Battlestar Galactica Episodes in Order: Every Episode of the 2004 Series

The reimagined Battlestar Galactica ran from a three-hour miniseries in December 2003 to the finale, "Daybreak", in March 2009, with two TV films alongside. This page lists every episode in broadcast order with its first air date and a short summary that avoids the big reveals. Dates are the US Sci Fi Channel premieres, except for season 1, which aired first in the UK on Sky One, about three months before it reached American TV. For in-universe dates rather than air dates, see the Battlestar Galactica timeline.

Watch order#

Broadcast order works for the whole show. The only real choices are the films and the prequels.

1. The miniseries comes first. It's the pilot, and season 1 starts five days after it ends.
2. Seasons 1 to 3, in order.
3. Razor. It's set during season 2, after "The Captain's Hand", but it aired before season 4 and was made to lead into it. Watching it here keeps the season 4 setup fresh. The extended cut is about 20 minutes longer than the broadcast version.
4. Season 4, through to "Daybreak".
5. The Plan. It replays the miniseries and seasons 1 and 2 through the eyes of two copies of Cavil, so it only works once you know who the Cylons are.
6. Caprica and Blood & Chrome, if you want more. Caprica is a one-season prequel set 58 years before the Fall, about how the first Cylons were made. Blood & Chrome follows a young William Adama in the tenth year of the first Cylon War.

(Battlestar Galactica miniseries; Battlestar Galactica: Razor; Battlestar Galactica: The Plan; Caprica; Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome)

Miniseries (2003)#

Two nights on the Sci Fi Channel, about three hours in all. Everything after builds on it. It's also where Baltar first sees Head Six, the Number Six nobody else can. Most of the main Battlestar Galactica characters are introduced across these two nights.

• Night 1 (first aired 8 December 2003): On the day Galactica is being retired as a museum, the Cylons break a 40-year armistice and hit the Twelve Colonies with nuclear weapons, leaving Commander Adama and the newly sworn-in President Roslin to pick up what's left. The attack is covered in full in the Fall of the Twelve Colonies.
• Night 2 (first aired 9 December 2003): Adama takes Galactica to Ragnar Anchorage to rearm, discovers that some Cylons now look human, and has to decide whether to fight on or run with about 50,000 survivors.

(Battlestar Galactica miniseries)

Season 1#

Thirteen episodes. Sky One aired them in the UK from 18 October 2004 to 24 January 2005, and the Sci Fi Channel ran them in the US from 14 January to 1 April 2005. The dates below are the UK premieres.

• 1.01 "33" (first aired 18 October 2004): The fleet has to jump every 33 minutes because the Cylons keep finding it, and nobody has slept in days when a civilian ship goes missing.
• 1.02 "Water" (first aired 25 October 2004): A string of explosions wipes out most of the fleet's water, and Boomer keeps waking up in places she can't remember going.
• 1.03 "Bastille Day" (first aired 1 November 2004): Lee goes to the prison ship Astral Queen to recruit convicts for an ice-mining job, and Tom Zarek has other ideas.
• 1.04 "Act of Contrition" (first aired 8 November 2004): An accident on the hangar deck kills a group of pilots, and training their replacements drags up Starbuck's guilt over the death of Zak Adama.
• 1.05 "You Can't Go Home Again" (first aired 15 November 2004): Starbuck is stranded on a moon after a dogfight, and Adama won't call off the search however much it costs.
• 1.06 "Litmus" (first aired 22 November 2004): A Cylon suicide bomber gets aboard Galactica, and the inquiry that follows starts digging into Tyrol's secret relationship with Boomer.
• 1.07 "Six Degrees of Separation" (first aired 29 November 2004): A woman calling herself Shelly Godfrey arrives with evidence that Baltar helped the Cylons attack.
• 1.08 "Flesh and Bone" (first aired 6 December 2004): Starbuck interrogates a captured Leoben, who says he has hidden a nuclear bomb somewhere in the fleet.
• 1.09 "Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down" (first aired 13 December 2004): Colonel Tigh's wife Ellen turns up alive, and Adama asks Baltar to run her through his Cylon test.
• 1.10 "The Hand of God" (first aired 3 January 2005): Low on fuel, Galactica plans a raid on a Cylon tylium refinery hidden in an asteroid field.
• 1.11 "Colonial Day" (first aired 10 January 2005): Roslin reconvenes the Quorum of Twelve, and the vice presidency becomes a fight she didn't want.
• 1.12 "Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part I" (first aired 17 January 2005): The fleet finds Kobol, and Roslin quietly sends Starbuck on a mission behind Adama's back.
• 1.13 "Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part II" (first aired 24 January 2005): Adama and Roslin's split comes to a head while Starbuck lands on occupied Caprica, and the season ends on a cliffhanger.

