VFX for everything Season 4 and past were internal BSGVFX ran by Gary Hutzel, not Zoic. We did Razor, The Plan, Caprica and Blood and Chrome (then went on to Defiance also on SyFy). It was pretty revolutionary to take the VFX in-house and was awsome to work on. A key difference, for example on Razor, we felt it was a little boring as originally written and delivered more than twice as many VFX shots as requested. Any vendor-based VFX would've required another million or more extra for that. I think Razor was peak BSG, wish it'd gotten a little more time here. The Plan... yeah. What we accomplished on Blood and Chrome was extraordinary... as was the fuckery from SyFy...
Was there ever an attempt to make a list of civilian ship designs to keep it in line with the script? Episode dialogue indicates between 60 and 75 ships but counting to the end of S4 and The Plan, I get upward of 95 ships!
You know, even after all he did I still strangely feel pity for John Cavil in the end. His overwhelming drive to experience his world in something other than that limiting human form speaks to me and I can somewhat relate. @@richlisola1
The entire plot of that film just makes their "plan" ridiculous. It's all boiled down to two Cavil's in a "Pinky and The Brain" type plot: "What we doing tonight Cavil B?". "Same thing we do every night Cavil A, try to wipe out the rest of the human race!".
Caprica was my first look into BSG as a teen. As a fan of period dramas, as well as sci-fi, the blending of the dynastic family drama and higher science fiction concepts really hit home with me and I still wish there had been more of the series. I was so angry about the cancellation, I didn't watch anything else related to BSG for years. Last year, I came across Caprica on dvd and rewatched it, finding myself falling in love with the world again and following it up with BSG (including Razor and the Plan) proper. Perhaps in another universe where Caprica had another season, I would have gotten into it sooner. All I know is that I wish I had checked it out as a teen
"All of this happened before, and all of it will happen again." The idea of a reboot or reimagining is at the very core of BSG phikosophy; as long as it's produced and delivered well it can simply be thought of as another loop within the endless cycle.
Yep funny I mentioned this and then saw you post here. I am sure someday we will see another take on this! Funny I am sure with AI type stuff someone will even wrap up the first series or something like that. At least Richard Hatch was trying to do something like that.
BSG creators: You dont try to repeat the formula Stargate creators: Yeah so SG1 was a success... lets make Atlantis with the same formula.... but in another galaxy 👌
@@gregorymcavoy758 SGU flopped exactly because it tried to change the formula of Stargate and copied too much BSG. Stargate fans at the time felt scammed cause the new Stargate didnt feel as a Stargate series
@@intellectic9155 well that "ass" ran for 10 seasons on the OG series, 2 movies, spinoff series of 5 seasons and 2nd spinoff that ran for another season. But you have your opinion
This is madness. I spent this morning listening to the excellent BSG retrospectives and was literally just thinking whether you'd cover the follow up series. 30 minutes later, this video drops. You mind-reading legend 😀
This short series has shown a lot of love to BSG. I remember the original from when I was younger, this new series blew me away. It was well thought out, darker, it had some terrific characters and acting. It was sci-fi, but so much was relatable and familiar about the people. I liked the spinoff's I definitely thought they added to the show. I didn't watch Caprica though. I watched the first episode, and even though it set up some things, the characters didn't grip me like BSG. Terrific work as always.
While not always well executed, I always like that ideas behind Caprica, I’m always a sucker for a good “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” story. And as far as The Plan, the more screen time Dean Stockwell gets, the better in my book
I still maintain that they should have gone first cylon war. You don't have to do the same thing over. You can have black ops missions, recon, follow multiple ships, anything! Sure you know how it ultimately ends up but still the characters themselves are fair game. Plenty of room for tragedy too.
I absolutely loved Caprica! But immediately knew it was doomed to failure for the reason you talked about in the video - while BSG was more about being drama that just happens to be in space than being sci-fi, this was drama not in space that is kinda-sorta more sci-fi-ish and that's just too niche for sci-fi fans, yet too connected to nerdy things for "normies". On the other hand that's also exactly what Black Mirror did and became a huge success, so you never know ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I liked Caprica but I think it would have been more successful if it had been more focused. It felt like the writers kept introducing new arcs every few episodes. I just didn't care about Tamara Adama becoming the queen of the sim game, for example. I was interested in Joseph Adama and Daniel Grasystone and how their mutual grief led to Graystone's rediscovery of resurrection technology. I wasn't that interested in the Tauron mob smuggling Cylon prototypes back to Tauron for use in the civil war, but I was interested in Willie Adama being drawn into his uncle's world. I wasn't that interested in the investigation into the maglev bombing but I was interested in how the rise of monotheism led to the Cylons' rebellion being a religious crusade.
Absolutely loved this retrospective! I loved how balanced it is showing your obvious admiration with ample evidence to back up it's strength AND it's weaknesses (also with ample evidence). It honestly makes me want to give the whole thing a re-watch! Looking forward to anything more you do Rowan!
Let's keep this in mind. The design of Pike's Enterprise is from the ship lenage of the NX01 Enterprise which explains why the Enterprise looks different. I believe once SNW run is done, the Enterprise will be refitted to look similar to the Classic TOS Enterprise but with an updated look.
I think if Blood and Chrome had followed the path BSG Deadlock took it would have made for a long lasting series. Watching the 1st Cylon War and how it influenced the 2003 series really solidifies the world building.
@@KabbalahSherry it got 2. U can gage it by the old norm of 23 episodes per season. Or u can go by what it states on the release. Life’s better when ur not anal 🤡
Only halfway through and you've already earned my sub. You've a great narrative voice, your observations are crisp and concise, and I look forward to exploring the rest of this retrospective. (I landed on part 3)
And this is what happens when the writing staff doesn't plan it out and shoots from the hip. It's always a letdown. Babylon 5, on the other hand, was fully planned out from A - Z and managed to survive a small budget, cast changes, etc to have an amazing ending.
@@sethzwicker3631 the last 6 or 7 episodes of B5 S5 were great, but the 14 or 15 prior to that were pretty terrible. And trust me: HUGE B5 fan here. Saw the pilot before it was even on TV, and I don’t like Star Trek, so I have no ulterior motive in being critical. Speaking of which, I think it’s fairly obvious BSG had some influence on the RDM Galactica, but that’s never really been discussed
@@mahatmarandy5977 Yes, I would agree but here's (my opinion) why: The last 6/7 episodes were the original intended finale & wind down. Fall of Centari Prime is just incredible but you already know that. The prior 14 were somewhat filler because the intended content of season 5 was shoved into the backhalf of season 4 due to the fact they thought they'd be cancelled so they wanted to complete the 2 main storylines: Shadow War & Earth Coup and they also shot the finale "Sleeping in Light" as a 4th season episode which worked out well because Ivanova was still in it whereas she would have been absent if they shot it in season 5. Low and behold TNT picked up the show and now they had a 5th season but didn't have a full season's worth of content.
