Battlestar Galactica 2003 / Tropes A to C

Tropes of Battlestar Galactica (2003)
A-C | D-I | J-R | S-Z

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A

• Abortion Fallout Drama: There is an episode where a girl wants to have an abortion. But her parents won't let her, and the religious beliefs of the colony she was from before the Cylon attack forbade it despite its legality. Though pro-choice herself, President Roslin understands that there are less than fifty thousand humans left in the universe, and that they will have to grow their numbers if they're to survive as a species. In the end, she outlaws abortion via executive order... after the girl has had her abortion and has applied for asylum aboard Galactica so she doesn't have to go back to her parents. Baltar, who's running against her for the position of President, immediately seizes on this and makes his campaign pro-choice on the grounds that humanity can't afford to sign away its rights.
• Absent Aliens: Edward James Olmos said early on that he would quit the show if aliens started showing up. He in fact stated he would have Adama faint while the cameras were rolling and walk off the set if he saw a space monster on set. As part of this, nothing aside from the advanced sci-fi space vessels and a few fictional plants (such as "chamalla," a hallucinogenic herb used in Colonial religious ceremonies and cancer treatment) is seen in this series that couldn't be seen in Real Life.
• Absent-Minded Professor: Baltar. Understandably so, since he's constantly being distracted by Head Six.
• Adam and Eve Plot: Helo and Athena have some parallels when they conceive Hera, the first known Cylon/human hybrid, after the Fall of the Twelve Colonies.
• Adaptation Name Change: The characters in the original series had Only One Name, some which were quite fantastic. This series either turns those into surnames (Adama, Tigh, Baltar) or pilot call signs (Starbuck, Apollo, Boomer).
• Adaptation Origin Connection: In the original series, the Cylons were created by an extinct alien race (also named the Cylons) and only came into conflict with humanity later on. Here, the Cylons were created by man, making the two races' conflict much deeper and more dichotomic.
• Adaptational Angst Upgrade:
  • Apollo starts the series with a far more estranged relationship with his father than the original series Apollo did.
  • Gaius Baltar in the original series was willingly collaborating with the Cylons and ultimately a sadistic power-hungry monster. Here, Baltar is reimagined as a delusional patsy played for a fool by the Cylons into inadverdently selling out his own species, and gains an astronomical amount of Survivor Guilt as a result.
• Adaptational Attractiveness: In the original series, Baltar was a scheming old man with the Face of a Thug. Here, he's made significantly younger, being a Mr. Fanservice Pretty Boy who manages to successfully sleep his way through most of the surviving female population of humanity (and even several Cylons, too).
• Adaptational Heroism: In the original show, Gaius Baltar was The Heavy for the Cylons and served as the de facto Big Bad for the show, being a deliberate traitor to the human race and even being arrogant enough at times to believe that the Cylons worked for him rather than the other way round. Here, he is an Anti-Villain at his worst and Byronic Hero at his best, having only been tricked into helping the Cylons destroy the Colonies, and while definitely selfish, cowardly and an all-round Jerkass, he is never truly evil and (very) slowly undergoes Character Development that eventually sees him becoming a genuinely kind and heroic person.
• Adaptational Jerkass: William Adama is not nearly as infallible here as he was the original series, and can be very blunt even at his best and downright ruthless at his worst.
• Adaptational Villainy:
  • Whereas Admiral Cain's counterpart in the 1978 series tended to make questionable decisions but was ultimately a good person at heart, any redeeming qualities have long-since ceased to apply to this version after she's introduced and it's revealed that she's sanctioned the gang rape of a Cylon prisoner aboard her own ship to provide "stress relief".
  • Downplayed to a degree with Boomer. The Galactica-Boomer is ultimately a Cylon, but a Manchurian Agent, and the Caprica-Boomer (along with the vast majority of her model line during Season 4) ultimately performs a Heel–Face Turn. However, it's later played a lot straighter after Galactica-Boomer regains her memories and starts suffering from both Chronic Backstabbing Disorder and Cavil's Toxic Friend Influence.
• Adaptational Wimp: Downplayed, but instead of being the leader over the entirety of humanity like he was in the original series, Commander Adama "only" leads the surviving members of the military.
• Advanced Ancient Humans: Technology Levels on Kobol seem to have been much higher than in the Colonies or on Earth. Indeed, all Cylon-related science, including organic Cylons and Resurrection, originated on Kobol and were Lost Technology until rediscovered thousands of years later. This later repeats itself on our Earth, where it is not known that humans and Cylons from distant solar systems are among the ancestors of modern humans.
• Aesop Amnesia: In the first two seasons, Baltar spends several episodes not believing that he's an agent of God, then experiencing certain events in the episodes in question coupled with Head-Six speaking to him to the point of convincing him that he is, only for him to go through the same or a highly similar cycle again a few episodes later, or even the very next episode. Justified, as Baltar's arrogance and desire to intentionally forget his mistakes so he doesn't have to confront them are specifically shown as two of his (many) character flaws that he's being effectively put through Hell to overcome.
• Affably Evil: The Cavils, at least during their early appearances. As the series progresses, though, they all become more evil and less affable.
• After the End: The miniseries that opened the show depicted "The End", namely the near-destruction of the human race, with only some 50,000 survivors. The series itself is therefore After The End, with the remaining shreds of humanity attempting to survive.
  • Subverted to an Inversion with the series finale, in which it's revealed that the entire series was actually Before The Beginning of our own "real" human history.
• Air Fiction One: Laura Roslin was aboard a ship called Colonial Heavy 798 when the Cylons attack. When it becomes clear she in the highest-ranking government official, she is sworn in as president and the ship begins identifying itself as Colonial One. The paint job was specifically chosen to resemble Air Force One.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The Cylons rebelled and fought against humanity. Even the more-mechanical Cylon centurions are liable to rebel against their Artificial Human masters unless kept in check. The inevitability of conflict between organic and artificial life, and various character's attempts to break the cycle of violence, form the spine of the series.
