Where now, Battlestar?

With the news that Syfy is considering another Battlestar spin-off, and the fact that it’s being headstrong about Caprica’s less-than-impressive ratings, it seems that fans of the Twelve Colonies will have entertainment a-plenty for years to come.

Sadly, that doesn’t extend to the mother series itself. We asked showrunner Ronald D Moore last Friday, in a telephone interview from Madrid during a junket for Caprica, whether The Plan would be the final release from that particular storyline. “I think so,” he admitted. “The sets are gone, we did digitally capture everything – not anything in particular but we just said grab them all on digital, in case we ever wanted to do something with them this is the only way they could be preserved, so why not? We’ll just wait and see if there’s some way to use that in the future.”

Although we may have come to the end of that particular chapter in Battlestar’s history, there are still many other avenues for the show to explore in another series, which will apparently return to its space opera roots. Here’s a few suggestions below.

All Of This Has Happened Before…

The oft-mentioned, and extraordinarily irritating, catchphrase of the show means that you could probably remake the storyline with a different crew, albeit with a more tragic ending. It’s unlikely this will happen while Caprica is running, however, as the incongruity between plotlines would certainly confuse and turn off new viewers.

The First Cylon War

We had a taste of it in the exceptional flashback sequences from Razor, and if we take the end of Battlestar as the end point of the story, it makes sense that further prequels within the established timeline are the only way to go. After all, Caprica sets up the creation of the Cylons, so it could neatly segue into this story to create a triptych between the shows.

Viva La Resistance!

It might be hard to get the actors back together, but a storyline set within the resistance period on Caprica isn’t entirely out of the question. After all, it remains a popular setting for the fans, and it could be a nice action-based contrast to the character drama practiced in Caprica. Do we really want a show where Samuel T Anders is the lead character, though?

Took the left at Albuquerque

The main story of Battlestar was focused on the ragtag fleet led by Galactica, but that’s not to say that all of the surviving human ships went with them. A few could have jumped in the wrong direction perhaps, and that would provide fertile ground for storytelling, particularly if there wasn’t a large military contingent to defend them.