@@sethzwicker3631 sort of true, but there were some other concerns. Number one is that the budget was smaller for the TNT season and it shows, number two is that they lost a day off of their 10 day production cycle for every episode, and that shows. One day it doesn’t sound like much but over the course of the season it’s the amount of time that they could make two full episodes in. Number three is the way they handle the drakh mystery. I like the concept of it, but we have seen our heroes, solve much more difficult mysteries in much less time, and since we know what’s going on, but they don’t, it makes them seem like idiots, trying to catch up with us. Number four, and what absolutely kills it for me, is the damn seven episode arc with Byron and the Telepaths. It just doesn’t work. It has no energy, it goes nowhere, and worse still it is completely unnecessary. After everything that we have already seen, we do not need the 1998 model Marcus to come in, and teach leader, how to be a leader. She already has more than enough experience behind her, and rising with the challenge on her own, would have better serve the character. And of course, there is no resolution to it. Just an absolute waste of time. Your filler comment is correct but honestly that doesn’t make it any better. Season one was largely filler as well, but that worked much better and after all we’ve been through we know these characters well enough for the audience to expect a little bit more. Allegedly, JMS had a much more cohesive concept of what he was going to do in the first 2/3 of the season, but he lost it. And I have always suspected he was just spread too thin. He was simultaneously doing 22 episodes of B5, writing 3 TV movies, gearing up for Crusade…just too much stuff. I don’t blame him, I just think he was overextended and it shows in the work.
That can happen with many creative things when put out there... I will say in the end yeah the creators vision is what we get, but there is are some shows and films that really just don't play out well in the end. Then at times we hear someone give it a better idea of how it could of played out and wow if they had gone that way with it boom! But hey such is how it works with creative material many a time and we all have our opinions in the end.
Caprica was Awesome and stands as a great predicesor of BSG! I do hop for a future of this imaginative series! I have read that there is maybe ANOTHER new version of the story in production.. Is not 2 versions enough already🙄
BSG 2003 is such a fascinating show - in some ways it is one of the greatest sci-fi shows ever made while also being a cautionary tale about going for that one last plot twist at the expense of everything else.
in the best case scenario i can see BSG becoming almost like a western version of Mobile Suit Gundam, a long-running franchise which shares tropes and beats across distinct continuities with their own flavours and thematic concerns.
This! Every Gundam series starts with a colony drop. BSG starts with a genocide. Kind of dark. A new BSG series should go with a heroic space opera. A traditional heroes journey. Apollo and Star Buck from 79 were classical hero archetypes. While their 2003 characters were merely protagonists. AI cyclons should be ditched replaced with humans or aliens. Revisiting the Moore's BSG would be wrong. But I have ideas of how it would be possible.
I just commented on the other video that the "They have a plan" line was the biggest betrayal of the series. I had no ide the writers did not like that line^^
Caprica had a shaky start but it was conceptually strong-And if nothing else, it made the 12 Colonies real. You feel the enormity of what was lost-12 Worlds of billions of people spread throughout solar systems, with thousands of years of history behind them, and seemingly ahead of them. Seemingly but we know there are only 58 years left for their civilization. Caprica made the loss of BSG feel real. Made the unimaginable conceivable. You feel the loss. And Blood And Chrome though unneeded was fun. To get a taste of the first war, and a young Adama. Bridging Caprica and BSG. It was perfect as a miniseries, but too many actors reused
I've said it before and will say it again, Cyperpunk is a very very tough sell at the best of times even to people who like science fiction. Tying to make a TV show on it is a very big risk. I love Caprica though.
This series (I think) really showed the most likely path for AI to become a type of real Cylon. With Chat gpt now widely used to control NPC characters in video games (giving it virtual bodies) the jump to a real body is getting smaller everyday. In that aspect this series was really ahead of its time. I found it very interesting to watch at the time. But as they say :). Nothing that is true will ever be popular, and nothing that is popular can ever be true...
It’s always been my strong opinion that the BSG reimagining embraced one fatal flaw, and that was when Edward James Olmos made them promise not to bring in aliens of any kind (supernatural elements likely lumped in by default), thereby forcing them to abandon their original premise/ending, or at least that’s my theory. The concept that the cylons left for outer space only to return, seemingly possessed, because they met someone or something terrible out there was a real missed opportunity, twice now. Blade Runner meets Chariot Of The Gods is a real gem of a conflict, far more intriguing than the now played out Star Wars. What does it mean to be alive? Can such a thing as tangible evil actually exist? If there are devils, then there must be angels…?
@toddblackwood129 Your comment just gave me a thought for an alternative path the show could have taken: what if the Cylons, after leaving the 12 Colonies behind, found the "Cylon" colony that had annihilated itself (the one the Ragtag Fleet found near the end of the series)? They might have run away from the implications of Cylons destroying themselves, went through some societal craziness, and came out the other side with their new religion and determination to eliminate their weaknesses . . . including everything about their creators on the colonies. Of course, this isn't how it happened, it's just a fanfic notion, but it would have made some sense of it all. It doesn't explain Head/Angel Six and all of that, but nothing in the existing series does, either.
@SingularityOrbit the mythology of it all is ripe for expansion, isn’t it?? Although, and correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the character Count Iblis explain some of the lore/backstory of the Cylons? I think that was a character that should've been brought back in the reimagined series…
That's one thing I like about The Expanse. While that series focuses on human conflicts, the extraterrestrial elements gradually move from the background to the foreground in a way that doesn't detract from the political intrigue between the various factions in the solar system. BSG could have incorporated aliens in a way that wouldn't have sacrificed the grounded grittiness the series was known for. A lost opportunity.
As someone who wasn't enamoured by the BSG reboot, I found Caprica fantastic. I've rewatched it multiple times, and pick up new subtle details each time. I was bitterly disappointed when it was cancelled, though it works well as a single season show.
As far as I was concerned, having seen the last season of the BSG reimagining, Caprica was so much more interesting than anything else on TV at the time. Its cancellation was the first time in my adult life I really cared about a show being cancelled. The cutdown second season to finish it off was so rushed that it didn't work, but that's what happens when a show needs to reach its conclusion in a hurry.
@@SingularityOrbit I think what helped caprica was that it was a cyberpunk genre inspired series. I agree, the last season of the BSG 2003 reboot was a complete mess and the series finale is considered one of the worst series finales of all time. The series started to go downhill with the middle half of season 3 after they wrapped up the New Caprica storyline. The 3-part season 3 finale almost redeemed the season. Season 4 was a whole lot of nothing and is generally considered the weakest season in the series.
@@SingularityOrbit BSG seasons 1, 2 and the early half of season 3 (New Caprica) were the best seasons of the show. Season 4's biggest problem was that it was made during a writers strike and had to be split in two. The series finale ultimately ruins the entire series.
@@NaquanGreen-zt4gr Oh, apart from mentioning that I watched all the way through BGS, the rest of my comment was all about Caprica. I don't think the ending ruins the series, apart from not taking their audience's emotional need to know what "God" was all about seriously (and I include myself in that audience who needed more than what we were given). It just wasn't a _perfect_ ending.
Well, I wasn't aware that Caprica was a failure. In fact, I loved it. And for the time it came out it was very with it - the internet as another reality you could escape into; how the stories of these 2 girls lead to the human version Cylons - and all occurring in a realistic corporate / political / governmental society we know too well. And it was hilarious at time - a valley girl teenager transplanted into a Chrome Robot Body ? - Uhhhh - Duhhh - mind bending and hilarious as well.
Blood and Chrome foi extraordinário como inicio da nova série reimaginada. Caprica foi muito longa para tratar do desenvolvimento dos cilônios como arma. A cultura de Cáprica era próxima a da cidade de Chicago.