• The Alleged Car: Racetrack's Raptor. Something always goes wrong with it any time she takes it out. She only discovered New Caprica because her jump drive malfunctioned and she got lost. She's crashed at least twice for plot-relevant reasons. This pattern continues up through the family, with an accident causing the Raptor to launch nukes at the Colony some time after Racetrack and her co-pilot are killed. Lesson here, never fly with Racetrack. She's not a bad pilot, she just has terrible luck.
• All for Nothing: The destruction of the resurrection ship in the two-parter of the same name ends up being largely a waste of time in the grand scheme of things, since not only does it prove just a temporary inconvenience to the Cylons, it actually makes their Raiders more of a threat, since instead of just being able to go all Leeroy Jenkins and rely on their ability to be resurrected, they're forced to make greater use of stealth and ambush tactics, which prove much more effective at blowing the inexperienced colonial pilots to bits. The only good thing that comes out of it is that Starbuck's alerting the fleet to the resurrection ship's existence stops what nearly turned into a shooting war between Adama and Admiral Cain, which allows time for Baltar to release Gina and for her to then kill Cain.
• All Just a Dream: In one, Baltar is forgiven for his treason and Roslin expresses her desire for him.

• Almost Lethal Weapons: A major character in the Season 1 finale takes two bullets to the chest at close range and lives. A minor season 4 character is shot once by the same weapon at longer range and dies in a minute or so.
• Almost Out of Oxygen:
  • Starbuck in "You Can't Go Home Again".
  • Garner in "The Captain's Hand". Unfortunately, Garner can't be saved.
  • Apollo, Starbuck, and Hot Dog in "Flight of the Phoenix."
  • Tyroll and Cally in "A Day in the Life."
• Alternative Foreign Theme Song: Dokudanjou Beauty is the ending theme of the second season in the Japanese broadcast.
• All There in the Manual: Lots of Worldbuilding and important details are hidden in the DVD Commentary and other out-of-universe sources.

• Amicable Exes: Deconstructed with Lee and Kara, who have been in love since first sight and have been friends (and essentially family) for almost as long. They tend to remain extremely close even when the romantic side of their relationship gets rocky, but on the flip side seem incapable of staying in Just Friends territory for long.
• An Aesop: As a whole, the series has two: "Sometimes, it's best to just Let the Past Burn if it's needed to get a clean slate and start over" and "Humans Are Flawed, but that's also what makes us so fascinating at the same time."
• Anchored Ship: Lee and Kara, who are kept apart, at least at the start of the series, by the fact that Kara was once engaged to marry his (now-dead) brother. Although they develop an on-again-off-again relationship, Kara's trust issues and inability to be completely honest and vulnerable about her feelings usually push them apart again. Also Bill Adama and Laura Roslin, who eventually overcome their job-related inhibitions about being in a relationship and get together.
• Angel Unaware: Implied to be the entities behind the hallucinations of the "Head people." Mostly Baltar's virtual Six, but also Six's virtual Baltar and scads of other characters (such as Kara during Season 4).
• Anyone Can Die: Almost every recurring and secondary character had been killed off by the end of the show, presumably so the minimum amount of people would get closure, not to mention a happy ending.
  • Of course for Cylons, Death Is Cheap — though even they begin to be Killed Off for Real as the Colonials make strides in the war.
• Ancient Astronauts: From whom we are descended
• And Then What?: Apollo uses this as an Armor-Piercing Question directed at Zarek in "Bastille Day."
• Ape Shall Never Kill Ape: Part of the Cylons' Cultural Posturing about why they are better than Humanity. To begin with anyway. They're also full of it. The biggest was when the Ones exterminated the Sevens out of petty jealousy, then mind wiped the rest to forget about it.
• Apocalypse How: The series starts out with a multiple Class 2, the Cylons having reduced the Twelve Colonies to radioactive wastelands as they pursue the few survivors into space.
• Arc Number:
  • 12 and 13: The Twelve Colonies of Kobol, twelve original Battlestars, twelve human Cylon models, the Quorum of Twelve, the Twelve Lords of Kobol, the original Twelve Tribes of Man... really, the list goes on. However, humanity is looking for the Thirteenth Tribe which settled on Earth, and it later turns out that the (former) existence of the Thirteenth Tribe means that there is actually 13 Cylon models.
  • 5: The Final Five.
  • The episode "33": It's the third in the series, where the Cylons always showed up 33 minutes after the fleet made a jump.
• Arc Words:
  • "All this has happened before, and will happen again".
  • "The shape of things to come."
  • Towards the end of Season 3, there's an arc song with "All Along The Watchtower." And to be more specific, there's the phase "There must be some kind of way out of here."
• Artificial Gravity: Both the Colonials and Cylons have developed this. It also serves as an Acceptable Break from Reality to help justify the show's set design.
• Artificial Human: The modern Cylons are lead by a caste of these, to the point where they're generally treated as the entirety of the Cylon race.
• Artistic License – Physics: A minor case, but the Documentary Episode "Final Cut" along with the series in general has Gaeta noting how the Galactica and rest of the Fleet functions on a 24-hour day/night cycle. While this certainly makes sense In-Universe, it's (literally) astronomically unlikely for the twelve different planets and moons that made up the Twelve Colonies to all have the same length in terms of day and night.
• Artistic License – Space: Averted. With some exceptions, ships largely behave according to actual physics. Well, largely. The major failures are either for narrative ease, or because it was too awesome to not do. Examples of the former include sound (although heavily muted sound) in space, ships being unrealistically close to each other (done so you can see both sides of a fight, or multiple members of the Colonial Fleet, in the same shot), and ships consistently being too low, and moving too slowly, to actually be in a viable orbit around a planet (it allows for nicer shots). Examples of the latter case include almost anything that makes you go "Holy shit!", such as the mid-atmosphere jump in the liberation of New Caprica.
• Ascended Extra: Dualla, Gaeta, Cally, Hoshi, Anders, Tory, Doc Cottle, Seelix, Romo, Hotdog, and Kat just to name a few. Helo is probably the most obvious example, as he was supposed to die in the pilot.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Starbuck in Season 3, though she doesn't realize it until later on in Season 4.
