Battlestar Galactica: The Almost Novel

“There are those who believe that life here began out there, far across the universe, with tribes of humans who may have been the forefathers of the Egyptians, or the Toltecs, or the Mayans. Some believe that there may yet be brothers of man who even now fight to survive, somewhere beyond the heavens…”

Fight to survive the licensed publishing industry, you mean!

Yes, it’s time for another Tale of Development Hell, that series of posts in which I tell you about projects I was hired to work on—usually original novels based on popular licensed properties—that never actually made it all the way to completion.

In previous installments, we’ve covered the Spider-Man/Gambit, Speed Racer and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles novels I never got to write, and the horror movie review compilation that got canceled, so now we turn to a science fiction TV show pretty much everybody knows: Battlestar Galactica. No, not the BSG that ran on the SyFy Channel and got all the critical acclaim (and the lame-ass ending); I mean the original BSG with Lorne Greene as Adama, Maren Jensen as Athena, Dirk Benedict as Starbuck, and Richard Hatch as Apollo.

Star Trek had The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Enterprise, and a multitude of novel series based on pretty much every friggin’ character who ever walked through the background of a scene. Star Wars had an Expanded Universe, with Jedi Academy, The New Order, original novels set pre– and post–Return of the Jedi, dozens of Dark Horse comic books, and a couple of Clone Wars animated series spun off from three godawful movies. Doctor Who has novels and related novels and audio dramas involving other characters who crossed paths with the Time Lord and were spun off into their own projects (see, for example, Big Finish Productions’ The Adventures of Bernice Summerfield and the upcoming The Diary of River Song).

At the start of this century, Battlestar Galactica had new novels written by Richard Hatch with Christopher Golden (then, later, with Stan Timmons, Alan Rogers, and Brad Linaweaver) for ibooks, inc. that followed the adventures of the original Galactica crew after the series was canceled. Apollo’s adopted son, Troy (formerly the annoying kid Boxey) had grown up, Starbuck had a daughter named Dalton, Adama had died, Apollo had became the new commander, and they continued looking for Earth. The fans loved the books—they were good, fun, space-opera stories—and so I got to thinking, What if there was more to the publishing license—say, a sort of expanded universe…?

In early 2003, having come off my recent successes with the X-Men: The Chaos Engine Trilogy books, I sat down with ibooks’ publisher, Byron Preiss, and BSG novel editor Howard Zimmerman and proposed the first-ever BSG spin-off novel series. Subtitled The New Young Warriors—so as not to be confused with an old BSG episode novelization, The Young Warriors—it would have focused on the twenty-something Galacticans, specifically Troy and Dalton. And to kick things off, I suggested that the Cylons get into a war with the more evolved version of their race that had been introduced in one of Hatch’s novels. That’s right, Galacticans—I suggested a civil war among Cylons long before the rebooted SyFy Channel version ever did!

Unfortunately, a two-page pitch was as far as we got. Although Universal’s licensing division was intrigued by the concept, we couldn’t work out the logistics of doing a spinoff series that wouldn’t create continuity problems for Richard’s plans for the “main” series—he knew exactly where those characters’ stories were going, and nobody wanted to mess that up. In the end, my idea for a Cylon war and spinoff series became as lost as the show’s fabled 13th Colony.

(By the way, have you seen Richard’s latest role, as the Klingon commander Kharn in the fan film Star Trek: Prelude to Axanar? He’s so amazing in the part, and the makeup so good in altering his features, that I didn’t know it was him at all! Definitely go and check it out.)

In retrospect, though: a licensed science fiction book series, written by a guy whose writing style is based on sarcasm and light snark? By the time I was done, classic Battlestar Galactica would probably have never been the same… 😉