Caprica, like B5's Crusade, was something that could've been great if it had been given time. So many interesting ideas, characters, and story directions for the show to go in. Sure, aspects of that were hampered by some wheel spinning, a short season would definitely have been a benefit, and sometimes the family drama got a little too soapy for my liking, but there was a whole lot of potential there, if only it had found its audience. The issue with audience as well. It probably is too much of a radical departure to have worked so soon after Galactica wrapped. Still, even if a lot of BSG fans didn't come over I think in time Caprica could really have come into its own with its own dedicated fanbase larger than what it currently has, something I couldn't really say about Blood and Chrome. Blood and Chrome is fun but kind of meh overall and I've no idea how they could've made it interesting in the long term. In my opinion there were nowhere near as many interesting plot hooks in that pilot compared to Caprica.
I like Caprica. It was canceled before it could find it’s stride, just like SGU. I understand that it didn’t produce viewing numbers to justify it’s cost, but if it was made today I bet it could have been saved by Fan Outreach; Online Petitions & Social Media.
Caprica was never really given a chance. They didn't even release the full first season, they strung it out, changed airing times, and in several regions didn't air the final few episodes.
I just can't imagine a new reboot doing as good a job as the 2003 edition. That latter version got so much right, and we're in a time when telling stories is difficult for a variety of political reasons both within the show and because of the participants' actions in the real world.
To be honest what I would do with the next series, is reimagine it all over again. Take elements from both of the first two series, but create something new and unique that paves its own path forward. I would lean really heavy into the mystical elements of the first show while grounding it a little bit like the second show.
It’s been awhile since I’ve looked into anything related to the new BSG show being made, but if Sam Esmail is still the show runner attached he already said the his new battle star galactic a show wouldn’t be a reboot. Quote “why mess with perfection?”. Personally I think focusing on a story about the exodus from Kobol would allow for a similar story in the same canon while giving new opportunities to try new ideas.
I really liked Caprica and I feel it didn't succeed because most the Galactica fanbase just wanted more pew pew. I feel resentful about that. I was finding the whole thing fascinating, especially the digital resurrection and how they were exploring it.
If Caprica had more time the prequel would have worked. It wouldnt' have commanded the #s of viewers as BSG BUT I still would have stayed on. I am sure more would have stayed on had they removed a lot of the child drama.....could still have had a very compelling story with the actors, both younger and older. The origin story is what is what is missing and a good 6 or 8 seasons would have worked wonders to fill out the reboot version.
You forgot the best BSG spin-off: the Portlandia episode “One Moore Episode”. Also, whenever I see the old 70’s BSG special effects, all I see are the effects from the MST3K episode Space Mutiny.
I liked the idea of ai becoming sentient via a shortcut where an already concious mind is translated into a digital substrate, sparking a cascade of existential risk that we all know ends in genocide via nuclear holocaust. And that extinction level event is perpetrated at least in part by bits of this young girls mind.
There were a lot of great ideas in Caprica and I was disappointed when it ended prematurely. Given another season it could’ve been a truly great successor to BSG. Blood and Chrome was entertaining, and a welcome return to the more visceral elements of BSG, but the plot definitely had a video game vibe to it. It was easily the least cerebral of the three shows. I always saw the failures of the two sequel series as one leaning into the drama too much, and the other embracing action as its primary focus - two sides of the coin that BSG managed to balance perfectly.
Caprica had a good concept it ended up becoming more soap opera than scifi in the end. I do believe that had we gotten more out of the show we would find out that Zoe evolves and becomes the god of the Cylons.
Franchises like BSG remind me of the TMNT franchise. Revisionism is sort of hard wired in to its DNA now. Each step forward (either a reboot or new gronds) just builds on the universe without always erasing or treading on what has come before. 2 generations now have there own "take" on what BSG is. I think much like TMNT you'll see several takes in the near/far future that won't necessarly hobble it as it has done with other more popular franchises.
Nice video and I love all BSG both versions warts and all. As they say this is happened before and will happen again sort of a haunting statement in itself. So I feel someone will do another take of BSG and will I still be around to see it...
You know they said they didn’t want to do a young Adama origin story but having those young Adama scenes in Razor I think would have been great for it’s own show. Plus people would watch because of that Razar episode. Could have also used the same actor that played young Adama in that episode. Could later in the show do a small time jump and bring back Starbuck and Apollo and dive deeper into Zack. Could do 4 seasons first two seasons focus on young Adama and the War with the Cylons then at the end or start of season 3 do a couple year time jump bring back Starbuck and Apollo and introduce Zack and now you could show the events of Starbucks relationship with Zack. Then you can end that show tied up with Battlestar Galactica.
I loved Caprica. I'm aware of its flaws, and its VR is total BS … but I loved the show. I loved the world, the politics, the cult, Sister Clarice, the underworld and the "overworld" with the latter being the more brutal, the discrimination against and ethnic pride of the Tauron people… The final episode was pretty much "look, this is where this was all going!" And I wanted to go there! I took the first season as a bit of a slow burn building toward all of that. And unfortunately, it was extinguished. And Blood and Chrome should've been made a series too! ALL THE BSG! (Except Galactica 1980, that doesn't exist.)
New reimagining, huh? Okay, so BSG is trying to become the American version of Japan's Gundam franchise. Here's the trick to that plan: Gundam series are developed in parallel, kind of like Fanal Fantasy video games. One Gundam series gets its one or two seasons as planned, and is then replaced with the next one. The novels and comics keep the previous series going. If the model kits and toys sell well enough then it might come back with a new miniseries or movie. If BSG is going to be a self-replicating franchise then they need to think that way, not in this "make a version until it faills down in some way, cancel it for a decade or two, then ignore the old one and try again" pattern.
Not sure how “active” the development on that BSG reboot is considering the original writer left the project a couple of years ago and there’s been no news on it since.
I still don't think that controversial is an accurate descriptor for the end of the series. While the story meandered and drifted all over the place at the end of season 3 and 4, conversations I had with fellow local nerds usually ended up saying that they weren't happy that the ending was too ambiguous. I partially blame George Lucas and his prequels for this, it was right around this time that everybody started demanding every piece of history or detail had to be fully fleshed out and answered, even if it was just meant to be a bit of background flavor history for the setting. Personally I like an ending with a little bit of ambiguity, my imagination is always going to create better backstory than anyting a corporate media arm will come up with.
Caprica was good and had incredible potential had they been able to play out everything they showed in the last episode where they tried to tie it all up in 5 min, BUT at times it was ponderously slow and making audiences wait 6 months to see the next half of the season was a ridiculous thing to do.
So, do you think or hope that Galactica goes through the Hasbro Treatment? Outside of a few ideas, they do a reimaging of the concept. The Hasbro Treatment refers to the Transformers/Beast Wars and My Little Pony Generation Series. Some are good, but most are excellent. Especially the Transformers.
Thanks for this retrospective! Have you watched 'For All Mankind', also by R.D. Moore? I absolutely love this series and it would be interesting to know your opinion.
Caprica was a great series. I'm still angry that the franchise REFUSED to show the last three episodes outside of Canada and blamed the AMERICAN audience for it's cancellation. The end of Sy-Fy channel.
I was blown away by Season 1 of BSG (best written sci-fi on the small screen) and yet I never watched Caprica. Why? Because I see no reason to visit a world that I know will be destroyed anyway. Showing how it all started could have worked as flashbacks throughout the second half of BSG (like they did with the Final Five). If written well it could have elevated seasons 3 and 4 from the mediocreness.
