A year after "Star Wars" smashed box-office records with its dazzling special effects, the original "Battlestar Galactica" TV series launched with lasers blasting.

While the show’s then cutting-edge special effects lured viewers, they weren’t enough to make up for its campy stories and even cornier writing. After a single season, ABC dropped "Galactica," and it lingered largely in syndication.

That is until 2003, when writer-producer Ron Moore of "Star Trek" fame and NBC-Universal executive David Eick brought "Galactica" out of dry dock and onto TV screens as a four-hour miniseries on cable’s Sci-Fi Channel.

Their grittier, more thought-provoking reinterpretation of the original was a ratings smash (drawing more than 4 million viewers in two nights, according to TV Guide). Word that it might be the pilot for a new "Galactica" series percolated among fans.

But "the word was ’no; you’re done,’" Eick recalls. "The budgets had come in and the answer was that a show would be too expensive for basic cable."

That didn’t stop Eick. With the help of a colleague at Universal, he secured financing - $400,000 per episode - from Britain’s Sky Network, which had seen ratings explode after it aired the miniseries overseas. Eick convinced Sci-Fi to produce a 13-episode season.

The first two episodes air from 9-11 p.m., Friday on Sci-Fi.

The series picks up right where the miniseries ends, reprising the dark, compelling story of a group of displaced humans struggling to stay ahead of a mysterious enemy. Its impressive visual effects and a talented ensemble cast - led by Academy-award nominees Edward James Olmos and Mary McDonnell - deliver 60 minutes of nail-biting weekly television.

The new "Galactica" loosely follows the premise of the original in which a surviving battleship must lead a civilian fleet to a new home after a devastating attack by an enemy known as the Cylons, rogue robots. But the resemblance ends there because Eick says he and Moore "wanted to go at the (science fiction) genre in a unique way" and re-envisioned "Galactica" as the "antithesis of contemporary sci-fi."

The cast from the 2003 miniseries (which repeats 9 p.m. today and concludes 9 p.m. Wednesday on Sci-Fi) reprise their roles. Among them are Olmos as the gritty Cmdr. Adama, who strains to repair his relationship with his son, Capt. Lee "Apollo" Adama (Jamie Bamber), and establish a civil one with McDonnell’s Roslin. "Galactica" is going to need an ever-growing audience if it’s to succeed in a cutthroat TV landscape that isn’t always friendly to expensive-to-produce sci-fi shows. Sci-Fi’s "Farscape" and Joss Whedon’s "Firefly," which aired briefly on Fox, are just two reminders of how quickly futuristic dramas can come and go. Will "Galactica" suffer a similar fate?

If premiere night is any indication, it’s blasting off with all thrusters firing. "Galactica" doesn’t look like it will run out of fuel anytime soon.