• Ascetic Aesthetic: The Colonials and Cylons have very different design aesthetics, with the former being in a run-down warship, with even the newer ships (ala Pegasus) are distinctly utilitarian; the latter in ultra-modern organic/technological starships.
• Asshole Victim:
  • Tory Foster. The only one of the "Final Five" to leap at the first chance to abandon the humans and join the Cylons, and the murderer of Cally Tyrol. Therefore, one doesn't have that much sympathy for her when Galen throttles her and snaps her neck in the series finale.
  • Similarly, only his mother can be seen feeling sorry for John Cavil when he decides to Rage Quit and kill himself in the series' last episode.
• Ass Pull: invoked An In-Universe case, where due to being both imaginative and an extremely talented liar, Baltar can pull a plausible excuse, idea, and once an entire religion out of his ass at the drop of a hat.
• Astronomic Zoom: The Season 3 finale was a variation, the shot zooming out from a battle to show the entire galaxy before zooming back in at a nearby area to show how close the fleet were to Earth, though given the sizes involved they could be right next to it and never have found it without help.
• Ate His Gun: Cavil at the end. Whether it was simple suicide as his plans crashed down around him, or a reflexive escape attempt forgetting he couldn't resurrect anymore, will never be known.
• Attempted Rape: Cally and Sharon, although it's averted, in the sense of there being actual rape, in Sharon's case in the deleted/extended scene. Good thing it's not canon.
• Author Appeal: A lot of people smoke, with lip-smacking enjoyment, on this show. Listening to one of the podcast commentary tracks with Ronald D. Moore will make it readily apparent why.
• Author Filibuster: All of this has happened before, and will happen to us if we aren't careful with our technology. Admittedly, Ronald Moore has stated that it probably would have been more effective had the 2007 Writer's Strike not crippled the series' writing staff during the last season of the show.
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Saul and Ellen Tigh.

B

• Back from the Dead:
  • Kara Thrace was killed, then mysteriously returned (complete with a shiny new Viper) thanks to the literal intervention of God.
  • Cylons, of course, who even down to the lowly Raider have Born-Again Immortality.
• Back Story: Quite a lot is given to even the lowliest extra.
• Badass Boast: From Laura Roslin, of all people, when told to back down to Tom Zarek's coup:
  Laura Roslin: ...No. Not now. Not ever. Do you hear me? I will use every cannon, every bomb, every bullet, every weapon I have down to my own eye teeth to end you! I swear it! I'm coming for all of you!
• Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work: Gina Inviere does humanity (and the mutineers) a favor by shooting Admiral Cain.
• Bait-and-Switch Credits: invoked Though it's more of an unintentional version, really. The writers for the show later admitted that they never actually got around to hashing out amongst themselves what exactly the Cylon plan prominently mentioned in the intro was supposed to be (as Executive Meddling ordered that turn of phrase to be put into the credits). Tellingly, the tagline mentioning said plan was quietly removed from the intro in the final season.
• Bathroom Stall of Overheard Insults: How Baltar got to be Vice President. Guess it should be Overheard promotions.
• Battle Chant: Admiral Adama leads the troops in a chant of "So say we all!" at the end of the miniseries.
• The Battlestar: Ya think? This series is a remake of the Trope Maker and Trope Codifier. An antique-turned-museum-piece, the Galactica is the only remaining military vessel, and therefore the best ship in the remainder of humanity's fleet.
• Beard of Sorrow: Saul Tigh, Galen Tyrol, and William Adama on New Caprica. Gaius Baltar during his trial. Adama had a mustache but it followed the trope exactly the same.
• Beauty Equals Goodness:
  • Zigzagged with the Cylons—Most of the good (or at least sympathetic) Cylons are played by attractive young actors and actresses (Six, Boomer/Athena, Anders, and Tyrol), the more morally doubtful (Leoben, Tigh) are older and less conventionally attractive, and the outright evil (Cavil) is the ugliest and oldest of the lot. Then again, Tory Foster and D'Anna Biers are both young and attractive and also pretty morally doubtful people, and their actions have resulted in them seeming far less sympathetic than their cohorts.
  • The only perfectly upstanding character in the whole show, Karl Agathon, is actually named after this trope (see "Kalos kai Agathos" above).
• Beauty Inversion: Lee Adama's weight gain in Season 3, which helps show the almost hilarious amount of pressure he's being put under.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted, with most of the humans and some of the Cylons. Special mention to Boomer's shot through her cheek leading to a massive bruise and hole in her cheek, with a bandage that covers most of her cheek.
• Becoming the Mask: What happens to Athena when she impersonates Boomer in the first season.
  • In The Plan a Simon/Number Four Cylon has a wife and child (hers, from a previous marriage) and tries to resist pressure from Cavil to commit sabotage.
• Benevolent Alien Invasion: Apparently, this was what the Cylons originally wanted to do on New Caprica, but it kind of blew up in their face due to both Colonial distrust and Cavil rising in power. They thought humans and Cylons could live together "peacefully," but it quickly descends into a tyrannical occupation regime rounding up random civilians for mass executions in reprisal for resistance bombings.
• Beta Couple: Helo and Athena to Apollo and Starbuck, although the problems they face are on a whole different level.
• Better than Sex:
  Kat: When you come back after a successful run, let me tell you. It is better than a great meal. Better than hitting a jackpot. It's better than sex.
• Beware of Hitchhiking Ghosts: A longer timeframe than usual, but Kara Thrace counts as this. She dies, turns up again and hitches a lift, gives mystical prophecies and information, vanishes into thin air when her "task" is done.
• Big Applesauce: The ruins of the first Earth look like this, but they actually aren't. The final scene in the entire series takes place in modern Times Square.
• Big Bad: John Cavil, aka Number One, the Humanoid Cylon who started the attack on the Twelve Colonies by sending humanoid Cylons to infiltrate them, and is ultimately responsible for humanity's near-extinction.
• The Big Board: Galactica has a large table with model ships that's used to plan and track missions. New models to represent Cylon ships are produced over the course of the series. A smaller example is the whiteboard Roslin hangs in her office tracking the population count of surviving humans.