Arguably the best Sci-Fi show of all-time with the worst ending ever seen. Everything that came after was both artificially bolstered by how damn good the series was and at the same time loaded down with the weight of that incredibly bad ending. I remain convinced that the original plan was for Starbuck to be the daughter of the Cylon Daniel, but when it got figured out by fans they decided to the dreaded 'diverting expectations' things and take a hard left turn with what was clearly an unfinished idea which suffered even more in its execution.
Always wish they focused more on the sci-fi element and less the metaphysical. Still enjoyed Caprica and it was nice seeing Eric Stoltz one more time. Blood and Chrime dying on the vine sucks as I feel it had potential. The plan was meh. It was trying to be a bit philosophical and pretentious. Really all I wanted was more ship pron. One thing I feel they dropped the ball on was the folks they left behind at the colonies. The cylons weren’t eradicated from that area and I doubt there couldn’t be possible pockets of other survivors as the lore established other habitable planets like in Blood and Chrome. I was also curious about the planet they left Xenia on and what went down and how they tied into it all.
Caprica had huge potential to show the birth of the cylon race. Unfortunately, the pace and backdrop left a lot to be desired. It is a shame it never had a chance to develop the plot so the audience had a better idea of where it was going...and also a shame that the plot itself demanded a attention to detail in the telling of how it all began. While I try to be patient with sci-fi, giving it a fair chance as I did, I could not help but be annoyed at the "teenage angst" story line and extending that into the cult...to me, those characters should have been adult...university age at minimum, not high school age... There were aspects of the story that were going well...the Grayson/Adama story line felt a bit stretched out. I think they could have put a lot more of that story line into season 1, and have an adult daughter take on the role of producing the first AI and dad knew all about it, helping her...toss in the terrorist train explosion and dear old dad is left with naught but the AI entity that was constructed in the virtual world. Have ties between the daughter and the "One True God" OTG cult, they learned of her research and sought to exploit it. Dad keeps daughter AI alive and eventually develops a body for her through military contracts instead of where it went in the series...not sure if I cared for the criminal aspect of where Grayson went with Adama. Maybe keep aspects of the animosity of the different worlds towards the others and build on that. Keep the relationship above board between the two families, not necessarily connected in such a way either. Iron Man 2's backdrop of connecting the characters through sins of the past for example. Impersonal, yet.... Its a difficult thing to convey, but it felt like the writers were writing themselves into corners with some of the story lines, making it too complex with too many issues going on. Was it a drama? Or was it a sci-fi? Was it a drama about social constructs? Or was it Sci-fi? Was it about teenage kids? Or was it about teenage cultists who hated their parents and wanted to live forever? Was it about a wife who couldn't handle life after her daugher was lost? And too much of the series itself focused on those few characters, nothing compared to the opening cast of BSG...constrained, there were openings for contradictory behaviour later on. All that has happened before, nobody wants it to happen again. Really. Stargate began showing this around season 5. It bloomed straight out of its spinoffs, SG Universe was the manifestation of lousy writing getting stuck into its own trap, Atlantis barely justified beyond "we have this contract to produce crap" thing going on...so many plot holes in the first season that never did have decent follow up. For lack of anything else to watch on TV when that series was going...I'd not have watched it. A gross insult to SG1 and the legacy that series brought to sci-fi. When you start rooting for the bad dudes...the Wraith...meh. I would like to see Caprica revived...same base premise of AI being developed to sentience and used by religious nutjobs as a means to immortality and the OTG linked to BSG's Caprica Six...keep the story itself simple and more importantly, to culminate to a major war that gives rise to Galactica's aversion to networked computers. Start there and work backwards...fill in the gaps with stuff that makes sense, that works to that end goal. Not unlike how BSG was envisioned...all of this has happened before, all of this will happen again. Earth as we know it now, a part of that cycle. They worked backwards from there, and tossed in the mythology familiar to the audience. And paced it well...no "boring" bits...no filler crap. Caprica had filler crap up the wazoo...and lost the audience because the core story itself got lost in all that superfluous and overcomplicated drama that would fit in well in any other story, just not this one. If only Terminator:The Sarah Conner Chronicles faired so well. Despite a tight story and well executed, the studio execs axed that series before it had a chance...in favour of a crap series that was also poorly written dredge...Dollhouse. Cater to the lowest common denominator...sexual exploitation.
I honestly didn’t like Caprica at first until I came across someone at work who was really into Caprica. And when we talked it turned out he loved it for the exact same reasons I hated it. And he didn’t like the parts that I semi-liked about the series.
The Plan was kinda weak because it didn't recontextualize the narrative enough to sell me on it Caprica should've been a miniseries a nice tight 6-8 episode run, it was hamstrung by being so stretched out because the good stuff is pretty good Blood and Chrome wasn't bad but I felt the lead was kinda weak and I wish they used the guy from Razor instead
The post-BSG era showed how little legs that franchise had and the bankrupt ideas it couldn't make work. Caprica was plagued by two unfixable flaws. 1: It was a prequel to a franchise where we knew everything that was going to happen. 2: It tried to create a story about religious conflict despite already proving one of those religions was "correct". I watched Caprica and found it utterly boring. I knew after watching it that BSG would not come back from this. It's their Battlestar 1980. Blood & Chrome had the same problem.
HELP THE CHANNEL GROW: www.patreon.com/rowanjcoleman
Please do a Tier Ranking of every Star Trek DS9 episode to celebrate that show's 30th Anniversary.
VFX for everything Season 4 and past were internal BSGVFX ran by Gary Hutzel, not Zoic. We did Razor, The Plan, Caprica and Blood and Chrome (then went on to Defiance also on SyFy). It was pretty revolutionary to take the VFX in-house and was awsome to work on. A key difference, for example on Razor, we felt it was a little boring as originally written and delivered more than twice as many VFX shots as requested. Any vendor-based VFX would've required another million or more extra for that. I think Razor was peak BSG, wish it'd gotten a little more time here. The Plan... yeah. What we accomplished on Blood and Chrome was extraordinary... as was the fuckery from SyFy...
That's rad!
-Minus the fuckery
Your work is appreciated and still exceeds a lot of the slop put out today. Bravo.
Considering how much had to rebuilt because the sets were torn down. It's been 10 years, but dad gum it's still a good watch.
Was there ever an attempt to make a list of civilian ship designs to keep it in line with the script? Episode dialogue indicates between 60 and 75 ships but counting to the end of S4 and The Plan, I get upward of 95 ships!
The Cylons did have a plan. The progress bar just got stuck at 99%.
It wasn’t the Cylons plan, it was Cavil’s plan-Always Cavill
You know, even after all he did I still strangely feel pity for John Cavil in the end. His overwhelming drive to experience his world in something other than that limiting human form speaks to me and I can somewhat relate. @@richlisola1
Spiny wheel of death just keeps turning. What does ‘buffering’ mean?
The entire plot of that film just makes their "plan" ridiculous. It's all boiled down to two Cavil's in a "Pinky and The Brain" type plot: "What we doing tonight Cavil B?". "Same thing we do every night Cavil A, try to wipe out the rest of the human race!".
That's what they get for running on f**king Windows Vista. 😉
Caprica was my first look into BSG as a teen. As a fan of period dramas, as well as sci-fi, the blending of the dynastic family drama and higher science fiction concepts really hit home with me and I still wish there had been more of the series. I was so angry about the cancellation, I didn't watch anything else related to BSG for years. Last year, I came across Caprica on dvd and rewatched it, finding myself falling in love with the world again and following it up with BSG (including Razor and the Plan) proper. Perhaps in another universe where Caprica had another season, I would have gotten into it sooner. All I know is that I wish I had checked it out as a teen
"All of this happened before, and all of it will happen again."