(Battlestar Galactica, season 1)

Season 2#

Season 2 aired in two halves, and the US DVD sets called them Season 2.0 and Season 2.5. The first ten episodes ran on the Sci Fi Channel from July to September 2005.

• 2.01 "Scattered" (first aired 15 July 2005): With Adama fighting for his life, Tigh takes command just as Galactica gets separated from the rest of the fleet.
• 2.02 "Valley of Darkness" (first aired 22 July 2005): Cylon Centurions board Galactica, while the crew of a crashed Raptor try to stay alive on Kobol.
• 2.03 "Fragged" (first aired 29 July 2005): Tigh, out of his depth, declares martial law, and the stranded team on Kobol turn on their commanding officer.
• 2.04 "Resistance" (first aired 5 August 2005): Protests over martial law spread through the fleet, and on Caprica, Starbuck and Helo meet a band of human fighters.
• 2.05 "The Farm" (first aired 12 August 2005): Starbuck wakes up in a hospital on Caprica that isn't what it seems, and Adama is back on his feet to find the fleet divided.
• 2.06 "Home, Part I" (first aired 19 August 2005): Roslin's followers search Kobol for the Tomb of Athena, and a short-handed Adama has to decide whether to go after them.
• 2.07 "Home, Part II" (first aired 26 August 2005): Adama joins the search on Kobol, and the tomb may finally point the way to Earth.
• 2.08 "Final Cut" (first aired 9 September 2005): A journalist named D'Anna Biers is given free run of Galactica to make a documentary about the crew.
• 2.09 "Flight of the Phoenix" (first aired 16 September 2005): A Cylon computer virus spreads through Galactica, and Tyrol starts building a new fighter by hand, the Blackbird.
• 2.10 "Pegasus" (first aired 23 September 2005): The battlestar Pegasus turns up alive, and its commander, Admiral Cain, outranks Adama and runs a very different ship.

(Battlestar Galactica, season 2)

Season 2.5 / Razor#

The second half of season 2 ran from January to March 2006. Razor's present-day story fits inside this stretch, though it wasn't made until a year and a half later.

• 2.11 "Resurrection Ship, Part I" (first aired 6 January 2006): The fleet finds the Cylons' Resurrection Ship, while Adama and Cain each start planning to get rid of the other.
• 2.12 "Resurrection Ship, Part II" (first aired 13 January 2006): The strike on the Resurrection Ship goes ahead, and so do the two commanders' plans.
• 2.13 "Epiphanies" (first aired 20 January 2006): Roslin is dying and remembers her last day on Caprica, while a group in the fleet pushes for peace with the Cylons.
• 2.14 "Black Market" (first aired 27 January 2006): A senior officer is murdered, and Lee's investigation leads into the fleet's black market.
• 2.15 "Scar" (first aired 3 February 2006): A veteran Cylon Raider the pilots call Scar keeps picking off Vipers at an asteroid mine, and Starbuck and Kat compete to bring it down.
• 2.16 "Sacrifice" (first aired 10 February 2006): Armed civilians take hostages in a bar on Cloud 9 and demand that Galactica hand over its Cylon prisoner.
• 2.17 "The Captain's Hand" (first aired 17 February 2006): Pegasus has a new commander who won't listen to Starbuck, and a teenage stowaway forces Roslin to make a hard political call.

Razor goes here. Its present-day scenes follow Lee in command of Pegasus with a new executive officer, Kendra Shaw, and flash back to what Pegasus did after the Fall. It first aired on 24 November 2007, between seasons 3 and 4, and that's still the best place to watch it. There's a full entry under TV films below. (Battlestar Galactica: Razor)

• 2.18 "Downloaded" (first aired 24 February 2006): On Caprica, a Six and a Boomer wake in new bodies and struggle with what they did, while on Galactica, Sharon goes into labour.
• 2.19 "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part I" (first aired 3 March 2006): Baltar runs against Roslin for president, a discovery shakes up the campaign, and Starbuck leads a rescue mission back to Caprica.
• 2.20 "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part II" (first aired 10 March 2006): The election is decided, the fleet makes a choice about its future, and the finale ends somewhere nobody expected.

