Most of the big sets for the year were already released, and more than a few have probably already found their way under the tree. For those last minute shoppers though, there are a few nice sets coming out right before Christmas. Chief among those is Caprica. Syfy canceled the show, and pulled it from the schedule, meaning that the set boasts unseen episodes. Joining Caprica, there are new releases for Futurama and Family Guy, as well as the latest volume of Secret Life. My pick of the week is The Virginian, with a caveat. It’s a great show, and a cool set, but it’s a little pricey. Put it on the list and wait for some Amazon deal-of-the-day shenanigans.
Clacked by Brett Love 
on Dec 21, 2010 @ 14:00 EST5EDT
Syfy really seem to have lost a lot of their business sense when it comes to Caprica. They release the pilot almost a year before the series launches, then act surprised when nobody watches the season premiere episode. The season goes into a hiatus half way through, and Syfy announce that the other half will air, next year. Then after much complaining from fans, they bring the second half forward, but then decide because the live viewing numbers aren’t good enough (although they won’t release the DVR numbers because added together, they probably represent a respectable viewing number) they decide to cancel the series and pull the show off air, and show the final five episodes some time in early 2011. But then Caprica is released on dvd (will there be a blu ray version?) which seemingly includes the final five episodes yet to be aired. No doubt they’ll then act surprised when fans don’t tune in to watch the final five episodes on live tv. Somebody needs to be fired, or have their head screwed on properly. The way that Syfy and the producers have gone about this is a joke. Please, Syfy, David Eick, et al, learn from your mistakes, and don’t repeat them when it comes to BSG: Blood and Chrome. You have in the BSG universe something amazing, something that will last for decades, even longer, something that requires you to not simply think in the short term. Look at Blade Runner. It didn’t do well at the cinema when it was first released, but it’s a film that over 30 years, has persisted as a classic of both film as a medium, and science fiction as a genre, with an influence that has far outstretched other films that might have initially made a larger splash at the box office.
Caprica was just boring with unlikeable charcters.
That simple.
I’m actually agreeing with Oreo! ;-) I was intrigued by Caprica’s pilot, but there was nothing after that to keep me watching.
“Caprica was just boring with unlikeable characters [sic].”
Ha! I feel similarly with regard to another cancelled show that will be burned off in the spring.
As to Caprica, the final five finally kicked it into gear. Certain characters received their long-awaited comeuppance, and I was fully satisfied with the coda. Even the finale of Willy Adama’s season 1 storyline didn’t annoy.
As to the DVR numbers, we all know that the Live+SD figures were abysmal, and that the Live+7 figures are meaningless for the purposes of network renewal, right? And that it was an exceedingly expensive show with a deteriorating viewer base?
The really sad part is how much the franchise is hurt. I hope SGU can go elsewhere.
https://airlockalpha.com/node/8129
Don’t get me wrong. There were also huge problems in the beginning: the slow place; the kid that played young William Adama was terrible; the plot seemed to be swimming in circles with characters endlessly talking about getting to Geminon but constantly delaying it; without human cylons, there was no tension or sense of paranoia about who was human and who was cylon; it was a huge mistake to try and distance Caprica from BSG so much, and it could have been solved easily if cylon production had moved into space on board the newly built “Battlestar Caprica”; and perhaps the thing that really got me was Alessandra Torressani. We were asked to believe that a spoiled, entitled, teen brat was also a master genius who invented the cylons when she was five, which her Dad stole from her, and that she invented v-world sentient avatars, which again her Dad stole from her. What annoys me about this is that it creates a false sense of empowerment within an otherwise realist approach. It’s basically Jane Espenson’s magic wand that empowers the young woman (the writer’s ego), while bypassing the processes that in reality 99.9% of people have to go through ie. learning from the knowledge and experience of others, whether at work or college. Even those people who we call geniuses, like Einstein or Hawking, went through the system of learning from others. But characters like Zoe are presented as geniuses out of the box. If you’re going to have a character like that, the performance needs to be something really special, a difficult one to pull off. I think maybe if Summer Glau had played Zoe, and not a schoolgirl, but a college undergraduate perhaps. She captured that sense of being a socially awkward genius perfectly in Dollhouse, and likewise was amazing as the terminator in the Sarah Connor Chronicles.
Zoe was portrayed as a genius to be sure, but remember when her angel appeared to her? She was given some sort of divine spark for her endeavors.
All the criticisms have merit, but even so, I would have liked to have had more of this series.
Here’s hoping Blood and Chrome will be great!
I agree. Despite its flaws, I wanted it to continue. I hope that most of the actors / characters will be brought forward into BSG: Blood and Chrome. If the concept art for BSG: BC is anything to go by, the cylons were experimenting with terminator-style cyborgs before moving onto synthetic DNA cylons, which would be an amazing way of bringing back the paranoia and tension between who is human and who is machine.
Too bad about Caprica. It was just starting to heat up.