• Big Damn Heroes: In "Exodus Part II", when the Pegasus comes diving in to save the Galactica from no less than four basestars as the Galactica evacuates the New Capricans.
  • Darkly subverted in the pilot miniseries. A portion of the civilian fleet led by Roslin and Apollo were in the midst of a dramatic countdown that would abandon the ships without FTL to their deaths at the hands of the Cylons. You would think that this would be a set up for the Galactica to show up at the last moment and save everyone. You would be wrong.
• Big Damn Gunship: Given the nature (and title) of the show, this effect is frequent, but particularly notable in season three's "Exodus — Part 2", in which both the Galactica and the Pegasus have almost back to back BDG moments.
• Big Good: Two major ones among the Colonials - President Laura Roslin among the Civilian Fleet, and Admiral William Adama among the crew members of the Galactica. There's also the "Messengers" - Head-Six and Head-Baltar - who are helping guide both Colonials and Cylons away from yet again repeating their Vicious Cycle.
• Big "NO!": There are a number over the course of the series, what with it being about an apocalypse. The most well known, and one of the most well executed ones on TV, is let out in a bloodcurdling scream by Apollo after Starbuck dies. Granted, its effect was slightly diminished though as it was used in the 'previously on' section in most subsequent episodes until her return.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: A figurative one among the Galactica community, with Roslin and Adama being the Team Mom and Team Dad of the Fleet, and a literal one among the Cylons, with Saul and Ellen Tigh being the estranged Team Dad and Team Mom for the Cylons, with their eldest son, Cavil, having usurped their position in the family and leading his siblings along the road to Hell.
• Bilingual Bonus: The opening theme's lyrics are an excerpt of the Hindu chant "The Gayatri Mantra". It approximately translates in English to "May we attain that excellent glory of Savitar the God / so May he stimulate our prayers."
• Biotech Is Better: The Cylons use a lot of biotech and they appear to be much more advanced than the humans.
• Bittersweet Ending: The First Cylon War ends with an uneasy armistice after a great deal of death, destruction, and bloodshed, and lasts for around forty years before the Second Cylon War ends in a Pyrrhic Victory for the humans and rebel Cylons, with the vast (and even the word vast does not seem quite adequate enough) majority of both the human and Cylon races being wiped out, roughly a dozen planets being turned into what amounts to nuclear wastelands, and while the remains of the two civilizations finally come to live together in peace on our Earth, the technologically advanced human and Cylon civilizations are extinguished, with the surviving population ultimately choosing to live a stripped down, relatively primitive lifestyle both out of a desperate desire to prevent the Vicious Cycle that both have been suffering through for countless millennia from repeating itself yet again and the simple fact that they literally do not have the remaining resources left to support their former way of life. And a great deal of the cast does not live to see it. Fast forward a few hundred or so millennia, and human-Cylon civilization has progressed to what we know it as today on our Earth, with the question of whether or not this will all happen again being intentionally left open and ambiguous. However, the fact that the humanoid Cylons, Colonials, and our Earth's hominids have apparently all melded into one species (modern humanity) instead of being "just" founded by one species gives the hope that the cycle has been permanently broken... But who can really say?
  • Flat-out averted with the Centurions, who are implied to permanently escape the cycle of violence after becoming the masters of their own destiny. The surviving Colonials and Cylons both admit that it's a massive risk considering the Centurions could eventually come back and wipe them all out, but they've more than earned their freedom by that point.
• Black-and-Gray Morality: invoked Everyone has a reason for doing what they do, no matter how morally questionable. As a result, only four major characters have crossed the Moral Event Horizon during the show's run.
• Blind Jump: Activating the FTL drive without inputting any coordinates is considered extremely risky as you'll "jump" to an unknown location which could be more dangerous than the current one. Admiral Cain is forced to risk it when the Pegasus is attacked during the Fall of the Colonies and can't escape the Cylons via conventional means.
• Blipvert: A short burst of clips from the episode plays after the opening credits. Occasionally this includes shots that were cut from the finished episode. The blipvert was dropped from the first few episodes of Season 2 as the network wanted more time for commercials. Fan outcry led to it being brought back starting with "The Farm".
• Bloodless Carnage: Averted; people get covered in blood after the slightest of injuries, most notably the characters on Kobol who are still bloody in the third episode of the second season from an accident in the previous season's finale (though this case is justified since they haven't had any chance to wash up as they've been running for their lives from the Cylons the whole time).
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: invoked Head Six and Head Baltar, both of whom don't see things like either the Colonials or even Cylons do. According to Word of God, whatever they are was the inspiration for both angels and demons.
• Boarding Pod: A rather spectacular version where the entire Galactica is used as one in the Series Finale.
• Body Backup Drive: The re-imagined Cylons download into new bodies, so long as there's a Resurrection Ship in range. Even the dog-level-intelligence Raider ships resurrect.
• Boomerang Bigot: Some of the most aggressively anti-Cylon characters later turn out to be either Cylons or people with significant connections to the Cylons.
• Born as an Adult: The humanoid members of the robotic Cylon race seem to all be born as adults, and upon death of their physical body they can regenerate into new ones, effectively making them immortal. There are also many copies. Their emotional maturity can range, though, as Cavil in particular is more like a sadistic, petulant teenager who happens to have been born in the body of an old man (which he is particularly cranky about).

• Brain Uploading: The Cylon means of immortality.
• Break Out the Museum Piece: The Galactica was in the process of being converted into a museum when the Cylon attack caused it to be pressed back into service. Also, the fact that Cylons can disable linked computer systems means that cutting-edge ships and fighters are useless against them, so older ones have to be used. Well, at least until they adapted the newer ships at later points in the series. And hilariously enough, Edward James Olmos actually broke a museum piece in an awesome bit of ad-lib acting during a scene early on in the show.
• Breakout Character: Head-Six was literally created by the writing team so as to keep a version of Caprica-Six around that could regularly talk to Baltar in the Colonial Fleet after everyone was stunned by Tricia Helfer's fantastic performance as Number Six. As such, Head-Six is easily one of the most popular and iconic characters out of the whole series, being featured in the series's marketing more than perhaps any other character (and not just for the obvious reasons).
