Battlestar Galactica 2003 / Tropes S to Z

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

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S

• Scale Model Destruction: Bill Adama worked on a model of an Age of Sail ship over the course of the show, which he ends up destroying in a fit of rage. The destruction was an ad-lib by Edward James Olmos, who didn't know the model was very expensive (after all, in Real Life someone working full time can take a couple months to build one) and in fact on loan from a museum. Fortunately, it was insured.
• Scars Are Forever: Tigh's eye, Gaeta's leg, Anders's mind/body. Even the Galactica itself is an example, being visibly in terrible shape by season 3 after the nasty beating it took during the evacuation of New Caprica, and practically falling apart in Season 4. At the end of the show, its superstructure shatters as a result of all the damage it's taken, rendering it unable to jump ever again.
• Scary Dogmatic Aliens: Unusual variant; The Cylons are Scary Dogmatic Robots who believe in God and have been led to believe that they must wipe out their creators in service to "Him."

• Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: invoked One million light-years, the alleged distance from the Colonies to Earth, is well outside the Milky Way. In fact, it's about 40% of the way to our nearest galactic neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy. Later justified in that Word of God stated Adama was using hyperbole when he said that.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: There is an argument to be made that Lee has benefited from this, even if he does not blatantly utilize it.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Helo might as well have this tattooed on his forehead.
• Sealed Good in a Can: The Final Five Cylons; specifically, Sealed Inside a Person-Shaped Can. Cavil set them up with human identities and Fake Memories so that they would experience his planned holocaust firsthand and couldn't use their knowledge of the true history behind everything to interfere by warning humanity or telling the other Cylons how Cavil was manipulating them.
• Searching the Stalls: This situation occurs during a hostage crisis in Season 2, at least, until Lee Adama jumps the guy supposedly hunting him from behind.
• See the Whites of Their Eyes: Even nukes are deployed at spitting distance. This isn't a danger to the attacker, but ships are generally much closer to one another than necessary, so you can actually see more than one ship on the screen at once.
• Second Love: Roslin becomes this for the widower Adama after they form a December–December Romance later on into the series.
• Sense Loss Sadness: What Cavil has to say about being a human.
• Sensor Suspense: "We've got multiple DRADIS contacts!"
• Seriously Scruffy: In "33," Adama and Tigh are both sporting very noticeable facial hair. As the characters have been attacked near constantly for a week, this is understandable.
• Settling the Frontier: The colonization of New Caprica (though later abandoned) and Earth.
• Sex Equals Love: Played straight with Helo and Athena on Caprica. Hand Waved in that they were already falling for each other, it was part of Athena's assignment as a Cylon infiltrator, and Helo had a massive crush on her ever since he met her on the Galactica.
• Sex Sells: The miniseries/pilot does this quite blatantly with arguably the sexiest member of the cast, Tricia Helfer. In the first scene of the series, she walks into the room in a tight red skirt suit, and passionately kisses a man. A few scenes later, she walks into Gaius Baltar's apartment wearing a see-through black dress with sexy black lingerie showing through it. The next shot is her making out with Baltar, during which she discards her top entirely (though filmed from behind) and has sex with him. Helfer continued playing Ms. Fanservice in various ways for several more episodes as Head Six.
  • This is quite unsurprising, given that Helfer was in fact a very successful fashion model (who also worked for Victoria's Secret) for about a decade before becoming an actress.
• Sexy Mentor: Head Six to Baltar, and Head Baltar to Caprica-Six.
• Shirtless Scene: Jamie Bamber briefly wears only a Modesty Towel in "Final Cut." Yum.
• Shoot the Dog: Many examples can be listed, but probably one of the most memorable instances is Starbuck and Apollo blowing up a ship with over 1,345 innocent people aboard so as to prevent the Cylons from following the Colonial fleet in "33."
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: The Season 4 mid-season finale is quite possibly one of the cruelest examples in the history of sci-fi television. Later on, however, the Series Finale subverts it with a Bittersweet Ending.
• Shooting Gallery: A very creepy one with Boomer's face being used as targets is seen at one point after she shot Adama.
• Shout-Out: Has its own page.
• Show, Don't Tell: Inverted when they get to the first Earth. They say they have arrived at Earth, and it is technically called "Earth", but notice how they wisely show the audience no familiar landmasses because this isn't the Earth we are expecting it to be and were shown in the Season 3 finale?
