Caprica

This Syfy show ended last week with a mini-marathon of its final five episodes.  Seems like the network decided to quickly dump the last episodes it still had in the can not to upset the fans, but the series was doomed.  In fact, while there had even been talk of Caprica getting picked up for a second season, that turned out not to be the case.

I had previously posted about this show and re-reading what I wrote, I agree with every point I had made, although it’s now clear why the season finale felt lackluster: it wasn’t a season finale after all.

In fact, Syfy aired this show in the most bizarre fashion.  It first released the 2 hour pilot on DVD in April 2009.  Then in the fall of 09 it released it free on the Internet.  It finally aired it in January 2010 when the series officially began.  From that point on it played almost continuously until July 2010 when it went off the air with what I thought was the season 1 finale, scheduled to return in January 2011.

However, in October 2010, Syfy began airing what I thought was season 2 but turned out to be 11 unaired episodes of season 1.  This was supposed to continue till the season 1 finale, at which point Caprica would have gone on break until season 2 was to premiere, sometime in fall 2011 or spring 2012.  At this time, the buzz also began about a second Battlestar Galactica spin off (Blood & Chrome) that would have joined Caprica on the air.

Suddenly, after only 6 episodes, in November 2010 Syfy stopped airing Caprica until last week’s 5 episode marathon and the news that the series would not come back.  Does your head spin yet?

Apparently Caprica’s audience, unimpressive to begin with, kept shrinking, but isn’t the crazy schedule Syfy adopted partly to blame?  I would most certainly make that argument.

Am I disappointed that the show is over?  Yes and no.  Caprica was never particularly exciting, but it was getting better towards the end.  In fact, the last 5 episodes showed quite a bit of promise, so I’m disappointed that it wasn’t given the chance to grow.  At the same time, despite the curiosity about how the Cylons came to be and what determined some of the main themes of the phenomenal Battlestar Galactica (like the one vs. many gods), Caprica was never fully engrossing and suffered from a certain level of disjointedness.

As I wrote in my previous post, the acting was very good, the scripts fairly well developed, the directing good, and the visual effects great.  Ultimately, I guess it just never had that magical ingredient that makes a show a fan favorite, and Syfy’s on-again, off-again scheduling only made matters worse.

Grade: 7