The Firefly Cameo In Battlestar Galactica Explained
A blink and you’ll miss it easter egg in the 2003 Battlestar Galactica miniseries pays homage to the recently canceled Firefly. Here’s why it’s there.
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Battlestar Galactica revived a much older series, but a small easter egg also pays homage to the more recent Firefly. The two series have a lot in common thematically, and both are surrounded by rumors of potential tv show reboots. In 2019, Peacock revealed that they had plans for a new series set in the Battlestar Galactica universe with Sam Esmail and Mike Lesslie confirming that they were working on it in 2021.
The Battlestar Galactica franchise has been a large part of the science fiction canon since its original series in 1978. It was re-imagined in 2003 with a miniseries that was picked up for four seasons as a complete show depicting humanity’s efforts to survive as their robot creations, the Cylons, attempted to wipe them out entirely. The series was successful enough to spawn a prequel series, Caprica, but it only ran for one season. Firefly follows Captain Mal Reynolds’ exploits aboard his ship Serenity, and ran for a single season before being canceled and later picked up for a movie (Serenity) and continued in the Firefly graphic novel spinoffs.
The Firefly easter egg comes as a blink and you’ll miss it cameo in the first part of the 2003 Battlestar Galactica miniseries. Laura Roslin (Mary McDonnell), the Secretary of Education destined to become the President of the Twelve Colonies, visits a doctor in Caprica City to receive a terminal diagnosis. In the background, various space traffic can be seen passing the window, including Mal’s ship, Serenity herself. Find the cameo at the start of the scene at the 14:44 timestamp.
At this point, both Battlestar Galactica’s return and Firefly are cult classics that have seen increasingly large followings as time has gone on. However, this cameo predates the wider popularity of Firefly and would have required those who inserted it to have been big fans of Firefly. In fact, the Battlestar Galactica miniseries first aired on December 8, 2003, predating not only the movie Serenity, but also the final episode of Firefly, which didn’t air until December 13 of that year (although its cancellation was announced in August).
It turns out that the people behind the cameo were more than simply fans of the series. The cameo seems to have been an inside joke between two people who worked on both shows: Jarrod Davis, who was an animator for Firefly and later a digital artist for both Battlestar Galactica and Serenity, and Lee Stringer, who worked as a CGI supervisor on both Firefly and Battlestar Galactica. Davis revealed in a Facebook post that was later posted to Reddit that Stringer had suggested inserting Firefly’s Serenity into the background of a scene, and Davis had made it happen. The 2004 Battlestar Galactica series is very self-aware about its place within the sci-fi canon, and this is only one of many Easter eggs that crop up within the show.
Link Source : https://screenrant.com/firefly-battlestar-galactica-serenity-cameo-easter-egg-explained/