• Breakout Villain: John Cavil, thanks in large part to Dean Stockwell's amazing performance, was elevated from being just another Cylon to the series' Big Bad and even the Greater-Scope Villain behind the Fall of the Twelve Colonies.
• Break the Cutie: Boomer. Things just take a downward turn for her in the first season and the series keeps running with it until the inevitable snap. Similarly, the poor universe utterly despises Felix Gaeta, and things keeps getting worse for him until his Face–Heel Turn in the final season.
• Broken Ace: Kara "Starbuck" Thrace. Top notch pilot, expert markswoman, fine brawler-but suffering from memories of an abusive childhood, a morass of self-esteem and self-loathing issues, and unsure of how to have a life beyond being The Ace. And of course it just gets worse halfway through the fourth season when she finds out she's been Dead All Along.
• Broken Pedestal: The Final Five, depicted in visions as glowing angelic beings in long flowing robes and held up as gods by the other six Cylons, turn out to be the five most screwed up, petty, petulant, disorderly, malcontent, self-centered and, ironically enough, human characters in the whole series. It also makes sense in-universe: Cavil wiped their memories and stuck them with the humans to teach them a lesson. He enforced a taboo amongst the other Cylons about discussing them. Both aspects backfired.
  • Gaeta has this with both Baltar and (in Season 4) Commander Adama.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer:
  • Starbuck habitually indulges in self-destructive and disrespectful behaviour that would get her kicked out of any real-world military. Among other things she misses her scheduled flight due to heavy drinking and punches her executive officer. It's justified in-universe by the fact that she has extraordinary skills as a pilot when pilots of any kind are desperately hard to come by. It probably doesn't hurt that she's Commander Adama's surrogate daughter-figure.
  • Colonel Tigh is a Jerkass alcoholic, known for Drinking on Duty, and once getting into a fistfight with a subordinate officer during a poker game (even he couldn't honestly remember when asked later if Starbuck threw the first punch or if he did). When he sobers up, he is a very capable and fiercely loyal XO to Commander Adama, saving the ship with his fast decision-making more than once.
  • This is all a bit more understandable in the light of the miniseries; they're both assigned to an aging Battlestar that's about to become a museum, and comments from various corners make it clear that neither Starbuck or Tigh have particularly good-looking futures for their careers once the Galactica shuts down and Adama can't shield them as much anymore from retirement; Lee, who does have a good career going, can't really believe how they act at first. And then the world blows up, and all of a sudden they have no option but to continue their jobs despite their flaws, which essentially become subplots for the first few seasons.
  • Played literally with Romo Lampkin, a kleptomaniac manipulative attorney who hates cats (despite having a pet cat). He acquits Baltar against all odds and survives several direct attempts to kill him.
• Butt-Monkey: Recurring Viper pilot Kat repeatedly gets into near-death experiences throughout the first half of the series, which eventually leads to her turning to drugs to deal with the stress and trauma this has caused. Her luck improves for a while, only for her secret past as a smuggler to nearly be revealed, which would ruin her career, Starbuck gives her a brutal "The Reason You Suck" Speech and threatens to reveal it to Adama, and she dies of heavy radiation poisoning sustained while trying to guide civilian ships out of a highly radioactive area near a sun about to go nova.

C

• Cain and Abel: Any serious conflict between the Cylons amounts to this, since all but the five originators of the race are technically brothers and sisters by relation.
  • John Cavil murdered his brother Daniel out of jealously because his mother loved him more, polluting the models during their assembly process. He later tries to permanently kill half of his siblings for rebelling against him.
  • Boomer and Athena's interaction also becomes increasingly hostile as Boomer feels that Athena got the life she should have had. Athena knowingly started out as a Cylon before joining the humans willingly, while Boomer believed herself to be human before having her Cylon nature forced upon her. She threatens to kill Athena's daughter Hera before Six kills her. After downloading again Boomer later beats up Athena and ties her up, then forces her to watch as she makes out with Athena's human husband Helo and kidnaps her daughter for Cavil.
• Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp": Rather justified given the setting is far removed from Earth, but still there. DRADIS (radar), "Carom" (mark), "Krypter! Krypter! Krypter!" (Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!), "JP" (unspecified if gallons or liters).
• Calvinball: The sport Pyramid and the card game Triad, although the real-world company Anovos said the latter is just Poker. It's also technically inverted from the original series, where Pyramid was a card game and Triad a ball game.
• Camping a Crapper: Starbuck does this to a mutineer during Gaeta's coup.
• Captain's Log: Some episodes have segments featuring Commander Adama's thoughts that he's recorded in his personal journal.
• Canadian Series: The Canadian involvement and references in this series is undeniable, most obviously in the prominent Canadian and American accents seen by virtually every character.
• Cartwright Curse: Chief Tyrol may be a cutie, but it sure is dangerous being his main squeeze. Similarly, trying to date either Starbuck or Apollo is usually a good indication that you will not be long for this world.
• Cassette Futurism: invoked The series overall has a deliberately retro aesthetic given to its super-advanced technology, looking more akin to the science fiction of The '80s than that of the decade of the series' release. This aesthetic choice was even lampshaded by Word of God, with Ronald Moore noting in one of the DVD commentaries that part of his vision for the Galactica was imagining a sci-fi warship developed by a people who had "just had to endure their own technology betraying them."
  • The series is initially vague about how advanced Colonial digital technology is, with a backstory alluding to the Colonials downgrading their digital tech deliberately to fight the Cylons, who, as artificially intelligent lifeforms, were really good at hacking their computer systems. When Helo and Starbuck are stranded on Caprica and rummaging through Starbuck's old apartment, the microcassettes from A Clockwork Orange show up in Starbuck's possession; they contain recordings of her father's piano music. Later, the series seems to imply that Colonial computer tech is about a couple years to a decade behind present-day Earth, but as the Galactica is an old ship from the First Cylon War, she is deliberately lower-tech compared to newer, more digitally advanced ships like the Pegasus.