The idea of a reboot or reimagining is at the very core of BSG phikosophy; as long as it's produced and delivered well it can simply be thought of as another loop within the endless cycle.
Sort of like Regeneration in Doctor Who. Except instead of a new cycle of the main character, we get a new cycle of the entire show
@@Zreen001 haha ya nice comparison. As long as they don't suck I'm ok with it. 😄
Yep funny I mentioned this and then saw you post here. I am sure someday we will see another take on this! Funny I am sure with AI type stuff someone will even wrap up the first series or something like that. At least Richard Hatch was trying to do something like that.
BSG creators: You dont try to repeat the formula
Stargate creators: Yeah so SG1 was a success... lets make Atlantis with the same formula.... but in another galaxy 👌
That was the hang-up at the time. Viewers were getting burned out on sequels and prequels. Show us something new guys.
You are forgetting that Stargate Universe was done like nuBSG as well. NuBSG for a time was a heavy influence on Scifi series styling.
The Stargate show is ass though.
@@gregorymcavoy758 SGU flopped exactly because it tried to change the formula of Stargate and copied too much BSG. Stargate fans at the time felt scammed cause the new Stargate didnt feel as a Stargate series
@@intellectic9155 well that "ass" ran for 10 seasons on the OG series, 2 movies, spinoff series of 5 seasons and 2nd spinoff that ran for another season. But you have your opinion
This is madness. I spent this morning listening to the excellent BSG retrospectives and was literally just thinking whether you'd cover the follow up series. 30 minutes later, this video drops. You mind-reading legend 😀
This short series has shown a lot of love to BSG. I remember the original from when I was younger, this new series blew me away. It was well thought out, darker, it had some terrific characters and acting. It was sci-fi, but so much was relatable and familiar about the people. I liked the spinoff's I definitely thought they added to the show. I didn't watch Caprica though. I watched the first episode, and even though it set up some things, the characters didn't grip me like BSG. Terrific work as always.
While not always well executed, I always like that ideas behind Caprica, I’m always a sucker for a good “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” story. And as far as The Plan, the more screen time Dean Stockwell gets, the better in my book
But... Dean Stockwell is... gone 🥺⚰️
I still maintain that they should have gone first cylon war. You don't have to do the same thing over. You can have black ops missions, recon, follow multiple ships, anything! Sure you know how it ultimately ends up but still the characters themselves are fair game. Plenty of room for tragedy too.
I absolutely loved Caprica! But immediately knew it was doomed to failure for the reason you talked about in the video - while BSG was more about being drama that just happens to be in space than being sci-fi, this was drama not in space that is kinda-sorta more sci-fi-ish and that's just too niche for sci-fi fans, yet too connected to nerdy things for "normies". On the other hand that's also exactly what Black Mirror did and became a huge success, so you never know ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I liked Caprica but I think it would have been more successful if it had been more focused. It felt like the writers kept introducing new arcs every few episodes. I just didn't care about Tamara Adama becoming the queen of the sim game, for example. I was interested in Joseph Adama and Daniel Grasystone and how their mutual grief led to Graystone's rediscovery of resurrection technology. I wasn't that interested in the Tauron mob smuggling Cylon prototypes back to Tauron for use in the civil war, but I was interested in Willie Adama being drawn into his uncle's world. I wasn't that interested in the investigation into the maglev bombing but I was interested in how the rise of monotheism led to the Cylons' rebellion being a religious crusade.
Absolutely loved this retrospective! I loved how balanced it is showing your obvious admiration with ample evidence to back up it's strength AND it's weaknesses (also with ample evidence). It honestly makes me want to give the whole thing a re-watch! Looking forward to anything more you do Rowan!
Let's keep this in mind. The design of Pike's Enterprise is from the ship lenage of the NX01 Enterprise which explains why the Enterprise looks different. I believe once SNW run is done, the Enterprise will be refitted to look similar to the Classic TOS Enterprise but with an updated look.
I think if Blood and Chrome had followed the path BSG Deadlock took it would have made for a long lasting series. Watching the 1st Cylon War and how it influenced the 2003 series really solidifies the world building.
I just want Caprica season 2. And I know we’ll never get it.
We can make it with AI.
Just finished a BSG run and I'm watching Caprica for the first time- very timely post for me, thanks so much!
I LOVED Caprica. It’s was soooooo good, I was heartbroken when it ended after only 2 seasons. I would very much like them to bring it bk
It only got 1 season actually 🫤
@@KabbalahSherry it got 2. U can gage it by the old norm of 23 episodes per season. Or u can go by what it states on the release. Life’s better when ur not anal 🤡
Only halfway through and you've already earned my sub. You've a great narrative voice, your observations are crisp and concise, and I look forward to exploring the rest of this retrospective. (I landed on part 3)
Caprica was so ahead of it's time.
Technology is just now catching up to what it predicted.
What really kills me about this is that so many of “The Plans’ that the fans came up with via guessing were so much better than the non-plan we got
And this is what happens when the writing staff doesn't plan it out and shoots from the hip. It's always a letdown.
Babylon 5, on the other hand, was fully planned out from A - Z and managed to survive a small budget, cast changes, etc to have an amazing ending.
@@sethzwicker3631 the last 6 or 7 episodes of B5 S5 were great, but the 14 or 15 prior to that were pretty terrible. And trust me: HUGE B5 fan here. Saw the pilot before it was even on TV, and I don’t like Star Trek, so I have no ulterior motive in being critical.
Speaking of which, I think it’s fairly obvious BSG had some influence on the RDM Galactica, but that’s never really been discussed
@@mahatmarandy5977 Yes, I would agree but here's (my opinion) why:
The last 6/7 episodes were the original intended finale & wind down. Fall of Centari Prime is just incredible but you already know that. The prior 14 were somewhat filler because the intended content of season 5 was shoved into the backhalf of season 4 due to the fact they thought they'd be cancelled so they wanted to complete the 2 main storylines: Shadow War & Earth Coup and they also shot the finale "Sleeping in Light" as a 4th season episode which worked out well because Ivanova was still in it whereas she would have been absent if they shot it in season 5.
Low and behold TNT picked up the show and now they had a 5th season but didn't have a full season's worth of content.
@@sethzwicker3631 sort of true, but there were some other concerns. Number one is that the budget was smaller for the TNT season and it shows, number two is that they lost a day off of their 10 day production cycle for every episode, and that shows. One day it doesn’t sound like much but over the course of the season it’s the amount of time that they could make two full episodes in. Number three is the way they handle the drakh mystery. I like the concept of it, but we have seen our heroes, solve much more difficult mysteries in much less time, and since we know what’s going on, but they don’t, it makes them seem like idiots, trying to catch up with us. Number four, and what absolutely kills it for me, is the damn seven episode arc with Byron and the Telepaths. It just doesn’t work. It has no energy, it goes nowhere, and worse still it is completely unnecessary. After everything that we have already seen, we do not need the 1998 model Marcus to come in, and teach leader, how to be a leader. She already has more than enough experience behind her, and rising with the challenge on her own, would have better serve the character. And of course, there is no resolution to it. Just an absolute waste of time.
