Day: October 27, 2010

I had mentioned a few weeks back on Twitter Caprica was on Dollhouse Watch and looks like that was confirmed today when Sy Fy canceled the show, pulled it from the line up and will burn off the remaining 4 episodes in Quarter 1 of 2011.
The good news is: Caprica is not Firefly and SyFy is not Fox.
The bad news is: Caprica started with a bang, killed off two main characters, resurrected them in Virtual Reality and whimpered under the weight of religious plot lines that even put me off.
SyFy did the right thing in the beginning by putting Caprica and Stargate Universe together since they were attempting the same thing: Give the audience a series that was set in an already established franchise without treading on new ground.
Stargate Universe started off a tad shaky had a Underweargate with Julia Benson then really found it’s voice and managed to balance the edge of the rebooted Battlestar with the fan-friendly easy going Stargate Universe.
Caprica on the other hand had several things going for it: The name, the actors and a great deal of space to fill in backstory since none of the flashbacks during BSG went as far back as Caprica.
So what the frack happened?
Well, a lot and nothing at all. With the writers staying far away from the somewhat convoluted info dump we received in the late seasons of BSG regarding the final five, the 13th Colony that nuked itself and instead focused on the birth of the Cylons, re-incarnation and the Cylons belief in one true god.
This made sense, most spin offs do a handing the torch from one generation to the next but since the final five are still in out there in space somewhere that axed any crossovers to get the ratings up.
In the end the writers tried to tackle monotheism/polytheism, the birth of AI and terrorism while making it all interesting. All the while bouncing back and forth between the real world and VR. Oh, and let’s not forget Patton Oswalt was probably the best thing of the entire show.
I wouldn’t say it was heady, I’d say the writers managed to make some of it work while other parts not. The fact they blew up one of their lead characters in the 2hr backdoor pilot was gusty but may have been too much too soon. Building up to the explosion in a mid season cliffhanger by showing the father and daughter geniuses of the Graystones tackling the Cyclon’s birth together would have been better I think. And, would made the Zoe character a little more likable.
The Adama plot lines with him being a Mob Lawyer was pretty good until they had no where else to go with it. The actors portrayed their parts extremely well. It’s just too bad nothing else on Caprica was as interesting as New Cap City.
But, from the ashes rises Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome. The spinoff was greenlit while Caprica’s marching orders probably came down in the same breath. This spin off series is supposed to take place during Will Adama’s tour during the First Cylon War. And, from the sounds of the description the show is going Sanctuary with green screen effects and such. If anyone passed on BSG: Razor, I’d highly recommend watching the section of Adam finding one of the Base Stars. It was good stuff and if the writers regroup then the series will probably bring everyone back that was missing the bang bang shoot’em up toasters.