• Shown Their Work: Aside from certain Acceptable Breaks from Reality (i.e., Faster-Than-Light Travel and Artificial Gravity) along with the series admittedly getting Denser and Wackier as it went along, most of the science and even military theory is impressively well-researched. The latter is certainly aided in that a large part of the series was inspired by Ron Moore's experiences in the U.S. Navy.
  • A nice and subtle example of this trope can be seen as early as the series' first episode "33." Since the Fleet has been on the run for almost five days in this episode, sleep deprivation is a clear issue, and is portrayed realistically here. Instead of yawning constantly and just saying "I'm so tired" as it is commonly shown in other works, characters are short-tempered, irritable, literally fall asleep at their stations, and are forgetful of simple things - all of which are real signs of sleep deprivation.
• Shrine to the Fallen: The Galactica had a rather large one aboard it commemorating all of those who died.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: About everyone, but it's an interesting case. The series throws around "frak" left and right, in all the uses "fuck" would have. "I want to frak" "motherfrakker" "frak you"... Suffice to say, if the show used "fuck" in place of "frak," it would never be allowed on cable.
• Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil: The Colonials had previously (and brutally) enslaved the Cylon Centurions, ultimately culminating in them rebelling with genocidal fury. The Humanoid Cylon models often make mention of this as evidence of how Humans Are the Real Monsters... despite the fact that they themselves have enslaved the modern Centurions and use them as Dumb Muscle Mooks.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Firmly on the cynical side being set in an After the End Crapsack World with the threat of humanity's extinction constantly hanging overhead. Heck, it was an actual rule in the writer's room that there could be no Colonial victory in the series' numerous battles without them taking at least one casualty. That all being said, it's not necessarily as cynical as it may first seem, with the series having a heavy undertone of recognizing the small victories that can be managed and finding peace with what one has rather than constantly lusting after more.
• Smoking Is Cool: Everybody smokes at some point or another. Yes, everyone.
• Soaperizing: The series is a Space Opera and really puts time into developing the relationships between even minor Bit Characters like Tory Foster and Romo Lampkin.
• Society-on-Edge Episode: The last season focused much more than previous seasons on the deteriorating conditions within the ragtag fleet (this being a post-apocalyptic society to begin with).
• Sole Surviving Scientist: The Final Five were Earth-1's sole surviving scientists after a nuclear holocaust, who attempted to Fling a Light into the Future, only to tragically succumb to the next iteration of the cycle of violence at the hands of their progeny.
• Space Amish: What the surviving Colonials and Cylons tried to become on the new Earth in the finale. Justified/Hand Waved since they all want as much of a fresh start as they can possibly get by Letting The Past Burn. Evidence from 150,000 years later makes their success rather ambiguous.
• Space Clouds: The Ionian Nebula actually reduces visibility.
• Space Fighter: Both the original and new series were largely built around Space Fighters.
• Space Is an Ocean: The day-to-day operation of Galactica was heavily based on Ron Moore's experiences as an aircraft carrier crewman.
• Space Is Cold: At one point, Tyrol and Cally are stuck in an airlock that had been slowly venting to hard vacuum for the past hour or two, and it had thus gotten really cold in there for the same reason that a can of spray deodorant gets cold. They even show Cally's hair icing up, and Tigh notes that they could suffer from hypothermia when they're forced to take a space walk without space suits to escape.
• Space Is Noisy: Subverted. While this version does have sound in space, said sounds are usually muted (as if being heard underwater) to give the impression that it's what the pilots/crew are hearing.
• Space Opera: With its own Space Opera House.
• Spaceship Girl: The Hybrids, though both the First Hybrid and post-brain damage Anders are Spear Counterparts.
• Spin-Off: Caprica, a family drama set fifty years prior to its parent series.
• Spirit Advisor: Head Six to Gaius Baltar; and in a surprising reveal, Head Baltar to Caprica Six, and later Head Baltar to Real Baltar.
• Spiritual Successor: To both Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager, arguably even moreso than the original series. Showrunner Ron Moore cut his teeth writing for both Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, but after the latter wrapped he spent a total of three weeks on Voyager only to quit for various reasons. BSG is heavily influenced by DS9 and uses many VOY concepts that Moore had wanted to use but which got the Executive Veto.
• Spot the Imposter: Played for Laughs in "Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down."
• Standard Alien Spaceship: The Cylon Basestars feature sweeping curves tapering into several huge spike-like projections. The overall effect is something like a giant alien starfish.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: Kara and Lee's tumultuous relationship/non-relationship.
  • Galen Tyrol and the Heel–Face Revolving Door posterchild Boomer. Although not expanded on much in the series proper, his back story also reveals his prior relationship with Tory Foster on ancient Earth as well. And then he ends up killing her for murdering his wife. Yeah, some guys just can't catch a break.