Your filler comment is correct but honestly that doesn’t make it any better. Season one was largely filler as well, but that worked much better and after all we’ve been through we know these characters well enough for the audience to expect a little bit more. Allegedly, JMS had a much more cohesive concept of what he was going to do in the first 2/3 of the season, but he lost it. And I have always suspected he was just spread too thin. He was simultaneously doing 22 episodes of B5, writing 3 TV movies, gearing up for Crusade…just too much stuff. I don’t blame him, I just think he was overextended and it shows in the work.
That can happen with many creative things when put out there... I will say in the end yeah the creators vision is what we get, but there is are some shows and films that really just don't play out well in the end. Then at times we hear someone give it a better idea of how it could of played out and wow if they had gone that way with it boom! But hey such is how it works with creative material many a time and we all have our opinions in the end.
Caprica was Awesome and stands as a great predicesor of BSG! I do hop for a future of this imaginative series!
I have read that there is maybe ANOTHER new version of the story in production.. Is not 2 versions enough already🙄
BSG 2003 is such a fascinating show - in some ways it is one of the greatest sci-fi shows ever made while also being a cautionary tale about going for that one last plot twist at the expense of everything else.
in the best case scenario i can see BSG becoming almost like a western version of Mobile Suit Gundam, a long-running franchise which shares tropes and beats across distinct continuities with their own flavours and thematic concerns.
This! Every Gundam series starts with a colony drop. BSG starts with a genocide. Kind of dark. A new BSG series should go with a heroic space opera. A traditional heroes journey. Apollo and Star Buck from 79 were classical hero archetypes. While their 2003 characters were merely protagonists. AI cyclons should be ditched replaced with humans or aliens. Revisiting the Moore's BSG would be wrong. But I have ideas of how it would be possible.
Anime is dumb.
@@intellectic9155 yeah that's why it rules
They really should have done a First Cylon War series, and if they ever revive the franchise that's how they should do it.
I just commented on the other video that the "They have a plan" line was the biggest betrayal of the series.
I had no ide the writers did not like that line^^
Blood & Chrome definitely should've gone to series 👍 And there should be a project set during 1st Cylon War 👍
Great review! Many thanks!
Love all three parts of your retrospective, very well done! 👍
Caprica had a shaky start but it was conceptually strong-And if nothing else, it made the 12 Colonies real. You feel the enormity of what was lost-12 Worlds of billions of people spread throughout solar systems, with thousands of years of history behind them, and seemingly ahead of them. Seemingly but we know there are only 58 years left for their civilization.
Caprica made the loss of BSG feel real. Made the unimaginable conceivable. You feel the loss.
And Blood And Chrome though unneeded was fun. To get a taste of the first war, and a young Adama. Bridging Caprica and BSG. It was perfect as a miniseries, but too many actors reused
I've said it before and will say it again,
Cyperpunk is a very very tough sell at the best of times even to people who like science fiction. Tying to make a TV show on it is a very big risk.
I love Caprica though.
One of the reasons i really liked Caprica. Very cyberpunkish and i was not expecting that heh.
@@actionvestadventure
Yeah exactly. That's why I loved it too.
It's not often that Cyberpunk TV shows get made.
This video was so good I bought Caprica while watching it.
This series (I think) really showed the most likely path for AI to become a type of real Cylon. With Chat gpt now widely used to control NPC characters in video games (giving it virtual bodies) the jump to a real body is getting smaller everyday. In that aspect this series was really ahead of its time. I found it very interesting to watch at the time. But as they say :). Nothing that is true will ever be popular, and nothing that is popular can ever be true...
That will be a great film it looks amazing
When I first used chatGPT I immediately remembered Caprica series.
Caprica was just finding its legs - when it was cancelled. This show would have been brilliant!!!
The Plan was good I enjoyed it
It’s always been my strong opinion that the BSG reimagining embraced one fatal flaw, and that was when Edward James Olmos made them promise not to bring in aliens of any kind (supernatural elements likely lumped in by default), thereby forcing them to abandon their original premise/ending, or at least that’s my theory. The concept that the cylons left for outer space only to return, seemingly possessed, because they met someone or something terrible out there was a real missed opportunity, twice now. Blade Runner meets Chariot Of The Gods is a real gem of a conflict, far more intriguing than the now played out Star Wars. What does it mean to be alive? Can such a thing as tangible evil actually exist? If there are devils, then there must be angels…?
@toddblackwood129 Your comment just gave me a thought for an alternative path the show could have taken: what if the Cylons, after leaving the 12 Colonies behind, found the "Cylon" colony that had annihilated itself (the one the Ragtag Fleet found near the end of the series)? They might have run away from the implications of Cylons destroying themselves, went through some societal craziness, and came out the other side with their new religion and determination to eliminate their weaknesses . . . including everything about their creators on the colonies. Of course, this isn't how it happened, it's just a fanfic notion, but it would have made some sense of it all. It doesn't explain Head/Angel Six and all of that, but nothing in the existing series does, either.
@SingularityOrbit the mythology of it all is ripe for expansion, isn’t it?? Although, and correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the character Count Iblis explain some of the lore/backstory of the Cylons? I think that was a character that should've been brought back in the reimagined series…
That's one thing I like about The Expanse. While that series focuses on human conflicts, the extraterrestrial elements gradually move from the background to the foreground in a way that doesn't detract from the political intrigue between the various factions in the solar system.
BSG could have incorporated aliens in a way that wouldn't have sacrificed the grounded grittiness the series was known for. A lost opportunity.
@robwalsh9843. And the Expanse is Ronald D Moore, isn’t it? Or am I wrong?
I LOVE CAPRICA, they didn't give it enough time to mature!
Looking interesting
As someone who wasn't enamoured by the BSG reboot, I found Caprica fantastic. I've rewatched it multiple times, and pick up new subtle details each time.
I was bitterly disappointed when it was cancelled, though it works well as a single season show.
As far as I was concerned, having seen the last season of the BSG reimagining, Caprica was so much more interesting than anything else on TV at the time. Its cancellation was the first time in my adult life I really cared about a show being cancelled. The cutdown second season to finish it off was so rushed that it didn't work, but that's what happens when a show needs to reach its conclusion in a hurry.
@@SingularityOrbit
I think what helped caprica was that it was a cyberpunk genre inspired series.
I agree, the last season of the BSG 2003 reboot was a complete mess and the series finale is considered one of the worst series finales of all time.
The series started to go downhill with the middle half of season 3 after they wrapped up the New Caprica storyline.
The 3-part season 3 finale almost redeemed the season.
Season 4 was a whole lot of nothing and is generally considered the weakest season in the series.
@@SingularityOrbit
BSG seasons 1, 2 and the early half of season 3 (New Caprica)
were the best seasons of the show.
Season 4's biggest problem was that it was made during a writers strike and had to be split in two.
The series finale ultimately ruins the entire series.
@@NaquanGreen-zt4gr Oh, apart from mentioning that I watched all the way through BGS, the rest of my comment was all about Caprica. I don't think the ending ruins the series, apart from not taking their audience's emotional need to know what "God" was all about seriously (and I include myself in that audience who needed more than what we were given). It just wasn't a _perfect_ ending.
@@SingularityOrbit
Caprica was great and deserved another season. I just love the way it felt like a cyberpunk genre series.
Razor was by far the best work of all the Battlestar productions
Why ya gotta hate... It's fun to watch things from a different side.
I looked forward to seeing BSG air..Even bought the DVDs.
