Battlestar Galactica (often abbreviated as BSG or just Galactica) is a military science fiction serial drama television series and part of the Battlestar Galactica franchise. The show was created by David Eick and Ronald D. Moore as a re-imagining of the Battlestar Galactica television series from 1978 created by Glen A. Larson. The series first aired as a three-hour miniseries in December 2003 on the Sci Fi network and ran for four seasons thereafter, ending its run on March 20, 2009. The series featured Emmy Award-winning and Academy Award-nominated Edward James Olmos and Academy Award-nominated Mary McDonnell and garnered a wide range of critical acclaim, including a Peabody Award and the Television Critics Association's Program of the Year Award, as well as Emmy nominations for its writing and directing. The story arc of Battlestar Galactica is set in a distant part of the galaxy, where a civilization of humans live on a series of planets known as the Twelve Colonies. In the past, the Colonies had been at war with a cybernetic race known as the Cylons.