Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
9 questions No timer
This Battlestar Galactica trivia quiz has 49 free questions with answers and covers both the 1978 original and Ronald D. Moore's 2004 reimagining. The classic-era questions take in Glen A. Larson's Mormon influences, the Star Wars lawsuit, Lorne Greene and Dirk Benedict, John Dykstra's effects and the ill-fated Galactica 1980. The reimagined series gets the bulk: the Twelve Colonies of Kobol, the 50,000 survivors, Adama's callsign, Roslin's swearing-in, why Starbuck became a woman, Baltar's betrayal and presidency, the Number Six in his head, the 33-minute jumps, New Caprica, Razor and the Pegasus, the Final Five and the Bob Dylan song that carried the fleet to Earth. There are also questions on the cast (Edward James Olmos, Mary McDonnell, Katee Sackhoff), Bear McCreary's score, the Peabody and Hugo awards, the United Nations retrospective, and the spin-offs Caprica and Blood & Chrome. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia pages for the series, characters and episodes, and each explanation adds one detail worth remembering. So say we all.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who created the original 1978 Battlestar Galactica?
Glen A. Larson
Glen A. Larson, a Latter-day Saint, wove Mormon ideas into the show, including a quorum-like ruling council, a lost thirteenth tribe and marriages 'sealed' for eternity.
Q 02Which Bonanza star led the cast of the 1978 series as Commander Adama?
Lorne Greene
Lorne Greene, Bonanza's Ben Cartwright, played Commander Adama opposite Dirk Benedict's Starbuck; the series premiered on ABC in September 1978.
Q 03In June 1978, which studio sued Universal claiming Battlestar Galactica had stolen 34 ideas from Star Wars?
20th Century Fox
20th Century Fox listed 34 alleged similarities; Universal countersued, claiming Star Wars had itself borrowed from its 1972 film Silent Running and the 1939 Buck Rogers serial.
Q 04After how many episodes was the original series cancelled due to high costs and falling ratings?
24
All 24 episodes aired on ABC in the 1978–79 season; the network tried a cheaper follow-up, Galactica 1980, which lasted ten episodes.
Q 05In the 1978 series, who created the Cylons?
An extinct reptilian species
An extinct reptilian species built the original Cylons as robot servants before dying out; the reimagined series flipped this, making the Cylons humanity's own creation, the whole point of the show.
Q 06Who developed the 2004 'reimagined' Battlestar Galactica?
Ronald D. Moore
Ronald D. Moore, a Star Trek veteran, ran the show with David Eick after the three-hour December 2003 miniseries and wrote its manifesto for 'naturalistic science fiction'.
Q 07The humans of the reimagined series live on a group of planets known as what?
The Twelve Colonies of Kobol
The Twelve Colonies of Kobol were settled by tribes that left the ancestral homeworld Kobol; the fleet later finds Kobol itself on the way to Earth.
Q 08Roughly how many humans survive the Cylon attack on the Colonies?
About 50,000
About 50,000 people escaped in the ragtag fleet, a figure that shrank almost every episode; the running tally on Roslin's whiteboard became one of the show's grimmest recurring images.
Q 09Why did Galactica survive the attack when the rest of the fleet was crippled?
It was an old ship about to become a museum
It was an old ship about to become a museum, so its outdated, un-networked computers were immune to the Cylon virus that disabled the newer battlestars.
Q 10Which actor plays Commander William Adama in the reimagined series?
Edward James Olmos
Edward James Olmos, an Oscar nominee for Stand and Deliver, was Blade Runner's Gaff and Miami Vice's Lieutenant Castillo before taking the bridge.
Q 11What was Adama's callsign as a young Viper pilot?
Husker
Husker was the young Adama's callsign, used in the 2012 prequel Blood & Chrome, which follows him as a rookie Viper pilot during the First Cylon War.
Q 12Before the attack, President Laura Roslin held which cabinet post?
Secretary of Education
As Secretary of Education she was 43rd in the line of succession; her swearing-in aboard Colonial One deliberately echoed Lyndon Johnson's after the Kennedy assassination.
Q 13Mary McDonnell, who plays Roslin, was Oscar-nominated for playing Stands With A Fist in which film?
Dances with Wolves
Q 21Which four of the Final Five are revealed in the season three finale 'Crossroads'?