Well, I wasn't aware that Caprica was a failure. In fact, I loved it. And for the time it came out it was very with it - the internet as another reality you could escape into; how the stories of these 2 girls lead to the human version Cylons - and all occurring in a realistic corporate / political / governmental society we know too well. And it was hilarious at time - a valley girl teenager transplanted into a Chrome Robot Body ? - Uhhhh - Duhhh - mind bending and hilarious as well.
Blood and Chrome foi extraordinário como inicio da nova série reimaginada. Caprica foi muito longa para tratar do desenvolvimento dos cilônios como arma. A cultura de Cáprica era próxima a da cidade de Chicago.
Caprica, like B5's Crusade, was something that could've been great if it had been given time. So many interesting ideas, characters, and story directions for the show to go in. Sure, aspects of that were hampered by some wheel spinning, a short season would definitely have been a benefit, and sometimes the family drama got a little too soapy for my liking, but there was a whole lot of potential there, if only it had found its audience.
The issue with audience as well. It probably is too much of a radical departure to have worked so soon after Galactica wrapped. Still, even if a lot of BSG fans didn't come over I think in time Caprica could really have come into its own with its own dedicated fanbase larger than what it currently has, something I couldn't really say about Blood and Chrome.
Blood and Chrome is fun but kind of meh overall and I've no idea how they could've made it interesting in the long term. In my opinion there were nowhere near as many interesting plot hooks in that pilot compared to Caprica.
I like Caprica.
It was canceled before it could find it’s stride, just like SGU.
I understand that it didn’t produce viewing numbers to justify it’s cost, but if it was made today I bet it could have been saved by Fan Outreach; Online Petitions & Social Media.
I never though the writers of Caprica were swinging for the fences. It seemed more like they were trying to draw walks.
loved blood and chrome
Caprica was never really given a chance. They didn't even release the full first season, they strung it out, changed airing times, and in several regions didn't air the final few episodes.
I just can't imagine a new reboot doing as good a job as the 2003 edition. That latter version got so much right, and we're in a time when telling stories is difficult for a variety of political reasons both within the show and because of the participants' actions in the real world.
To be honest what I would do with the next series, is reimagine it all over again. Take elements from both of the first two series, but create something new and unique that paves its own path forward. I would lean really heavy into the mystical elements of the first show while grounding it a little bit like the second show.
Great video ... as always!
I loved the ending of the series! Best ending of all series! Compare it to Lost or others...
I really need to sit down with Caprica everything else I have seen
One reason Caprica failed is that there was no screen presence for the actors chosen, nor screen chemistry among them either.
It’s been awhile since I’ve looked into anything related to the new BSG show being made, but if Sam Esmail is still the show runner attached he already said the his new battle star galactic a show wouldn’t be a reboot. Quote “why mess with perfection?”. Personally I think focusing on a story about the exodus from Kobol would allow for a similar story in the same canon while giving new opportunities to try new ideas.
I realy liked Caprica.
Thy need to bring back this show and battlestar galactica back plz
I really liked Caprica and I feel it didn't succeed because most the Galactica fanbase just wanted more pew pew. I feel resentful about that. I was finding the whole thing fascinating, especially the digital resurrection and how they were exploring it.
If Caprica had more time the prequel would have worked. It wouldnt' have commanded the #s of viewers as BSG BUT I still would have stayed on. I am sure more would have stayed on had they removed a lot of the child drama.....could still have had a very compelling story with the actors, both younger and older. The origin story is what is what is missing and a good 6 or 8 seasons would have worked wonders to fill out the reboot version.
I really loved Caprica.
Keep your scam. I already have your telegram account blocked
You forgot the best BSG spin-off: the Portlandia episode “One Moore Episode”.
Also, whenever I see the old 70’s BSG special effects, all I see are the effects from the MST3K episode Space Mutiny.
I liked the idea of ai becoming sentient via a shortcut where an already concious mind is translated into a digital substrate, sparking a cascade of existential risk that we all know ends in genocide via nuclear holocaust. And that extinction level event is perpetrated at least in part by bits of this young girls mind.
Mutually exclusive does not mean what you think it means
There were a lot of great ideas in Caprica and I was disappointed when it ended prematurely. Given another season it could’ve been a truly great successor to BSG. Blood and Chrome was entertaining, and a welcome return to the more visceral elements of BSG, but the plot definitely had a video game vibe to it. It was easily the least cerebral of the three shows. I always saw the failures of the two sequel series as one leaning into the drama too much, and the other embracing action as its primary focus - two sides of the coin that BSG managed to balance perfectly.
I love the 2 lead girl character appearance in The Sarah Connor Chronicles.
Caprica had a good concept it ended up becoming more soap opera than scifi in the end. I do believe that had we gotten more out of the show we would find out that Zoe evolves and becomes the god of the Cylons.
I was in The Plan and 4 or 5 episodes of Caprica....yet never watched either. I was more a fan of the original BSG (late 70's).
Franchises like BSG remind me of the TMNT franchise.
Revisionism is sort of hard wired in to its DNA now. Each step forward (either a reboot or new gronds) just builds on the universe without always erasing or treading on what has come before.
2 generations now have there own "take" on what BSG is. I think much like TMNT you'll see several takes in the near/far future that won't necessarly hobble it as it has done with other more popular franchises.
Please review Star Trek Prodigy
Caprica gives you another cylon race.
A zoe human Cylon race
Nice video and I love all BSG both versions warts and all. As they say this is happened before and will happen again sort of a haunting statement in itself. So I feel someone will do another take of BSG and will I still be around to see it...
You know they said they didn’t want to do a young Adama origin story but having those young Adama scenes in Razor I think would have been great for it’s own show. Plus people would watch because of that Razar episode. Could have also used the same actor that played young Adama in that episode. Could later in the show do a small time jump and bring back Starbuck and Apollo and dive deeper into Zack. Could do 4 seasons first two seasons focus on young Adama and the War with the Cylons then at the end or start of season 3 do a couple year time jump bring back Starbuck and Apollo and introduce Zack and now you could show the events of Starbucks relationship with Zack. Then you can end that show tied up with Battlestar Galactica.
Crazy how shows would get canceled for pulling in 5 times the viewers shows get now
I loved Caprica. I'm aware of its flaws, and its VR is total BS … but I loved the show. I loved the world, the politics, the cult, Sister Clarice, the underworld and the "overworld" with the latter being the more brutal, the discrimination against and ethnic pride of the Tauron people… The final episode was pretty much "look, this is where this was all going!" And I wanted to go there! I took the first season as a bit of a slow burn building toward all of that. And unfortunately, it was extinguished.
And Blood and Chrome should've been made a series too! ALL THE BSG! (Except Galactica 1980, that doesn't exist.)
New reimagining, huh? Okay, so BSG is trying to become the American version of Japan's Gundam franchise. Here's the trick to that plan: Gundam series are developed in parallel, kind of like Fanal Fantasy video games. One Gundam series gets its one or two seasons as planned, and is then replaced with the next one. The novels and comics keep the previous series going. If the model kits and toys sell well enough then it might come back with a new miniseries or movie. If BSG is going to be a self-replicating franchise then they need to think that way, not in this "make a version until it faills down in some way, cancel it for a decade or two, then ignore the old one and try again" pattern.
I thought Caprica was OK, but, yes, seemed to be treading water for most of it's run. Dreary, even.
Not sure how “active” the development on that BSG reboot is considering the original writer left the project a couple of years ago and there’s been no news on it since.
