uses a Boxey action figure dipped in ink to write.

Superego

• In the Season 3's episode 6, Baltar tells Cylon Jim and Cylon Phil to capture Captain Apollo. While Cylon Jim says "By your command," Cylon Phil says he has a conflict in time since he's auditioning for a role in the musical Oklahoma!.
• In the Season 3's episode 9, Baltar tells Cylon Jim and Cylon Phil to destroy the Battlestar Galactica but Cylon Jim and Cylon Phil have more complaints for the Imperious Leader.

Radio

"Hour of Slack"

• In "The Hour of Slack" episode #794, the theme music is played at the beginning of first Post 4X-Day episode. It is also the first track on the CD "4X-DAY".

Other

Hartsfield Atlanta International Airport

• From the opening of the midfield terminal in 1980, until its refurbishment in 1996, the computerized announcement voices were referred to by fans as Cylon and Logan's Run voices.

Mozilla

The Mozilla "Cylon" progress bar

• All programs made by Mozilla feature an oscillating status bar which, in the code, is called a "cylon."

External links

• IMDb's Movie Connections
• Frak (swear)
• Tylium