There are a lot of ground rules when reassessing the best of Battlestar Galactica. First, even though the reimagined version of the show (2003-2009) fully eclipsed the original (1978) series in both popularity and quality, it's still wise to make it clear which BSG you’re talking about; after all, the classic show has some good episodes, too. Second, when disciples of rebooted BSG try to convince the uninitiated to watch the show, we are obligated to strongly warn those newbies of the unevenness of the fourth and final season. Finally, it’s essential to remind people who have never watched the show that Season 1, Episode 1 — while a banger — is not the beginning of the show. Rather, the series began with a three-part miniseries that is the real start of the show. To be clear, the miniseries isn’t a weird backstory or prologue, it’s the actual first episodes in which everything that creates the overall thrust of the show happens.
And yet Battlestar Galactica’s true run of episodes began 20 years ago — on October 18, 2004 on Sky1 in the U.K., and January 24, 2005 on the Sci-Fi Channel (not yet “SyFy”) in the U.S. And the episode that launched that regular run was the aforementioned banger, titled “33.” Many fans will tell you this is still the greatest episode of BSG, and looking back 20 years later, there is some truth to that. While no two BSG “best of” lists tend to agree, several rankings (including Collider and Digital Trends) put “33” in the top five.
