The greatest conceit of all versions of Battlestar Galactica is easily the idea that the entire show stars humans who are also, technically, aliens. (This is true of Star Wars, too, of course, insofar as Luke Skywalker isn’t from Earth, and has never heard of Earth, because he lives in a galaxy far, far away.) In 1978, the chilling Patrick Macnee voice-over suggested that humanity’s evolution occurred on other distant planets, that life began “not here, but out there, far across the universe, with tribes of humans.” In the rebooted 2003-2009 version of the show, that turned into “this has all happened before and it will all happen again.” And in all versions of BSG, this means that our planet, Earth, is the ultimate MacGuffin, and the thing that the alien humans want to find.
In all of its iterations, Battlestar Galactica has had mixed results in the find-Earth-mystery department. The popular reboot series opted first for a fake-out Earth, then a real Earth, but in the distant past. Meanwhile, the finale of the original show suggested that the rag-tag fugitive fleet could creep up on our own world, perhaps in contemporary times. Then, in 1980, Galactica arrived on Earth and tried to ruin the entire franchise with one of the weirdest sci-fi shows ever, Galactica 1980.