I still don't think that controversial is an accurate descriptor for the end of the series. While the story meandered and drifted all over the place at the end of season 3 and 4, conversations I had with fellow local nerds usually ended up saying that they weren't happy that the ending was too ambiguous.
I partially blame George Lucas and his prequels for this, it was right around this time that everybody started demanding every piece of history or detail had to be fully fleshed out and answered, even if it was just meant to be a bit of background flavor history for the setting.
Personally I like an ending with a little bit of ambiguity, my imagination is always going to create better backstory than anyting a corporate media arm will come up with.
Honestly "The Plan" works better as an extended "Season 4 Episode 15.5". On its own it's kind of a nothing burger.
Caprica was good and had incredible potential had they been able to play out everything they showed in the last episode where they tried to tie it all up in 5 min, BUT at times it was ponderously slow and making audiences wait 6 months to see the next half of the season was a ridiculous thing to do.
so say we all!
Great work as always!
Now do Lost :)
So, do you think or hope that Galactica goes through the Hasbro Treatment? Outside of a few ideas, they do a reimaging of the concept.
The Hasbro Treatment refers to the Transformers/Beast Wars and My Little Pony Generation Series. Some are good, but most are excellent. Especially the Transformers.
Thanks for this retrospective! Have you watched 'For All Mankind', also by R.D. Moore? I absolutely love this series and it would be interesting to know your opinion.
Caprica was a great series. I'm still angry that the franchise REFUSED to show the last three episodes outside of Canada and blamed the AMERICAN audience for it's cancellation. The end of Sy-Fy channel.
I tried watching Caprica and there were parts of it that I really liked, but I just didn’t find myself keeping up with it.
I was blown away by Season 1 of BSG (best written sci-fi on the small screen) and yet I never watched Caprica. Why? Because I see no reason to visit a world that I know will be destroyed anyway.
Showing how it all started could have worked as flashbacks throughout the second half of BSG (like they did with the Final Five). If written well it could have elevated seasons 3 and 4 from the mediocreness.
Arguably the best Sci-Fi show of all-time with the worst ending ever seen. Everything that came after was both artificially bolstered by how damn good the series was and at the same time loaded down with the weight of that incredibly bad ending. I remain convinced that the original plan was for Starbuck to be the daughter of the Cylon Daniel, but when it got figured out by fans they decided to the dreaded 'diverting expectations' things and take a hard left turn with what was clearly an unfinished idea which suffered even more in its execution.
Caprica would have worked better if it were not tied to BSG at all.
Always wish they focused more on the sci-fi element and less the metaphysical. Still enjoyed Caprica and it was nice seeing Eric Stoltz one more time. Blood and Chrime dying on the vine sucks as I feel it had potential. The plan was meh. It was trying to be a bit philosophical and pretentious. Really all I wanted was more ship pron.
One thing I feel they dropped the ball on was the folks they left behind at the colonies. The cylons weren’t eradicated from that area and I doubt there couldn’t be possible pockets of other survivors as the lore established other habitable planets like in Blood and Chrome. I was also curious about the planet they left Xenia on and what went down and how they tied into it all.
I CAME FOR CAPRICA CONTENT AND I WILL POST CAPRICA CONTENT
CAPRICA CAPRICA CAPRICA
Caprica was superb. Was as bad as when SGU got cancelled early
I liked the final episode.
Caprica had huge potential to show the birth of the cylon race. Unfortunately, the pace and backdrop left a lot to be desired. It is a shame it never had a chance to develop the plot so the audience had a better idea of where it was going...and also a shame that the plot itself demanded a attention to detail in the telling of how it all began. While I try to be patient with sci-fi, giving it a fair chance as I did, I could not help but be annoyed at the "teenage angst" story line and extending that into the cult...to me, those characters should have been adult...university age at minimum, not high school age...
There were aspects of the story that were going well...the Grayson/Adama story line felt a bit stretched out. I think they could have put a lot more of that story line into season 1, and have an adult daughter take on the role of producing the first AI and dad knew all about it, helping her...toss in the terrorist train explosion and dear old dad is left with naught but the AI entity that was constructed in the virtual world. Have ties between the daughter and the "One True God" OTG cult, they learned of her research and sought to exploit it. Dad keeps daughter AI alive and eventually develops a body for her through military contracts instead of where it went in the series...not sure if I cared for the criminal aspect of where Grayson went with Adama. Maybe keep aspects of the animosity of the different worlds towards the others and build on that. Keep the relationship above board between the two families, not necessarily connected in such a way either. Iron Man 2's backdrop of connecting the characters through sins of the past for example. Impersonal, yet....
Its a difficult thing to convey, but it felt like the writers were writing themselves into corners with some of the story lines, making it too complex with too many issues going on. Was it a drama? Or was it a sci-fi? Was it a drama about social constructs? Or was it Sci-fi? Was it about teenage kids? Or was it about teenage cultists who hated their parents and wanted to live forever? Was it about a wife who couldn't handle life after her daugher was lost? And too much of the series itself focused on those few characters, nothing compared to the opening cast of BSG...constrained, there were openings for contradictory behaviour later on. All that has happened before, nobody wants it to happen again. Really. Stargate began showing this around season 5. It bloomed straight out of its spinoffs, SG Universe was the manifestation of lousy writing getting stuck into its own trap, Atlantis barely justified beyond "we have this contract to produce crap" thing going on...so many plot holes in the first season that never did have decent follow up. For lack of anything else to watch on TV when that series was going...I'd not have watched it. A gross insult to SG1 and the legacy that series brought to sci-fi. When you start rooting for the bad dudes...the Wraith...meh.
I would like to see Caprica revived...same base premise of AI being developed to sentience and used by religious nutjobs as a means to immortality and the OTG linked to BSG's Caprica Six...keep the story itself simple and more importantly, to culminate to a major war that gives rise to Galactica's aversion to networked computers. Start there and work backwards...fill in the gaps with stuff that makes sense, that works to that end goal. Not unlike how BSG was envisioned...all of this has happened before, all of this will happen again. Earth as we know it now, a part of that cycle. They worked backwards from there, and tossed in the mythology familiar to the audience. And paced it well...no "boring" bits...no filler crap. Caprica had filler crap up the wazoo...and lost the audience because the core story itself got lost in all that superfluous and overcomplicated drama that would fit in well in any other story, just not this one.
If only Terminator:The Sarah Conner Chronicles faired so well. Despite a tight story and well executed, the studio execs axed that series before it had a chance...in favour of a crap series that was also poorly written dredge...Dollhouse. Cater to the lowest common denominator...sexual exploitation.
I honestly didn’t like Caprica at first until I came across someone at work who was really into Caprica. And when we talked it turned out he loved it for the exact same reasons I hated it. And he didn’t like the parts that I semi-liked about the series.
The Plan was kinda weak because it didn't recontextualize the narrative enough to sell me on it
Caprica should've been a miniseries a nice tight 6-8 episode run, it was hamstrung by being so stretched out because the good stuff is pretty good
Blood and Chrome wasn't bad but I felt the lead was kinda weak and I wish they used the guy from Razor instead
The post-BSG era showed how little legs that franchise had and the bankrupt ideas it couldn't make work. Caprica was plagued by two unfixable flaws. 1: It was a prequel to a franchise where we knew everything that was going to happen. 2: It tried to create a story about religious conflict despite already proving one of those religions was "correct". I watched Caprica and found it utterly boring. I knew after watching it that BSG would not come back from this. It's their Battlestar 1980. Blood & Chrome had the same problem.