  • Various other Colonial tech (especially non-military tech) also has retro-stylings, like their Art Deco radios that wouldn't look out of place in a 1950s diner. The Colonials are Human Aliens, human beings from a parallel civilization who eventually turn out to be among modern humanity's prehistoric ancestors. Their technological progression (pre-First Cylon War) doesn't strictly have to follow Earth's, but they are meant to be roughly similar to us culturally enough that we might expect only minor variations, like the microcassettes and vintage-looking radios, which might have been technological dead-ends in their own civilization's history, but probably are more resistant to Cylon electronic warfare than digital technology. At least, Colonial space travel tech does seem to have advanced by the time Galactica is set, but the civilian radios still look like early and mid-20th century AM/FM models with art deco stylings, and other episodes imply that the A Clockwork Orange-inspired microcassettes were a common storage medium for music, at least on Caprica, before the Cylon Holocaust.
• Casual Interstellar Travel: "JUMP!"
  • Although ironically, it's not a case in-universe... the vast majority of traffic is between the twelve planets, all located in one planetary system. Worlds outside there are generally for mining or research, not true colonies, so few of them have any traffic to speak of. "Casual" interstellar travel only becomes common after the colonies are destroyed and they don't really care where they're going.
• Catchphrase:
  • Among the Colonials, "So say we all" is frequently used among closing ceremonies of both a religious and military nature.
  • In contrast, the original series' "By your command" line among the Cylons makes a single appearance and then is abandoned, likely in part because this series' version of the Cylons initially have very little in the way of hierarchy.
• Caught with Your Pants Down: Gaius Baltar is haunted by visions of his Cylon ex that nobody else can see. She frequently gets romantic with him. It's shown that this looks like exactly what you'd expect it to look like when Starbuck drops by his lab and catches him "doing his exercises" in the first season. She almost lets this pass without comment ...and then dryly asks him to zip up his fly.
• Celebrity Survivor:
  • Starbuck runs into a band of survivors who used to be a professional sports team before the nuking of Caprica, who only escaped the initial blast because they were training up in the mountains. The team was also not really trained in guerrilla warfare. They were just using techniques that they saw in contemporary movies, with predictably mixed results.
  • Before the Cylon attacks, Gaius Baltar was also a well-known scientist and proponent of re-developing advanced computer technology. It is Baltar's celebrity status that causes Helo to give up his seat on the Raptor to him, stating that if humanity was going to survive, it would need smarter people them himself. Ironically, Baltar was an Unwitting Pawn of the Cylons, causing most of civilization to be destroyed to be destroyed in the first place.
• Central Theme: Faith (both of the religious kind and not), the nature of humanity, family, and Eternal Recurrence. "All of this has happened before, and will happen again."
• Centrifugal Farce: Used to simulate difficult targeting conditions by Viper pilots.
• Cessation of Existence: According to Head-Six, this is the fate of all who die on Kobol, as Go "turned his back" on the planet due to humanity's worship of the Lords of Kobol.
• Character Development: invoked Every. Single. Character. For the most part this is handled supremely well, other than a few duds.
  • And they all do it relatively well. One particular example is William Adama, who at the end of the first season objects to Roslin's use of troops against civilians, because of what his father (a civil liberties attorney) taught him about the dangers of that. And later on, he's still willing to vote against conviction of a war criminal, because "the defense made its case." But that doesn't stop him from ultimately threatening a person's loved ones in order to stop a worker's strike that could cripple the fleet, apparently in full knowledge of how horribly he was acting but grimly deciding that when the survival of the human race is on the line, one must engage in certain sins to ensure a greater virtue.
  • Ellen Tigh might be one of the most stark examples in the entire show. While for the majority of the series she is presented as a scheming Lady Macbeth and source of Toxic Friend Influence for her own husband, Season 3 starts to show more of her genuine love for Saul during the New Caprica occupation and Stepford Smiler traits. Furthermore, after she dies and resurrects, she becomes an empathetic Team Mom (well, relatively speaking), to the point where she forgives her own son after learning that he raped her and was responsible for the deaths of over 50 billion innocent people (among many other crimes).
• Characters Dropping Like Flies: Billy, Gaeta, Zarek, Dualla, Cally, Anders (rendered effectively brain dead), D'Anna Biers (presumably perishes on the uninhabitable "Earth"), multiple supporting cast crew members whose deaths were depicted, several last-episode fatalities (Roslin, Cavil, Tory, etc.) and that's not counting characters who die but come back at least once.
• Character Shilling: Zig-zagged with Laura Roslin. She gets away with things any leader would be called to account for, and frequently brushes aside her responsibility as a quasi-democratically elected (or at least popularly acclaimed as such when the alternative is to reinstate Gaius Baltar as President) leader with a requirement to get the consent of the people instead of issuing edicts and orders. However, not only does she still go through tons of crap over the course of the series, both her and Adama's praise in spite of their numerous flaws is shown to be due to everyone else understanding on some level that they're slowly cracking under the almost-hilarious pressure they're all undergoing to prevent mankind's extinction.
  • Inverted with Tom Zarek. He's never trusted, even after being legitimately elected a Quorum of Twelve member and retained as Vice-President under Roslin, who he seemed initially to have come to terms with after the Cylon occupation (under which both leaders were subject to illegal detention, incidentally). Then the show shoots him off the bus... until later it's shown that he was just biding his time, looking for the chance to stage his own coup.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • A Viper that sat there a long time. Early in the pilot episode(s), the crew of the Galactica announce that they have managed to hunt down Commander Adama's old Space Fighter and have it on the hangar deck. The first time we see him fly it is in the denouement of the series finale.
  • On a similar note, Episode 10 of Season 1 features Head Six explaining herself as being 'an angel of God'. The last thirty seconds of the series pays this off, when it's revealed that she wasn't lying. It's literally true.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder:
  • Gaius Baltar can fall into this at times thanks to his willfull Aesop Amnesia and Dirty Coward traits, though he significantly improves as the series goes on.