(Battlestar Galactica, season 2)

Season 3#

Twenty episodes, from October 2006 to March 2007. The first two aired together as a double bill.

• 3.01 "Occupation" (first aired 6 October 2006): Four months into the Cylon occupation of New Caprica, Tigh's resistance is fighting back while Adama and Lee argue over a rescue.
• 3.02 "Precipice" (first aired 6 October 2006): The Cylons crack down on the colonists, and the resistance argues over how far it's willing to go.
• 3.03 "Exodus, Part I" (first aired 13 October 2006): The resistance and the fleet race to get ready for a breakout, and D'Anna's dreams lead her to an oracle.
• 3.04 "Exodus, Part II" (first aired 20 October 2006): The rescue begins, and the Exodus from New Caprica turns into a fight for every ship.
• 3.05 "Collaborators" (first aired 27 October 2006): A secret tribunal called the Circle passes judgement on people who worked with the Cylons during the occupation.
• 3.06 "Torn" (first aired 3 November 2006): Baltar tries to help the Cylons with a disease spreading through them, while Starbuck and Tigh sour the mood on Galactica.
• 3.07 "A Measure of Salvation" (first aired 10 November 2006): A basestar full of sick Cylons gives Adama and Roslin the chance to wipe out the whole race, if they're willing to take it.
• 3.08 "Hero" (first aired 17 November 2006): A pilot thought dead for years escapes the Cylons, bringing back a secret from Adama's past.
• 3.09 "Unfinished Business" (first aired 1 December 2006): The crew hold boxing matches to blow off steam, and flashbacks show what happened between Lee and Starbuck on New Caprica.
• 3.10 "The Passage" (first aired 8 December 2006): The fleet's food is contaminated, and Kat has to guide ship after ship through a deadly star cluster while her past catches up with her.
• 3.11 "The Eye of Jupiter" (first aired 15 December 2006): Tyrol finds a temple built by the Thirteenth Tribe on an algae planet, and the Cylons arrive looking for the same thing.
• 3.12 "Rapture" (first aired 21 January 2007): The standoff at the temple breaks down, and Athena takes a huge risk to get her daughter back.
• 3.13 "Taking a Break from All Your Worries" (first aired 28 January 2007): Baltar is interrogated aboard Galactica, while a new bar on the hangar deck becomes the place where everyone's relationships fall apart.
• 3.14 "The Woman King" (first aired 11 February 2007): Helo suspects a doctor is harming Sagittaron refugees, and nobody wants to hear it.
• 3.15 "A Day in the Life" (first aired 18 February 2007): Adama remembers his ex-wife on their anniversary, while Tyrol and Cally are trapped behind a hull breach.
• 3.16 "Dirty Hands" (first aired 25 February 2007): After an accident nearly kills Roslin, Tyrol leads a strike over working conditions in the fleet.
• 3.17 "Maelstrom" (first aired 4 March 2007): Starbuck is haunted by visions tied to her childhood, and Adama starts to wonder if she's fit to fly.
• 3.18 "The Son Also Rises" (first aired 11 March 2007): After an attack on Baltar's defence team, Lee is assigned to protect his new lawyer.
• 3.19 "Crossroads, Part I" (first aired 18 March 2007): Baltar's trial begins, and four people in the fleet start hearing music nobody else can.
• 3.20 "Crossroads, Part II" (first aired 25 March 2007): The trial reaches its verdict, the fleet jumps into a nebula, and the season ends on one of the show's biggest reveals.

(Battlestar Galactica, season 3)

Season 4#

Season 4 also aired in two halves, released on DVD as Season 4.0 and Season 4.5. The first ten episodes ran from April to June 2008. After a seven-month break, the last ten ran from January to March 2009.

