Caprica DVD movie/Pilot - Page 4

FYI....

final 5 episodes of Caprica are going to be shown back to back on SciFi this coming Tues. starting at 6pm EST

Yup. Had they arrived just a few years sooner than they did, Graystone's Cylons might've never come into existence in the form they took, and both the first and second wars would've been aborted in utero, to say nothing of avoiding the creation of Cavil himself.

Yeah, if only the guy that doesn't like to be called God could have sped them along and prevented the whole mess.

Just finished the series finale, and I have to say, I really liked Caprica a lot more than BSG. It was a very interesting character drama and intellectual scifi piece that deserved a better fate. That said, it may been the proper length for a story like this, as they managed to tell an interesting prequel story without the handcuffs of needing to connect a bunch of dots to the previous narrative.

 

I will say that I hope Moore has a therapist - the number of suicidal people in his shows is conspicuous. :)

 

One unconnected dot I would be interested in knowing about is how the first Cylon (Zoe) became lost between the two shows. I wonder if Lucy Lawless was supposed to be playing "Zoe" in BSG?

I don't think Lawless was playing Zoe. Remember all skinjobs were created by the final five, and were supposed to be based on people they knew or something like that. It would have been nice to get at least one more season out of this story, but as it is it was a pretty good show.

Right, I guess I tried to forget. :)

 

I did scrounge this up:

 

 

Warning: Spoiler! (Click to show)

Kinda interesting. I guess from what they showed that Zoe was basically the personality inside the metal cylons from both series, to some degree.

Finally watched the last five on Hulu last night.  The 'Shape of Things to Come' montage ending on 'Next Season on Caprica' was a real kick in the balls.  They really deserved a second full season.  If they'd actually aired this episodes when they were meant to, I think word of mouth might have brought a slight uptick in the ratings (I also don't think they ever should have moved Caprica or SG:U to Tuesdays.  They'd tried a Tuesday programming block that included mythology heavy shows once before a really long time ago and it failed.  Tuesday nights for Syfy are like Friday nights for Fox), and the stadium climax would've really energized the audience.

 

And I really wanted to see Lacey's takeover of the Monotheist church.  Presumably she shut down the terrorist actions of the STO, since Clarice was allowed to preach monotheism in an actual cathedral (albeit only to Cylons...).

If only they'd sent in Granny Meatcleaver, the whole Cylon War would've been OVER in just a few days' time.

 

I think that was supposed to be virtual. But, I'm not 100%.
 

This could have been a great show. There were some interesting ideas for characters, intriguing ideas, and clearly the cast and production crew were into it. But the show really suffered from the start/stop pacing and some really inconsistent characterizations. SyFy really need to look at how the BBC does series. Just do 8-10 episodes, tell one or two stories in a concise exciting manner, move on. Jeeze.

 

Agreed. Unfortunately, it seems that television as a long-form storytelling medium is now dead.

Even bargain-basement soap operas aren't safe anymore, but I doubt if there will be another major, expensive science fiction "saga" series again within the coming next few years. The current network business structure simply cannot sustain such a show.

 

Once a significant portion of the Caprica audience-base, who had initially given the show a try, had dropped off, it was going to be very difficult to lure them back again. My guess is that RDM and the other BSG producers already knew this when they pitched Blood & Chrome to the network this past year.

They probably presented it as a way of telling a more dynamic story, thus re-attracting BSG's core audience, while at the same time giving them the option of revisiting some of the unresolved Caprica story-threads.

See, the thing is, I don't believe the Battlestar universe needs to die, but the writers need to ACT like it might. They did an amazing job when the death-knell tolled for Caprica. The last episodes were fantastic, and that's how they need to approach Blood & Chrome: lean-and-mean, like every episode might be their last.

Which means no fillers, no long setups to get to some vague point that won't get paid off for another several months. The lesson of Caprica is, know your story, and tell it with a bit of desperation.

 

And I'd add to that: BE CONSISTENT! If you introduce a character as a basically good person, then retcom them into an asshole, then re-recon them back to being (more or less) a goodie, you screw the basic engine of the show.
 

Based on what? The failure of a show on the Syfy (pronounced "crin-ge") channel?

 

Justified, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Sons of Anarchy, Treme, Friday Night Lights, Boardwalk Empire, Dexter, Spartacus, Fringe... off the top of my head.

 

Television is in great shape. Certain channels are in terrible shape, but most of them have been for years. Syfy canceling Caprica in one season isn't a surprise; them keeping BSG around for 4 is the surprise. Heck Syfy even picking up Caprica to begin with is a shock - it was way too cerebral and hard-sci-fi for the channel. Syfy is run like a big broadcast network: if they happen to get a good show, it's by accident, and they will absolutely torpedo its story and its audience if it means saving a penny.

 

Cable overall is contributing greatly to modern storytelling. Any involvement Syfy has had in that is completely unintentional.

Which character was this?  Graystone was kind of an asshole from the very beginning and Joseph was running bribes for the Ha'latha.  Nobody was basically good in the beginning of the show.

Quote:

 

I was referring more to long-form, relatively expensive science fiction epics (in the vein of BSG, Caprica, Stargate Universe, etc.) than the other shows you mention, which are largely mainstream dramas for the most part. You are correct -- television drama as a whole has never been better, but it's the long-form SF shows out there which still fail constantly in the ratings time and time again, particularly space-based ones. For whatever reasons, audiences seem far less inclined towards patience in sticking with a "genre" show than with a non-genre one.

 

Agreed too that Caprica was way too "cerebral" for Syfy's typical programming traditions...even back in 2008, when the pilot got greenlit, I wondered out loud, "Will even the BSG audience stick around for a show like this?" It was a totally weird call on Syfy's part, given their penchant for stuff in the "Mansquito/Chupacabra/Ice Spiders" milieu, but I'm not surprised that it failed the way it did, either, considering.

This book actually fucking exists.

Book? The man has an entire library devoted to savaging Moore's BSG franchise: Universal Studios vs. Battlestar Galactica: How Universal Studios Mismanaged This Property To Utter Oblivion; Whistling in the Dark: Ronald D. Moore's Failed Attempt to Revive Battlestar Galactica; Universal Studios Vs. The 1978 Battlestar Galactica Series: The Common Sense Manual; Blood & Chrome: SyFy Channel's Sham Interpretation of Battlestar Galactica Continues (Volume 1) [note: volume 1!!]; Bonnie Hammer's Sci-Fi Channel: Hatred Of The Science Fiction Genre Keeps This Backwater Cable Channel Neck Deep In Chronic Failure... there's more, but I couldn't get past page one.

 

Hahaha I hope Moore has a restraining order out against this guy.

Graystone was originally presented as cold to his family but committed to his business, and naive as well. He's led into more and more egregious actions in support of his company..except then we learn that, no, he was an ass all along, and carefully made note of the (numerous) personal failings of his Board of Directors. Adama was originally presented as a hard working lawyer but then oops! (after maybe 1 episode) He's in the Ha'latha hook line and sinker. He takes maybe 2 seconds to change from conflicted guy trying to work out what's best to Mafia guy in space. There's no internal tension with either character, and that makes them bland plot devices that simply perform random acts.