  • Boomer changes sides so often it's amazing she doesn't get whiplash. In fact, Cavil states that all the Eights have a tendency to betray as part of their self-destructive streak.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: In the pilot we're introduced to Boxey, a young boy who was a regular in the original series. He's rescued by Boomer, who carts him all the way back to the Galactica, and introduces him to Chief Tyrol as "a new part of the crew." He appears again briefly in the third episode and was in a deleted scene in the second episode, and then is never seen again.
• Clear My Name: "Six Degrees of Separation" has Baltar trying to exonerate himself and prove that he wasn't the man who sold out humanity to the Cylons. In an interesting twist, both he and the audience know that he actually was the traitor, but as the evidence implicating him is falsified and Baltar is now The Atoner, both we and him are still motivated for Baltar to prove his (false) innocence.
• Cliffhanger: The occasional two-parter, such as "The Oath" used this very well.
• Cloudcuckoolander: The Hybrids are an incredibly creepy example. Sometimes they will blurt a piece of information only certain people can interpret as anything important.
  • Baltar also comes off as this to anyone who catches him conversing with (or doing other things to) Head Six. Unlike with the Hybrids, though, this is more often than not Played for Laughs.
  • Cally fell into this territory Once an Episode near the beginning of the series. As she Took a Level in Cynic, they became far more infrequent.
• Code Name: The esoteric names of the original series (Apollo, Starbuck, Boomer, etc.) are used as pilot callsigns with the characters being given more grounded birth names (Lee, Kara, Sharon, etc.).
• Cold-Blooded Torture: "Flesh and Bone" is largely focused on Starbuck engaging in this regarding the captive Leoben, with waterboarding mostly being featured (as part of the series making a thinly veiled Take That! towards the use of waterboarding at Guantanamo Bay by the United States during The War on Terror). It doesn't work at all, and it's only when Starbuck actually tries to properly interrogate Leoben that they reach any form of success.
• Les Collaborateurs: On New Caprica, many Colonials work with the Cylon occupation regime. The majority of them are killed by a suicide bomber in the first episode of Season 3.
• Colonel Badass: Saul frakking Tigh. Colonel Belzan, former XO of Pegasus, gets a nod for having the integrity (and the balls) to defy Admiral Cain's order to launch a suicide attack. Averted with Colonel Fisk, who's generally a coward, not to mention a criminal.
• Color Wash:
  • Most scenes set on Cylon-occupied Caprica are given an ugly but fitting saturation boost to the lighting, which serves as a subtle reminder of the planet slowly but surely becoming an uninhabitable wasteland thanks to the Cylons' nuclear bombardment.
  • On a lighter note, most scenes set on Kobol are given a subtle green filter, to the point where the foliage on the planet comes across as almost implausibly green so as to further underline the fertility of humanity's homeworld.
• Coming in Hot: Galactica is basically an aircraft carrier in space, so of course they will have a crash landing or two...so they get one out of the way right off the bat in the miniseries.
  Apollo: (his ship being pushed by Starbuck's ship towards Galactica's retracting hangar bay) We're coming in a little hot, don't you think?!
  Starbuck: invoked No... (Starbuck's eyes widen in fear)
  • The above is also justified, as they only have a limited number of aircraft and no resources to make new ones until much later in the series, so they do not really have the option to just eject and save the pilot - they have to try and save the ship too.
  • They make a pretty regular tactic out of this trope, due to how FTL travel affects tactics and maneuvering. The Vipers provide screening for the Galactica against Cylon Raiders for as long as possible. The recall order is given during the Galactica's final preparations for jump, and the Vipers make a "Combat Landing", forgoing all practiced form in favor of getting inside the hangar bays as fast as possible before their mothership jumps.
• Communications Officer: Dualla for most of the series, later succeeded by Hoshi.
• Commuting on a Bus: Commander Kelly is, judging by dialogue cues, the third highest ranked officer on Galactica behind Adama and Tigh but only ever makes a handful of appearances across the course of the series. A somewhat justified example as his job as Landing Signal Officer means he's usually down at the landing bay overseeing landing procedures. His appearing in CIC usually means something is really wrong and someone higher up is unavailable.
• The Complainer Is Always Wrong: invoked Deconstructed in the grand scheme of things when Tom Zarek actually brings up a valid point when he argues that the government is pretty much a joint-dictatorship between Roslin and Admiral Adama. Of course, not only is he a former terrorist and wants that power for himself, but he also crosses the Moral Event Horizon eventually, so it doesn't exactly give him the moral high ground.
• Conservation of Ninjutsu: Early in the series, Cylon Centurions are depicted as being veritable juggernauts in battle, with a small raiding party necessitating headshots with high-explosive rounds in order to be brought down. By the series finale, the Galactica crew is able to drop waves of the things using only pistol-caliber carbine rifles and submachine guns.
  • Ronald D. Moore addressed this in a podcast, saying that the humans eventually developed armor-piercing ammunition to counter the Cylon's upgraded armor.
• Continuity Nod: The Cylons use the infinity symbol of the Soldiers of the One from Caprica during a funeral service in "Islanded in a Stream of Stars".
• Continuity Reboot: invoked The new series is a reboot of the franchise, starting from a clean slate and having only the premise in common with Battlestar Galactica (1978). It's got a Setting Update and a more modern feel than the original.
• Convenient Miscarriage: Caprica-Six and Tigh's son (Wil)Liam, caused by Tigh switching his affections back to Ellen.
• Cool Ship: Technically averted with the Galactica, which survives thanks to being an obsolete old bucket (while still remaining very cool indeed) and played straight with the Pegasus and the Cylon Basestars.
• Courtroom Episode: The two-part Season 3 finale "Crossroads" is focused around the trial of Gaius Baltar for his role in the dismal affairs regarding New Caprica.
• Conveniently Close Planet: Averted in "Water."
  Tigh: (to Roslin) The galaxy's a pretty barren and desolate place when you get right down to it.
  • Played straght in "Act of Contrition," as Starbuck is incredibly lucky to have been right next to a planet when she had to punch out.
