Caprica: Where No Battlestar Galactica Has Gone Before
Check out the Caprica clips at AWNtv!
First the wars: now the social and political events that caused them.
Which is why the genesis of the Cylons is so ripe for exploration in Caprica, the prequel to the highly-acclaimed Battlestar Galactica, premiering tonight on Syfy (9/8c). However, last spring we got a sneak peek when an extended version of the pilot bowed exclusively on DVD from Universal Home Ent. Tonight's series premiere, though, offers more.
But it's very clear that Caprica is no BSG. Despite the great acclaim and terrific production values, there were creative and commercial demands placed on the prequel, so creator Ron Moore made sure that Caprica offered something very different.
"Galactica was unique in that it was a very demanding show for television -- you really had to watch it carefully," explains Gary Hutzel, the visual effects supervisor now overseeing Caprica. "And I think what that meant was that a lot of the stories didn't reach a real wide audience. We had a consistent audience; we had a very dedicated audience. I think the producers felt that it didn't get a wide enough audience: it was great drama; it was a fascinating story. It could've had a wider audience had it not been so relentlessly depressing."
Caprica takes place nearly 60 years before the two robotic Cylon wars and the fall of the 12 colonies, including Caprica. But now there is peace yet the underlying issues that will eventually lead to the annihilation of humankind (a culture of excess, technology, terrorism, racism) begin in this series. One of those big issues is the development of artificial intelligence. The first version of the Cylons created is called the U-87, which actually looks like a more primitive Cylon from the original Battlestar 1978 series. It's created through the investment of wealthy technologist Daniel Graystone (Eric Stolz), who is obsessed with the idea of reincarnating his newly-deceased 14-year-old daughter Zoe (Alessandra Toressani) as a cyborg. The story reveals how, before her death, the young girl, who was also quite brilliant, managed to download "rudimentary elements of her personality and DNA into the machine," forging this astounding hybrid that elicits all sorts of moral and ethical quandaries.
Now that Hutzel is well into the series, he says it's rapidly evolved with heightened use of virtual environments as an interactive escape. "The show is interesting in that it's changed its context quite a bit before we started. In other words, the original premise of Caprica was to explore international relations through the science-fiction framework of a series of planets that represent widely different ethnic groups. As the show moved ahead, there were more and more requests to introduce more of a science-fiction element to that and push it into a slightly more fanciful mode, so we've been accommodating that.
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Kurv Studios, Spin Quad and 3D Garage.
I am taking a class on Lightwave and need help while working on the program at home is there anything available? I have not been able to get this far on your site. I am also running the demo program at this time while at home. All of the companies that sell the program to college students are waiting for the program to become available for shipping.
... not to pay money to the middle man but directly to the artists. All companies do need to make profit which of course need to be added to the price tag. Price tag of outside company = profit + fixed costs + paychecks to the artists. Price tag of the inhouse team = fixed costs + paychecks to the artists?
It sounds by the last comments made, that the producers found a small group of highly talented artists under one roof to do it on the cheap. They've obviously succeeded- I've watched the show, and I must give kudos, because not only is the story becoming greater with each episode, but the visuals are equally great.
Doing previz for a fraction of 30,000$...so they're doing it for what - 2 or 3 thousand instead?
...sounds like a group of artists taking it up the backside, to keep the work flowing....which these days is just about right, I guess.
I can't get past the fact that I'm expected to believe William Adama was 68 - 69 in Battlestar Galactica (after the Cylons attacked). Olmos is what? 60? And young William Adama has brown eyes, not blue. Inconsistencies like that drive me nuts.
I also felt a total disconnect with the teens in this show. Why are teens always painted as confused, lost or depressed? And these teens were completely off the rails. Sex orgies, ritual sacrifice?? That's pushing it.
I didn't find BSG depressing at all, I found it inspiring from the minute the miniseries aired. Caprica, on the other hand, I found completely depressing. I'll tune in next Friday to see if things improve.
Having been a BSG addict from start to end, I really look forward to the Caprica series to kick off. The first episode looked promising, but it has a lot to live up to, if it is to match or just coat-tail BSG, which was the best TV show ever produced.
During BSG, there were rumours of cancellation... but fortunately that didn't happen. Too many shows are discontinued after a season or two... leaving the story untold. Such things should not be allowed to take place without legal action against the networks... them having promised a story, get people hooked, then they just walk away, having stolen people's time.
Anyways, I hope the Caprica story will be told for many seasons to come, or even just a couple of seasons, then other stories, from some of the other planets could be told.... the material only has the limits of the story writers... let's hope they are not raised up in closed boxes.
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