Just as the things that made Star Trek special were not the intellectual property objects that CBS and Paramount now own, the bits and pieces from which Battlestar Galactica was assembled are freely available for anyone to use:
“ancient astronaut hypothesis” + Ptolemaic Egypt in space + killer robot apocalypse
Anybody can make this show. If you are Universal Studios, you call the show “Battlestar Galactica.” If you are somebody else, the show has a different name. I don’t think the audience really cares whether the grizzled air-force-general hero is called Adama or not.