• The Starscream: Tom Zarek.
• Starship Luxurious: Averted. Galactica and Pegasus are military ships and their designs reflect that. Most of the civilian ships in the Fleet are cargo ships, utility cruisers or passenger liners. The cramped and uncomfortable conditions are frequent plot points.
  • There are ships that do play this trope straight, but it is a case of an Invoked Trope, where the luxury of such ships makes them special. Cloud Nine for instance, was designed as a luxury cruise liner for deep space holidays and features bars, restaurants and a dome that imitates a large open garden space. Characters frequently mention desire to visit it because it is such a pleasant change from the rest of the Fleet, even after it becomes a Wretched Hive due to gangs taking over some decks. It is implied that its loss was a significant hit to the morale of the Fleet in the subsequent months.
  • Though we don't see much of them, Zephyr and the Botanical Cruisers are also implied to be these, albeit less so than Cloud Nine.
• Status Quo Is God: Generally, but the series does move on. Watch the storyline where they decide to live on New Caprica and you'll find yourself wondering what kind of trope they are going to use like time travel or phlebotenum to reverse time back to the status quo (like they do on other space TV shows) — but it never happens.

• Straight Gay: You wouldn't know Hoshi was gay unless you watched the webisodes, and the fact that Gaeta is bisexual isn't made explicit until relatively late in the series.
• Straw Civilian: Averted, mainly due to the Roslin/Adama dynamic. Amusingly enough, more often than not Roslin is actually the Warhawk and Adama has to talk her down into embracing the peaceful option. Played straight by the Demand Peace movement, a protest group that constantly demanded that the Colonials try to make peace with the Cylons, and treated Adama as a General Ripper for trying to defend the fleet from them constantly and called him a warmonger. They also would occasionally sabotage military equipment as well.
• Straw Hypocrite: A particular scene between Cavil and Tyrol is a heaven for subtext when rewatching the series from the beginning.
  1. Brother Cavil is posing as a human priest in the human fleet (and in the Caprican Resistance), but he's actually a Cylon abusing his position to orchestrate destructive acts.
  2. He's talking to Chief Tyrol to give him counseling and talk him down from his fear that he, like his girlfriend, is a Cylon sleeper agent. Cavil assures him he hasn't seen him in any of their super secret meetings... because Cavil reprogrammed Tyrol to forget his life as one of the five creators of Cavil and the bio-Cylon race.
  3. Among the Cylons, Cavil advocated the destruction of humanity for its sins in enslaving the robotic Centurions, while he did just the same, and memory wiped his creators and put them in the colonies, while lying like a dog to his siblings. The war being a genocidal temper tantrum in an attempt to become the "favorite son."
• Stealth in Space: The Blackbird's special carbon plating masks its heat signature, meaning that it cannot be picked up by any DRADIS.
• Stellar Name: As per the original series, each of the Twelve Colonies have a name inspired by one of the Western Zodiac constellations (i.e., Caprica —> Capricorn, Libran —> Libra, Tauron —> Taurus, etc). The actual Zodiac names are even referred to as their "original" names before they were modernized and adjusted over the millenia.
• Stock Footage: Footage of the Viper launches and landings is often reused for the sake of budget.
• Sufficiently Advanced Aliens: One proposed explanation for the "angels" and "God" by the series' own writing team.
• Sunglasses at Night: Romo Lampkin wears these as a Character Tic.
• Surprise Incest: Cavil and Ellen. She doesn't know at the time, but he does and is even aware the Cavil model was shaped in the image of her father and that she saw Cavil as a son.
• Survival Mantra: To quote Starbuck, "Fear gets you killed. Anger keeps you alive."
• Survivalist Stash: Helo and Caprica-Sharon find one on Caprica.
• Sympathetic P.O.V.: This gets used a lot for the series' villains as part of its Grey-and-Gray Morality, especially with both the Cylons and Gaeta when he spearheads a failed mutiny. He's ultimately executed for this role, but he's far more sympathetic than his co-conspirator Zarek, and the viewers get the sense that he was trying to do what he thought was the right thing.

T

• Take Me to Your Leader: Brother Cavil does that when he is outed as a Cylon spy. They take him to the brig instead.
  (After having several guns pointed at him) Well, this is an awkward moment. (Beat) Yes, uh, he's right, I am a Cylon. And I have a message, so.... take me to your leader.
• Take That!: Ronald D. Moore had previously worked on Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, and briefly worked on Voyager before quitting out of dissatisfaction with how the producers were running the show. He subsequently wrote a long rant about all the problems the series had, notably the lack of continuity, reliance on Techno Babble to solve everything, constant usage of the Reset Button which underminded the premise of being trapped in a hostile area of the galaxy, and failure to accurately depict a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits without a consistent source of supplies on a long, grueling voyage to reach home. He then produced this series, incorporating most of his suggested changes to Voyager along the way.
• Techno Babble: Military jargon more than sci-fi-isms. Lampshaded when Tigh accuses Baltar of "weaselly technobabble". An accurate accusation, as Baltar's first "Cylon detection method" was entirely made up. There is deliberate avoidance on the writers' part of "this works because of the Cylon hypersilly system" and so on.
  • The lack of technobabble and the downscaling of technology in general were probably deliberate moves by Moore, who was fed up with Techno Babble being used to solve everything on Star Trek: Voyager.
  • The miniseries has a great moment telling the audience that the show won't involve a lot of technobabble. After Apollo saves Colonial One from a Cylon nuke, he goes on to explain how he did so by "realigning the hyperdrive with the generators blah blah blah". After a beat, Roslin says, "The lesson here is to not ask follow-up questions, but to rather say 'Thank you, Apollo, for saving our collective asses.'"
• That Man Is Dead: Tigh after New Caprica.
  Bill Adama: You can get your ass back into your quarters and not leave until you're ready to act like the man that I've known for the past 30 years!
  Saul Tigh: That man doesn't exist anymore, Bill.
• That Thing Is Not My Child!: Double subverted during the New Caprica arc in a particularly cruel fashion. After the Cylon invasion, Leoben Conoy/Number Two has kidnapped Kara "Starbuck" Thrace and keeps her locked up in a secluded apartment to force some sort of twisted relationship on her, and since he has plenty of backup bodies, "killing" him just means he'll be back in a few hours. At one point he brings in a little blonde girl that he claims is a human-Cylon hybrid, who was conceived with Kara's ovary (which the Cylons had previously removed from her body) and his own sperm. Starbuck initially refuses to accept the child as her own, but when the kid gets hurt Kara seems to acknowledge the child as her daughter. However, when the humans escape the planet it's revealed that the kid in question was actually a normal girl taken from her real human mother by Leoben as part of his ploy to get close to Starbuck.
• Theme Naming: A completely unintentional case, but the names of the Final Five all have prominent T sounds in them: Saul and Ellen Tigh, Galen Tyrol, Tory Foster, and Samuel T. Anders.
• Themed Tattoos: Starbuck and Anders mark their marriage by getting bicep tattoos that link together to form a bigger symbol.
• Theotech: The imagery of the series is far more akin to ancient Greek religion, even showing them having household idols named after the Greek gods and goddesses on spaceships and alien planets. In contrast, the Cylons had adopted a mystical, almost Judeo-Christian view of a "one true God." (Well, most of them. Some of them were atheists; the model Ones - the "Cavil" model - especially seemed to lean towards a Straw Nihilist take on atheism). Gaius Baltar was changed from the Darth Vader Expy he was in the original series to an atheist who becomes a sort of prophet/messiah, spreading the word of the Cylon God^note who seems to be real but also hates being called "God" and, amusingly enough, doesn't seem to really have much of a problem with people worshiping other gods since those other gods are implied to be him in some fashion to the humans.
• There Is Another: As with the original series, the Battlestar Pegasus is discovered. The reunion wasn't quite as happy as you might imagine, though...
• There Will Be Toilet Paper: Adama cuts himself shaving pretty frequently.
• They Look Like Us Now: The Trope Namer. The Cylons have evolved from "walking chrome toasters" into androids with flesh. The opening and a few characters use the line, and it does cause a lot of mistrust among the human survivors.
• Thicker Than Water: John's mother is extremely disappointed in her Cylon son and how many terrible things he has done out of pettiness and rage at his parents for giving him a human body. She calls her petulant son out on his jealousy and sadism, but despite all of John's crimes like fratricide, genocide, and even raping her, says that he isn't broken and could still be redeemed if he accepted what he was. She states she still loves him because she made him.
• Third Line, Some Waiting: Plot threads are picked up again at the writers' convenience, if they're ever picked up at all.
• 13 Is Unlucky: Twelve tribes of man who founded the Twelve Colonies... plus one that "got lost" and inspired the survivors to go on (what at least seems to be) a wild goose chase IN SPACE! to find a planet called Earth. Twelve human-Cylons... plus a dead one named Daniel.
• This Is Not a Drill
• Three-Way Sex: Baltar is shown to have done it with a Number Three and a Number Six; quite an achievement since he's basically their captive at that point. Oh, and both women, being Ridiculously Human Robots, are strong enough to effortlessly snap his spine if they wished to.
• Throwing Out the Script: Adama does this during his retirement speech in the miniseries.
• Thrown Out the Airlock: invoked This show is the reason the word "airlock" is now a verb and Laura Roslin's Fanon nickname is Madame Airlock.
• Title Drop: Both specials use this.
  • In Razor, Admiral Cain awards Kendra Shaw the eponymous title, which she applies to the most loyal and merciless of her soldiers.
  • In The Plan, it's first used in print on Brother Cavil's religious flyers, and subsequently in spoken lines by the Cylons.
• Tomato in the Mirror: Boomer, plus four other characters as of the Season 3 finale.
  • And another one shortly afterwards. It takes her a few seconds to realize that it's not as bad as she initially thought.
  • Kara may be a whole other case altogether.
• Tomato Surprise: Happens twice: Once with Tigh, Tyrol, Tory, and Anders, then again with Ellen.
• Took a Level in Jerkass:
  • Boomer, following the fall of New Caprica, goes from one of the few Cylons crusading for peace to an extremely bitter and anti-human nut job who tries to snap baby Hera’s neck at one point.
  • Tigh and Starbuck after the New Caprica arc, thanks to going through absolutely hellish experiences that left them with lingering trauma, and for a few episodes they spend most of their time harassing the rest of the crew and drinking. They get better after having a Heel Realization.
  • Kat, after getting hooked on drugs.
• Toxic Friend Influence: Ellen Tigh is a horrible enabler of Saul's drinking and darker ambitions. Similarly, Saul himself is frequently a inspiration for Ellen's darker machinations. The fact that the two of them actually do genuinely love each other is probably the most surprising aspect of their relationship, honestly.
  • Following her being killed by the Colonials and being reborn among the Cylons, Cavil preys on Boomer's angst and resentment towards her "sister" Athena for supposedly "stealing her life away" to cause her to Take a Level in Jerkass and become one of his supporters in greater Cylon society.
• Transhuman Treachery: Upon discovering she was a Cylon, Tory Foster quickly jumps ship and joins up with them and wants to abandon humanity because she saw Cylons are better than humans. She didn't really think this through though, as Cylons had recently added "killing each other", "civil war", and "screwing up royally" to that list of things Cylons are supposedly better at.
  • Inverted with Ellen Tigh, who goes out of her way to try and save humanity once she realizes she's a Cylon, even becoming a significantly kinder person in the process..
• Trash the Set: By the last half of Season 4, the Galactica has been showing quite a bit of damage.
• Trauma Conga Line: Tyrol, later on.
  • The first half of Season 4 is one of these for Adama, though he weathers it somewhat better than Tyrol.
  • Really, everyone gets put through an emotional wringer over the course of this series.
• Trial Balloon Question: Athena to Helo, on if she were a Cylon. Anders to Starbuck, on if he were a Cylon. In both cases their human partners make less than encouraging responses, but are more accepting when they actually learn their significant others are Cylons later.
  • In "Colonial Day", Helo puts two and two together about having seen two Number Sixes on Cylon-occupied Caprica in "33" and "The Hand of God" (and it must be two, because Athena shot and killed the first one) and realizes that the Cylons must have created duplicate models that can pass as humans, because it makes no sense for an actual human to be helping them, let alone a set of twins. Athena says that if they're based on humans then they must be capable of complex emotions, maybe even love, and are just misguided in the way they've been indoctrinated, but Helo shuts her down, saying that no human could kill billions of innocent people and they must be machines like the rest of them.
  • In "He That Believeth in Me", Starbuck has returned from the Fleet after her Viper was seemingly destroyed in the maelstrom in "Maelstrom", and is widely suspected of being a Cylon because the Cylons are the only people the Fleet knows can return from the dead. Anders tells her that even if she turned out to be a Cylon, he'd still love her no matter what. Starbuck jokes that he's a better person than she is, 'cause if he turned out to be a Cylon, she'd shoot him.
• True Companions: Dysfunctional as it is. Adama and Roslin are clearly the Team Dad and Team Mom to the rest of the crew, and Fleet, and all the main protagonists by the end of the series have effectively become a particularly effective and loyal band of Vitriolic Best Buds laden with Teeth-Clenched Teamwork.
