AllMovie

In the distant future, intelligent robots known as Cylons were created to serve as slaves to the people of the Twelve Colonies on the planet Caprica and to fight humanity's wars. Later, the Cylons would become sentient, rebelling against their mortal masters. As a result of the Cylon rebellion, man and machine engaged in a bloody war that would eventually end in stalemate, after which a treaty was signed. The Cylons subsequently withdrew into a remote region of deep space, and for the next 40 years, a tense, silent treaty existed between the Cylons and the Twelve Colonies. Over the course of the next four decades, humanity would deploy an envoy to the neutral Armistice Station to meet with a Cylon envoy on each anniversary of the treaty's signing. Though no Cylon envoy would show for the first 39 years, something terrible happened on the 40th anniversary: immediately after a beautiful Cylon in human form appeared on the Armistice Station, the neutral zone was vaporized and a devastating nuclear attack was launched on Caprica and the Twelve Colonies. As a result of the attack, the entire human race was nearly destroyed, and only those who were lucky enough to be aboard starships at the time were spared. Led by the Colonial warship the battlestar Galactica and its commanding officer William Adama (Edward James Olmos), those survivors fled into deep space. But the Galactica was set to be commissioned at the time of the attack, and is hardly an ideal vessel to harbor humanity's last hope. With only 50,000 humans left, the only hope for humankind is to locate the mythical "13th Colony" known as Earth before they fall prey to the Cylons.