Tigh, Tyrol, Tory Foster and Anders
Tigh, Tyrol, Tory Foster and Anders are drawn together by a song only they can hear; the fifth, Ellen Tigh, is revealed in season four and resurrected in 'No Exit'.
Q 22In the first regular episode, '33', how often must the fleet jump to stay ahead of the Cylons?
Every 33 minutes
Every 33 minutes the Cylons reappear, so the crew goes five days without sleep and finally has to destroy one of its own ships; the episode won the 2005 Hugo Award.
Q 23Baltar wins the presidency from Roslin by promising to do what?
Dances with Wolves (1990) earned her a supporting-actress nomination; her second, for Passion Fish, came two years later, and she was the First Lady in Independence Day.
Q 14Which actress plays Kara 'Starbuck' Thrace?
Katee Sackhoff
Katee Sackhoff's casting as a female Starbuck drew a backlash, including a scathing essay from original Starbuck Dirk Benedict; she later played Deputy Vic Moretti in Longmire.
Q 15According to a prophecy, Starbuck is the 'Harbinger of Death' who will do what?
Lead humanity to its end
The Hybrid's prophecy is that she will lead humanity to its end; she dies, returns inexplicably and in the finale jumps the fleet to a new home before vanishing.
Q 16Which scientist unwittingly gives the Cylons access to the Colonial defence mainframe?
Gaius Baltar
Gaius Baltar, played by James Callis, let his Cylon lover into the defence network; a Six later produces photos of him carrying a device into the mainframe.
Q 17Which actress plays Six, the blonde humanoid Cylon who seduces Baltar?
Tricia Helfer
Tricia Helfer, a former model, plays the Six model; the copy who compromised the colonies is later treated as a hero by the other Cylons.
Q 18Grace Park plays the Eight model, whose copies include Boomer and which other Raptor pilot?
Athena
Athena is the callsign taken by the Eight who marries Helo; she flies Raptors for Galactica after defecting from the Cylons.
Q 19Which slur do some humans use for the Cylon Centurions?
Toasters
'Toasters' mocks the chrome Centurions; 'skinjob', reserved for the humanoid models, is borrowed from Blade Runner's term for replicants.
Q 20Brother Cavil, the priest played by Dean Stockwell, is which numbered Cylon model?
Number One
Number One, the eldest model, was the first built by the Final Five; Cavil erased the other models' memories of them and hides their identities.
Settle the fleet on New Caprica
His pledge to settle the fleet on New Caprica proves a disaster: the Cylons arrive a year later and occupy the planet, forcing the fleet to flee and mount a rescue.
Q 24Which second surviving battlestar, commanded by Admiral Helena Cain, joins the fleet in season two?
Pegasus
Pegasus, a newer Mercury-class battlestar, had escaped the attack under Michelle Forbes's ruthless Cain and brought its own brutal history with it.
Q 25Which two-hour TV movie about Admiral Cain's battlestar took up the first two slots of the season four order?
Razor
Razor aired in November 2007 and got a limited cinema run; it flashes back to Cain's first days of the war and introduces Lieutenant Kendra Shaw.
Q 26Which composer scored more than 70 episodes of the reimagined series?
Bear McCreary
Bear McCreary took over from Richard Gibbs after the miniseries; his score used taiko drums, duduk, erhu and bansuri, and even spawned a ballet in Hagen, Germany.
Q 27Which Dylan song, in a Hendrix arrangement, plays over the closing montage of 'Daybreak'?
All Along the Watchtower
All Along the Watchtower's notes turn out to be the jump coordinates that Starbuck enters to take the fleet to Earth; the Hendrix arrangement closes the show.
Q 28In the finale, the fleet's survivors settle on a new planet and do what with their ships?
Fly them into the Sun
The plan is to fly them into the Sun, with the brain-dead Anders wired in as pilot; the surviving Centurions get the last Basestar, and the planet is our Earth 150,000 years ago.
Q 29The 'Daybreak' rescue mission is launched to retrieve which child from the Cylon colony?
Hera Agathon
Hera Agathon, the half-human, half-Cylon daughter of Helo and the Eight, is being studied for how Cylons might reproduce; the Colony sits beside a black hole.
Q 30Where are the angelic Baltar and Six walking in the very last scene?
Modern-day New York City
In modern-day New York City they watch news of robots and gadgets and repeat the show's refrain: all of this has happened before, but does it have to happen again?