• Turned Against Their Masters: "Then came the day the Cylons decided to kill their masters." The most terrifying part, however, is that it is later revealed that there is a Vicious Cycle of Eternal Recurrence where this is infinitely repeating, where humanity creates A.I.s that rebel against them and eventually the whole messy business starts all over again.
• Two of Your Earth Minutes: In the re-imagined series, they generally use what the audience would consider standard measurements: they've mentioned that a "day" has 24 hours in it, 365 days a year. It's not clear if this is some sort of universal fleet time that the Twelve Colonies agreed upon as an average of their local times or if it is based on Caprica-time. One exception is that their unit of distance is an "SU" (Solar Unit) instead of an "AU" (Astronomical Unit) - which in real life is based on the distance between Earth and the sun. Seeing as they're from twelve different planets in a double binary star cluster, using an "AU" wouldn't make much sense.
• Tyrant Takes the Helm: This story arc stars Captain Cole "Stinger" Taylor, Pegasus' CAG, who tyrannizes the Galactica fighter crew.

U-Z

• Uncommon Time: Among other usages, Six's theme is in 9/8, and "Black Market" is at least partially in 7/4.
• Unexplained Recovery: Starbuck. It was suspected she was a Cylon. In a surprising twist, it turns out that it was literally a miracle.
• Unflinching Walk: Cavil performs this in the finale, walking through Galactica's corridors with a phalanx of Centurions around him as they fight the Colonial Marines.

• Unique Pilot Title Sequence: The opening credits for the pilot miniseries begin with music by Richard Gibbs. The third episode and first episode of the series proper, "33," begins with the now familiar Bear McCreary theme.
• Unusual Euphemism: "Frak."
  • An unusually anachronistic euphemism: In the series pilot, when Adama and Tigh are discussing Starbuck, Adama says, "Jesus." So does Racetrack when she comes face to face with a Centurion. In both instances, they are slurred enough to avoid notice unless you're paying attention or have subtitles.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: In the first season, Gaius is tormented by the vision of Six he keeps seeing, leading him to say strange things and act strangely in public. Despite this, they put their trust in him and even elect him Vice President.
• Unusual User Interface: invoked Cylons have two for the price of one. They can plug fiber optic cables into their forearms to interface with Colonial computers (but they have to make an incision first), and they can interface with their own ships by putting their hands in a stream of water called the "datastream". The latter might be either electrical or biochemical transmitters, with it being implied that the Cylons have a special layer of photosensitive skin cells on their palms that let them interface with the datastream. Oddly, humans also seem to be able to interface well enough with the datastream by just putting their own hands into the datastream, but this can likely be Hand Waved by the Hybrids always being present in those instances to help facilitate the process.
• Unexpected Successor: The series opens and closes with one: Secretary of Education Laura Roslin becomes President of the Twelve Colonies after everyone else in the presidential cabinet is killed, and then communications officer Lt. Louis Hoshi temporarily becomes Admiral of the Fleet simply by being the only decent officer left in the fleet once the Galactica has left for the final battle.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: This trope was made for Lee Adama and Kara Thrace. If anything, it only intensifies after they have sex.
• Used Future: Being set After the End, this series has this aesthetic down pat. Though in a surprise twist, it's not actually the future.
• Vehicle Title: The titular Battlestar Galactica is both the primary setting of the series and last defense that the remnants of mankind has left against the Cylons.
• Verbal Tic: Whenever you hear Gaius Baltar say "Quite frankly," he's asspulling like a madman.
• Vicious Cycle: The religion of the Twelve Colonies features one based around Eternal Recurrence as a core part of its belief system, being specifically called "the Cycle of Time." It also turns out to be (kind of) real, with it consisting of humanity creating advanced A.I.s thanks to rediscovering their own Lost Technology, the A.I.s eventually rebelling, the few surviving humans escaping and settling down somewhere else, and then the whole messy business eventually repeats itself. However, the Series Finale gives the possibility of the cycle having been finally broken thanks to the Messengers and actions of the main cast.
• Villain Episode: The episode "Downloaded" for the Cylons, and later an entire villain movie (The Plan), focusing mainly on Cavil.
• Villain Has a Point: Cavil does have something of a point about the Final Five imitating the human form so slavishly that the humanoid Cylons have very few superhuman abilities and are vulnerable to the same medical problems as human beings (as even Cottle groused about when he had to deliver Hera with a detached placenta).
• Virus and Cure Names: Mellorak, cured by Bittamucin.
• Visual Pun: Helo and Sharon are hiding in a store while a Cylon patrol goes by. Unfortunately a few minutes before they decided to make toast, which pops up at just that moment. The joke being they were betrayed by a literal "chrome toaster".
