I liked BG going all the way back to the original (Spagetti-western  in space at best, lol). Not sure the chronology would have mattered; afterall Star Wars was taken out of sequence with pretty good results.

There was no reason they could not have quickened the pace of Caprica a bit and/or at least kept the continuity going without so many breaks in the weekly showings; hard to build an audience if you can't count on it being there every week for an extended period. I liked Caprica, maybe more than BG, but it felt like pulling teeth to find when the next episode would air before they shut it down.

So, I think it more a combination of the faster pace for BG and the better treatment in building the audience which made the difference more than the order of presentation. Just my opinion. Take care. Vern

R A Keen wrote:

'Twas the Beast of False Expectation that killed Beauty. We wanted answers, solid, to the point, ASAP, as to how the "Toasters" came into being and prominence, how and why they rebelled. The slower route through the various facets and evolution of Caprican society itself, as the technology of robots evolved toward intelligence and the "skins", felt far too tortuous to the avid fan and thus precipitated their abandonement of the series.

You nailed it. 

I've watched the re-imagined series a couple times now (the only tv show I know of besides sitcoms like Seinfeld) that I could even be bothered to see more than once and I've also watched Caprica twice over, both of which have their own merits.

It truely twas the Beast of Falso Expectations that killed the beauty.  But that's what happens when a show ends on a 'high note', people still want/expect more of the same from a prequel/sequel, and when they don't get it the tune out.  The first several episodes attracted lots of viewers, but then that dropped off dramatically when word got out it wasn't really anything like the parent show.   

Apparently a new show is in the works that will focus on a young William Adama in the early days of the 1st cylon war, or so wikipedia says, which may prove more successful viewership wise than Caprica if it's handled well.

The problem any show in the same Universe will have is trying to match up with the overwhelmingly complex plot that wa (according to the show's writers) pretty much made up as they went along (which is why there are several plot holes - per episode ;0 )

And by the way, the robots didn't evolve into 'skins', they were given the technology by the 'final five' as part of a deal to end the 1st cylon war! (Wow, after saying that I do sound like a complete nerd!)

vern wrote:

...I liked Caprica, maybe more than BG, but it felt like pulling teeth to find when the next episode would air before they shut it down.

So, I think it more a combination of the faster pace for BG and the better treatment in building the audience which made the difference more than the order of presentation. Just my opinion. Take care. Vern

Good points - it WAS difficult to follow the broadcast schedule of the next episode that had such large gaps between them in the series. The viewing public's attention span is short and other shows will move in to fill the void. I wound up viewing them on my laptop.

Caprica was good, very good, if "slow" in the sense that it wasn't one desperate battle after the next simply to survive, which the characters on BG often faced. That said, both shows were non-standard SF in many ways:  Fully developed characters, many quite flawed though counted among the good guys, and saving qualities portrayed among the bad guys, political/social groups, each battling for the good of the community, human and cylon, as they saw it, decisions with no good outcomes but only the lesser of two evils and the community living with the consequences, the individuals dealing personally with them, real psychological tension all in all against a background of real hopelessness, denied and/or hidden away.

No wonder they all drank so much. Oy!

Yep, Lots of depth and texture not normally found in the genre. IMHO, I don't think a better sci-fi series has ever been produced.
 

Kydd Dustyn wrote:

I can't help, Bob, as I refused to watch the new BG (with Starbuck being a WOMAN!) and never saw Caprica. I kind of liked the tin-can Cylons with the ping-pong eyes and synthesizer voices.

Shame on you, Kydd!   Objecting to a switch to a dynamic, strong - tough as nails, also her weakness - an all too humanly flawed female version of a plastic male, goodie-two-shoes character from the older series, really a poor rip-off of Star Trek??? Rent the first season of BG and you'll never, never regret having done so.

I kid you not.

MattyZink wrote:

I've watched the re-imagined series a couple times now (the only tv show I know of besides sitcoms like Seinfeld) that I could even be bothered to see more than once and I've also watched Caprica twice over, both of which have their own merits.

It truely twas the Beast of Falso Expectations that killed the beauty...Apparently a new show is in the works that will focus on a young William Adama in the early days of the 1st cylon war, or so wikipedia says, which may prove more successful viewership wise than Caprica if it's handled well.

The problem any show in the same Universe will have is trying to match up with the overwhelmingly complex plot that wa (according to the show's writers) pretty much made up as they went along (which is why there are several plot holes - per episode ;0 )

And by the way, the robots didn't evolve into 'skins', they were given the technology by the 'final five' as part of a deal to end the 1st cylon war! (Wow, after saying that I do sound like a complete nerd!)

Not only handled well but better managed by the broadcast executives in terms of scheduling the series so they keep a hard earned viewing audience!

