Caprica & SyFy

I am a major TV junkie, and I always have to laugh when people complain there is nothing on TV to watch because if my DVR could talk, I think it would probably scream at me and jump out the window.  I won't say that all of the show I watch are especially thought provoking, but I am happy to say that I have shied away from any of the "reality" shows on VH1 and MTV, and that for the most part, I tend towards quality shows with healthy dose of guilty pleasures (Gossip Girl) and shows I can't seem to quit even though they rarely reach the heights of their earlier seasons (Grey's Anatomy).

When the Sci-Fi Channel switched it's name to SyFy, a lot of people, including me, thought it was a pretty preposterous and annoying name.  The impetus was that they wanted to re-brand themselves to broaden their appeal.  “What we love about this is we hopefully get the best of both worlds,” Dave How, President of SyFy said. “We’ll get the heritage and the track record of success, and we’ll build off of that to build a broader, more open and accessible and relatable and human-friendly brand.”  Ok....

The real change was strategic.  They couldn't trademark "Sci-Fi."  So, by going with SyFy, they get to have their cake and sell a shirt, too.  Now, being a Science Fiction fan, I've always watched a few shows on the channel, the top being, of course, Battlestar Galactica, which I will still call one of the, if not the, best television show of the last 10 years.  I also enjoyed Eureka, which is just a quirky little show that is more police procedural (loosely) in a town that is totally science fiction.  I figured that Eureka was going to be more of what SyFy was going to go for, but I'm happy to say that outside of Warehouse 13, which is good but a blatant X-Files rip off, I've been totally surprised with the quality of their main offerings: Stargate Universe and Caprica.   I'll talk more about SGU when it comes back on later in the year.  I want to focus on Caprica, which is a prequel to Battlestar Galactica (BSG), which may not ever reach the heights of the original, but it certainly is one of the most humanistic, theology driven, science fictions shows I've ever seen.

While BSG veered far from the original show, it still had some basic holdovers (colonies destroyed, looking for Earth, etc.) so that they could still call it Battlestar Galactica.  I have honestly not seen the original in years.  So, I cannot say how much ancestry of the characters was built in, but I think that is where Caprica dodges a bullet because they don't have some uber-nerd saying, "That is not *snort* how it was in the original!"  You do have the Adama family (a young William Adama will go on to be Commander Adama in BSG), but outside of the actual Cylons, the rest can be the imagination of the writers.

And what an imagination they have!  From the pseudo 1950's style setting to a pretty strong conversation about morality in a technologically rich world, this is one of the few shows that feels totally at ease from the start with the world it has created.  The big difference from BSG and what I ultimately think will be its downfall, is that that this is much more of a humanistic style science fiction soap opera.  I highly doubt there will be any big space battles, unless towards the end of the series we begin to see the First Cylon War, and for the most part, that sort of deep thinking over KILL KILL action is going to scare away the average fan boy.  No, Caprica is much more concerned about the ethnic, religious, and moral questions of a civilization in decline.  I'm not even bringing up some of the awesome character twists like the Sam Adama, a gangster of sorts, who happens to be gay and no one bats an eye, and Sister Clarice who is in a polygamous marriage where it appears everyone is pretty free sexually.  When you add in the idea of at what point does artificial intelligence become simply "intelligence," Caprica is quickly becoming one of the more thought provoking shows on television. 

Of course, the bottom line is ratings, and it is not doing incredibly well.  Of course, it is also on a Friday night at 9pm.  If DVD sales are good, there is a possibility that it will survive past it's first season, but I'm not getting my hopes up.  Also, I'm just sure how long they can sustain the storyline without it being too contrived.  There is certainly an ending of the current story arc, but I'm not sure where they go from there.  The good news is that even if it only survives a season, it will have posited some very interesting thoughts out into the ether.  Maybe in 25 years, an aspiring producer will re-create it like BSG?