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot: In the Extended Cut of "Daybreak", Adama throws up all over the sidewalk outside a bar.
• Wagon Train to the Stars: The entire series might be considered a deconstruction of this trope, stripping away the gloss normally applied to this concept by portraying the "wagon train" as desperate refugees fleeing from a literal genocide and having entire episodes (i.e., "Flight of the Phoenix") dedicated to showing how emotionally and physically draining this would be on everyone involved.
• The War Just Before: The series is set forty years after the first Cylon War. The Cylons and colonials ended it with an armistice and built a space station as a meeting point between the two sides, but the Cylons never showed up. This made a number of the Colonial brass suspicious enough to send the Battlestar Valkyrie on a covert operation to penetrate Cylon space with a stealth ship. Admiral Adama, who was Valkyrie's CO at the time, comes to believe this may have reignited the conflict.
• Watching Troy Burn: The destruction of the Colonies was watched from space by both civilian fleets and the Cylons.
• Water Torture: An early episode has a pair of guards hold a skin-job Cylon's head in a bucket of water until he starts to drown, pull him out, question him, rinse and repeat.
• Waxing Lyrical: Jimi Hendrix's "All Along the Watchtower," as recited by the Final Five.
• We ARE Struggling Together: Even ignoring the numerous instances of Teeth-Clenched Teamwork and open conflicts among the surviving Colonials (i.e., the Gideon Massacre from early on in Season 2 and The Mutiny arc in the second half of Season 4), it gradually becomes obvious that the Cylons themselves are not nearly as unified as they may seem on the surface. While this got a lot clearer as the series goes on (with the Cylons even breaking out into Civil War in Season 4), signs of this can be seen as early as Season 2, where one faction of Cylons tried to use a "logic bomb" computer virus to wipe out Galactica while another faction of Cylons wanted to keep Galactica alive so as to safeguard the survival of Caprica-Boomer's unborn child. In fact, Caprica-Six's faction of Cylons wanted to create a lasting peace with the New Capricans in the Season 2 finale, but their benevolent intentions were unfortunately hijacked by Cavil's faction and instead turned into a brutal occupation regime.
• We Used to Be Friends: Kara and Lee. Especially during and after New Caprica.
  • As well as Colonel Tigh and the Old Man on several occasions.
• We Will Use Manual Labor in the Future: The original Cylons were intended as manual laborers and soldiers before they rebelled. The scarcity of advanced equipment means humans in the Fleet getting worked to the bone, too. In fact, this "distrust of advanced technology" is part of the reason for why Galactica looks the way she does, as she had no networked computers due to her age as a warship (which had the unseen boon of making her effectively immune to the Cylons' first strike on the Twelve Colonies). This also helps explain why there's numerous characters since the lack of advanced computers results in lots of people being needed to fill in all those jobs that would otherwise be automated.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist:
  • The Cylons' main motivation is to secure the survival of their species along with reaching spiritual enlightenment, and can be argued as having been only pushed into true villainy by John Cavil. And then there's the anti-Cylon New Caprican suicide bombers.
  • Felix Gaeta during the mutiny, as he's primarily motivated by a genuine desire to prevent Adama from supposedly selling out humanity to the rebel Cylons (he's not, but Gaeta's gone through too much Sanity Slippage by this point to accept Adama's logic).
• Wham Episode: Used frequently throughout the series, but easily the two biggest examples can be found when the Colonial Fleet and rebel Cylons first find out "Earth" is a nuclear wasteland Earth and then when Kara inputs a series of coordinates that take the survivors to "our" Earth.
• Wham Shot: Lots of examples, but easily one of the biggest is in "Downloaded," with The Reveal that Caprica-Six has a Head Baltar just like how Baltar has a Head Six, confirming that the two "Messengers" are of a far more mysterious origin than what the audience first thought.
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • The reaction fans had with Helo during the miniseries and why the writers ultimately retconned his off-screen death.
  • invoked Roughly a thousand people had to be left on New Caprica. Suffice to say, things likely did not go well for them.
  • Similar to the above, it's unknown (though very unlikely) in any other Colonials survived the nuclear holocaust of the Twelve Colonies, with only Caprica being shown in the series both before and after the Fall.
  • The fates of any other civilian fleets that survived the initial attack and didn't encounter either Pegasus or Colonial One.
  • In addition, all of the FTL spacecraft was crashed into the Sun in the Series Finale... except Adama and Roslin's Raptor, which is certainly going to be a great boon for archaeologists when they find it if it hasn't deteriorated into so much rust after 100 millennia.