Did you sort of pick up in Caprica that Dad intended to come up with a less Toaster and more human like version of a cylon to accommodate his daughter's virtual psyche? And now that you mention it, I do recall the "final five" being mentioned as having brokered such a deal BUT the final five were already skins, and someone had to have invented/evolved the bodies to "house" the cylon virtual psyches before any deal could be made. No?

Oh, yes indeed, we do sound like such nerds. Big Bang move over...

rita aguilar wrote:

Caprica was an okay series, but man I just really like the space ships. I think that's why I took to Battlestar Galactica more -- it wasn't just the intrigue, it was the intrigue _and_ all the space ships.  Oh, and Adama.  I almost had a heart attack when he got shot at the end of season one.  I couldn't imagine the series without him.  There wasn't a character in Caprica that really captured my interest in the same way that Adama did in Battlestar Galactica.

Caprica -- at least the first episodes that I saw -- just had intrigue and incipient cyborgs.  And virtual realities, which is a topic I can rarely sink my teeth into.  And the characters just weren't nearly as engaging for me.  It was kind of an interesting set-up, story-wise, but it just didn't pull me in.

Oh, how I love spaceships too, especially if the writers portray them as such vehicles would really behave/maneuver in a space battle - not in the least like the Star Wars fighters, which maneuvered like WWII fighters, impossible in the near vacuum of space.

True, Adama was an intense and intriguing character among an ensemble cast of interesting characters. Caprica had a good cast, solid actors but no one character to fill Adama's boots, though the writers did have the opportunity to create one in Daddy Greystone.  Instead, they turned him into an amoral character with minimal backbone. Adama, for all his faults, had a spine and he was loyal to the point of death to his friends.

Anyway, I agree with you in one sense - we expected the writers to jump immediately into the deep end of the pool, both feet, life preserver be damned, to answer just what were and how did the whole political, social and technological threads evolve to create the world that lead to the human-cylon confrontation and ultimately to BG.

Why, such expectations? BECAUSE BG came first in the series.

Oh, well. I hope MattyZink is correct and a new series is being planned - with lots of spaceships, cyborgs, intrigue, flawed good guys, etc., etc., etc.

Write well and prosper, one and all,

Bob Keenan

Last edited by R A Keen (04-09-2011 16:00:07)

TirzahLaughs wrote:

Caprica was slow and every time I'd see a show and start to watch it, they'd move the show to another channel or there would be a big gap between new shows.  Finally I just gave up.

This is one of the frustrations I felt when watching both shows,

I'm especially not a big fan of shows when they take a huge break in the middle of the season (The whole 'season 2.5' thing).

MattyZink wrote:

R A Keen wrote:

MattyZink wrote:

...The problem any show in the same Universe will have is trying to match up with the overwhelmingly complex plot that wa (according to the show's writers) pretty much made up as they went along (which is why there are several plot holes - per episode ;0 )

And by the way, the robots didn't evolve into 'skins', they were given the technology by the 'final five' as part of a deal to end the 1st cylon war! (Wow, after saying that I do sound like a complete nerd!)

Did you sort of pick up in Caprica that Dad intended to come up with a less Toaster and more human like version of a cylon to accommodate his daughter's virtual psyche?

I did pick up Dad's intention to come up with a more human skin-job kind of robot to house his daughters consciousness, however that wouldn't really fit with what they explicity told us in the show...So the technology for cylon skin-jobs like the one that Daniel wanted to make in Caprica had to have already existed?  I guess?  I'm so confused.   The 1st cylon war didn't take place too long before Battlestar Galactica, and Caprica didn't take place that long before the 1st cylon war; there's no time for Greystone's technology to reach Kobol since the ruins were hundred's of years old.  Perhaps it has something to do with the 'this has all happened before..' line.

Either way, the new show is called "Blood & Chrome", you can find some basic info here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlestar … %26_Chrome

Cheers,
Matty

Oy

Bring on the new show! Logic be damned, we're dealing with spec-fic here, just so long as it is as compelling as BG, or even Caprica!

Write well and prosper,

Bob

matt wrote:

Am I the only one who thought Caprica was magnificent? No wonder it didn't last. What a shame. I guess I'm totally out of synch with the rest of the sci-fi world.

matt

Not at all. As noted in earlier post, the problem was the way they kept the audience guessing as to when it would air the next original episode. Not exactly conducive to building a loyal fan base. I enjoyed the episodes I could actually catch very much and kept looking for more to no avail. Cancellation has almost nothing to do with the quality of the show, more to do with whether the network powers that be got a case of scabies or not, lol. Take care. Vern

Alethearia Moon wrote:

Well, I'm the one crazy person that actually loved the new BG despite already loving the original.

Well, not really...as stated in my earlier post - way back in April of last year - on this thread. But we can be crazy together. Take care. Vern