  • Although they did encounter a lot of planets^note (Kobol and New Caprica, to name just two) in the series, the "jump" method of travel obscured the distances; many of the hops were described as requiring several jumps.
• Conveniently Unverifiable Cover Story: Former trope namer; Boomer's plausible cover story. Presumably the Final Five have similar "biographies" to go with their Fake Memories.
  • It can be freely speculated about a lot of the people on the show because almost all of the records of what everyone did before the Fall of the Twelve Colonies was lost on their nuked homeworlds.
• Constructed World: Almost, but not quite. On the one hand, it's obviously averted in that the series frequently uses names and other real-world terms (i.e., the Lords of Kobol are all named after deities from Classical Mythology, and the Cylon's religion is a thinly-veiled parallel to Christianity), and the main characters are all searching for "Earth." However, it's also played straight in a sense with that the Twelve Colonies of Kobol still have a lot of appropriately alien histories and cultural details given to them, and that's all without getting into the Cylons' bizarre pseudo-Hive Mind "democracy". And in a more clear instance of this trope, the Cyrannus planetary system where the Twelve Colonies are found is not based after any discovered planetary system in reality.
• Couch Gag: Starting with the second season the opening credits have a running total of the remaining human population that changes depending on the recent deaths (or occasional births). The R&D TV Vanity Plate at the end of the credits also changes with each episode (although plates are sometimes recycled much like the trope namer).
• Cradling Your Kill: In the third season, Saul Tigh is convinced that his wife, Ellen, has betrayed the human resistance movement by collaborating with the Cylons. The resistance leaders agree that she must be punished by death, so Saul volunteers to do the deed himself. He poisons her drink, and gently holds her as her last breath slowly slips away. This does his psychological state no favors.
• Crapsack World:
  • The Colonial Fleet. Morale hangs by a thread, paranoia at the prospect of Cylon infiltrators is through the roof, rights that the Colonials had back home are steadily eroded by grim necessity (such as abortion being ruled illegal), the supply situation gets ever more desperate as the ships of the fleet grow ever more decrepit as time goes by, children end up working dangerous jobs or meet even worse fates at the hands of black marketeers, and even the good guys have to put down strikes with threats of violence against the instigators' families to ensure their continued survival. Needless to say, there's an endless list of reasons for why it utterly sucks to living in the Fleet.
  • New Caprica is a cold and barely inhabitable planet with only a thin strip of survivable terrain along its equator. Naturally, it gets even worse after the Cylons eventually find the settlement, quickly transforming from a Benevolent Alien Invasion into a ruthless occupation regime that organizes the mass execution of civilians in the face of the Resistance's suicide bombings.
• Crapsaccharine World:
  • Cylon society is portrayed as this, as highlighted in "Downloaded". On the surface, it seems to be a blissfull and peaceful direct democracy dedicated to spiritual enlightenment, but it's ultimately a ruthless Police State ruled over by the Ones with an iron fist, with Cylon society being fueled by the enslavement of the Centurions and Raiders and religious fervor being twisted into justifying the extinction of humanity. By the final season, they're ultimately running out of as many resources as the Colonials are, being reduced to little more than rags and become a straight-forward Crapsack World.
  • The Cylon farms are worthy of special note, as they may look like pleasant health clinics on the surface, but they're ultimately horrific facilities where human women are kidnapped and hooked up to hideous "birthing machines" as part of the Cylons' experiments into restarting biological reproduction.
• Critical Staffing Shortage: The Galactica was about to be decommissioned so the Colonial Navy already stripped it of its best personnel and it is left with a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits who were meant to be retired or discharged after the Galactica is scrapped. When the war with the Cylons starts, combat losses makes this problem even worse. New personnel are recruited from the civilian fleet and at one point Adama has to cut a deal with the prisoners on a prison ship in order to use them as needed labor. There is almost a mutiny because skilled people are kept in undesirable job positions because their skillset is too valuable to allow them to be promoted or transferred out.
• Crucified Hero Shot: Season 1 ends on a shot of Bill Adama laid out and cradled by several others on the CIC command & control station, arms wide, passed out from blood loss after being shot twice in the chest by Boomer.
• Cryptic Conversation: Much of Head Six's conversations with Baltar.
• Crystal Ball: Or rather, the pool of water used by the prophetess on New Caprica.
• Cultural Posturing: Used by both sides at times to some degree.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: The Second Cylon War starts out as a very brutal version of this, with the Colonials being subjected to a hellish nuclear bombardment and less than 50,000 people left out of the previously 50 billion population of the Twelve Colonies survive. To put that into perspective, that means that less than 0.0001% of the original population of the Colonies survived.^note Literally one in a million. Imagine a 1000x1000px image. Each pixel in that image is a person. Randomly pick a single pixel in that image. That's the lone survivor. Its actually worse than that. Though weirdly enough, the humans actually win in the end. Well, if you can call it that...
• Cutting Back to Reality: Baltar's interactions with Head Six are often treated this way with the camera cutting to another angle to show that, from the other characters' point of view, he's talking to himself.
• Cut Himself Shaving:
  • Gaius' explanation to his cult after some thugs assault him with his own shaving razor: "Cut myself shaving."
  • Adama, on the other hand, actually does cut himself shaving quite a lot.
• Cyborg: Most if not all Cylons are cyborgs. The Raiders are almost entirely organic on the inside, and the human-forms are ambiguous. On the one hand, they are extremely difficult to tell from humans. On the other, Sharon once accomplished something useful by cutting her hand open and jamming a fiber-optic cable inside. In a later episode it is stated that the human-form Cylons have some sort of organic optical data port in their hands, which is how they control and receive data from the basestars. Presumably Sharon was inserting the fiber so that she could make a good connection to the Galactica's less advanced hardware. On a Basestar, they just stick their hands in the literal datastream. The Centurions are in fact the only ones who are entirely mechanical.
• Cycle of Revenge: The entire series is ultimately about a Vicious Cycle involving this trope in regards to the relationship between humanity and Cylons (A.I.s), and everyone either playing into this or intentionally trying to permanently break it. "This has all happened before and it will happen again."

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