  • The fate of the surviving rebel Centurions and their Basestar after the Series Finale is intentionally left up in the air.
• What Measure Is A Nonhuman: Done over and over again between the humans and Cylons of all types. The standard philosophical debate is complicated by attempted genocide against one side and slavery of the other in the backstory, so each side has a reason to hate and fear the other, and also by the bizarre bio...mecha...chemistry of the Cylons.
• Why Don't You Marry It?: The initial reaction to Helo and Athena's courtship. Eventually, he does marry her.

• With Due Respect: The standard preface to anything guaranteed to piss Adama off.
• A Wizard Did It: God was behind it all. Yes, that God.
• World of Snark: Virtually every character gets to show off their dry wit at some point.
• Wrench Wench: Cally and Seelix. Starbuck and Dee even have moments of this, Starbuck moreso; she's shown covered in grease and fixing a Viper during the miniseries.
• Wring Every Last Drop out of Him: Laura Roslin's illness only becomes majorly visible on two occasions. In her very first scene and when she's being informed that she has cancer and spent the entire run of the show dying in varying degrees.
• Writer on Board: The show did this at least twice, with one episode in which Laura Roslin was forced to weigh the consequences of protecting a woman's right to an abortion with the need to protect the small amount of human life that was left, and again with another episode where Tyrol was used to champion the greatness of organized labor (he later became a union leader). In the Battlestar Galactica podcast, Ronald D. Moore flatly admitted that he was engaging in this trope with these two episodes, but that he also basically didn't care.

• Xanatos Speed Chess: Cavil is a master of this. Nearly every one of his plans spectacularly explodes in his face, yet he's quick enough on the rebound with a backup plan to make you think he almost planned it that way. He manages to hold things together until his last viable option goes up in smoke and then, well... "FRAK!"
  • Baltar spends the entire series playing XSC. But he couldn't have done it without the help of Head Six.
• You Can't Go Home Again: Notably, a case where it's both a literal series trope and also an episode title.
• Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters:
  • The issue is directly referenced by name in Season 1, during the election dispute between Laura Roslin and Tom Zarek, a notable radical who had served twenty years in prison for blowing up a building during an insurgency on Sagittaron before the war, and thus is regarded in legal terms as a terrorist. A Roslin supporter sitting at a bar makes a comment regarding Zarek as a terrorist only to have a Zarek supporter sitting nearby immediately correct the man that Zarek is a freedom fighter. The argument soon evolves into a brawl, but this view is shared by Zarek's supporters as well as Zarek himself, and his ability to market himself as a heroic, populist figure sways nearly half of the fleet (though Dualla, who's also from Sagittaron, is disgusted by the support he gets, feeling there's no justification for what he did, not even if it was supposedly in the name of their world's freedom).
  • In Season 3 during the Cylon occupation of New Caprica, Colonel Tigh flatly states "Which side are we on? We're on the side of the demons, Chief. We're evil men in the gardens of paradise, sent by the forces of death to spread devastation and destruction wherever we go. I'm surprised you didn't know that" when confronted by Chief Tyrol over the use of suicide bombers and terrorism against the Cylons and the humans who work for them. Although, he could just have been sarcastic after Tyrol expressed outrage over the use of suicide bombers against the Cylons (who can resurrect while humans cannot), which Tigh seems to justify under I Did What I Had to Do.
• You Shall Not Pass!: The Cylons want to finish the job and destroy the Colonial Fleet, but to do that, they just have to get past Adama and Galactica. This is why after a miniseries and four seasons, the Cylons were never able to destroy humankind.
• You Wouldn't Shoot Me: While investigating the Black Market, Apollo learns that its ringleader, an ex-mercenary turned crimelord named Phelan, went so far as to start selling children as sex slaves. The trope then shows up in this exchange:
  Apollo: invoked (holding Phelan at gunpoint) There's lines you can't cross, and you've crossed them.
  Phelan: You're not gonna shoot. You're not like me. You're not gonna—
  Apollo: *BOOM*
• Zombie Advocate: In the latter part of Season 2, a group of activists called the "Demand Peace" movement briefly emerged who argued that the Colonials should pursue peace and coexistence with the Cylons. This despite the fact that the Cylons had almost entirely eradicated all of mankind in a nuclear holocaust and pursued the scant few survivors into deep space, the activists still characterized Admiral Adama and Galactica's campaign to protect the fleet from being wiped out of existence as a "relentless war machine".

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