• 4.01 "He That Believeth in Me" (first aired 4 April 2008): Kara Thrace comes back to Galactica with a story nobody wants to believe, in the middle of a Cylon attack.
• 4.02 "Six of One" (first aired 11 April 2008): Starbuck and Roslin face off over the way to Earth, and the Cylons split over whether to look for the Final Five.
• 4.03 "The Ties That Bind" (first aired 18 April 2008): Starbuck gets a ship of her own to search for Earth, Cally finds out something about her husband, and the Cylon split turns into a civil war.
• 4.04 "Escape Velocity" (first aired 25 April 2008): Baltar's new religious following clashes with the government, and Tigh comes apart.
• 4.05 "The Road Less Traveled" (first aired 2 May 2008): Leoben joins Starbuck's crew aboard the Demetrius, and her people come close to mutiny.
• 4.06 "Faith" (first aired 9 May 2008): Starbuck's team boards a rebel basestar to question its Hybrid, while Roslin talks about death with a dying woman.
• 4.07 "Guess What's Coming to Dinner?" (first aired 16 May 2008): Humans and rebel Cylons try to work together, and an unplanned jump carries Roslin away from the fleet.
• 4.08 "Sine Qua Non" (first aired 27 May 2008): Lee looks for someone to lead the government, and Adama makes a choice that puts his command at risk.
• 4.09 "The Hub" (first aired 6 June 2008): Humans and rebel Cylons go after the Resurrection Hub, while Roslin and Baltar are stuck with each other on a basestar.
• 4.10 "Revelations" (first aired 13 June 2008): D'Anna takes Roslin hostage to force the hidden Cylons into the open, and the mid-season finale points the fleet towards Earth.
• 4.11 "Sometimes a Great Notion" (first aired 16 January 2009): What the fleet finds at the end of its search hits everyone hard, Adama and Roslin included.
• 4.12 "A Disquiet Follows My Soul" (first aired 23 January 2009): Zarek fights the plan to upgrade the fleet with Cylon technology, and Tyrol learns a family secret.
• 4.13 "The Oath" (first aired 30 January 2009): Gaeta and Zarek move against Adama, and Galactica turns on itself.
• 4.14 "Blood on the Scales" (first aired 6 February 2009): The mutiny reaches its end, and Roslin and Adama fight to take the fleet back.
• 4.15 "No Exit" (first aired 13 February 2009): Anders, recovering from a head wound, remembers where the Final Five came from, while Ellen Tigh and Cavil have it out on a Cylon ship.
• 4.16 "Deadlock" (first aired 20 February 2009): The Final Five argue over their future, and Galactica's crew patch the dying ship with Cylon resin.
• 4.17 "Someone to Watch Over Me" (first aired 27 February 2009): Starbuck meets a piano player in Joe's Bar, and Boomer makes her move.
• 4.18 "Islanded in a Stream of Stars" (first aired 6 March 2009): Galactica is falling apart, and Adama has to decide whether to keep her flying.
• 4.19 "Daybreak, Part I" (first aired 13 March 2009): Flashbacks to life on the Colonies before the attack run alongside Adama's final decision about Galactica.
• 4.20 "Daybreak, Part II" (first aired 20 March 2009): Galactica's last mission and the end of the story. It aired as one two-hour finale, which some streaming services split into Parts 2 and 3 (numbered 4.20 and 4.21 on some lists).

(Battlestar Galactica, season 4)

TV films#

Two TV films sit outside the season numbering. Some lists also count Razor as season 4's first two episodes, which is where the episode totals of 75 and 76 come from.

• Razor (first aired 24 November 2007): Kendra Shaw, Lee's new executive officer on Pegasus, carries the memory of what the ship did under Admiral Cain in the months after the Fall, and a present-day mission forces it all back up. It runs 81 minutes as broadcast and about 101 minutes in the extended cut, and was promoted with seven short online "Razor Flashbacks" about a young William Adama in the first Cylon War. (Battlestar Galactica: Razor)
• The Plan (released on DVD and Blu-ray 27 October 2009; first shown on Syfy 10 January 2010): Two copies of Cavil wait to be thrown out of an airlock and look back on the Cylon plan from the first attack through season 2, showing what the hidden agents in the fleet and on Caprica were doing all along. Edward James Olmos directed it from a script by Jane Espenson. Watch it after the finale. (Battlestar Galactica: The Plan)

Caprica (19 episodes, 2010) and Blood & Chrome (ten web episodes from November 2012, broadcast as a single film on Syfy on 10 February 2013) are prequels rather than part of the 2004 series, so they aren't numbered here. The 1978 show and Galactica 1980 belong to a separate continuity, covered in our guide to the original Battlestar Galactica. (Caprica; Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome)