Will Smith’s ‘MIB3′ Beats … 
Cannes Podcast: Pete Hammond On ‘Lawless’, … 
Over-Achievers Of This Year’s Upfront 
Aussie Pay-TV Shakeup Impacts Hollywood 
USA: ‘Rebounding’ & ‘Modern … 
Interview: Philip Kaufman At Cannes With ‘Hemingway … 
R.I.P. Television Mogul Lee Rich 
Cannes Biz Shines Despite Wind & Rain 
Full 2011-2012 TV Season Series Rankings 
2011-12 Season Network Rankings: Fox Still On Top But Down, … 
HLN Set To Air Daytime Emmy Awards 
Grant Bowler Cast As Richard Burton Opposite Lindsay Lohan … 
UPDATE: Dish Network And Broadcasters Ask Courts To Decide … 
Cannes Surprise Screening: Change Of Plans On Juan Antonio … 
Kevin Hart In Talks To Join Kevin James In ‘Valet … 
Anthony Hopkins Up For ‘Red 2′ Villain; Can … 
Cannes Conflicted Over ‘The Paperboy’ As … 
RATINGS RAT RACE: ‘American Idol’ Posts … 
Ghost Of 2004 Hovers Over L.A. Screenings As Int’l … 
On The Road To Awards Season? Kerouac Book Finally Makes It … 
Michael Bay’s Name Pushed Paramount To Settle Injured … 
It’s over for Syfy’s Battlestar Galactica prequel Caprica. The cable network said today that it will be pulling the show off the schedule effective immediately. The final five episodes of the sci-fi saga will air in the first quarter of 2011 and will mark the end of the series’ one-season run. “We appreciate all the support that fans have shown for Caprica and are very proud of the producers, cast, writers and the rest of the amazing team that has been committed to this fine series,” said Mark Stern, Syfy’s EVP of original programming. “Unfortunately, despite its obvious quality, ‘Caprica’ has not been able to build the audience necessary to justify a second season.” After a soft start with the first part of its freshman season at the beginning of the year, Caprica returned with the second half of the season earlier this month to disappointing 889,000 viewers and a 0.4 rating with adults 18-49. That was down from where it ended in the spring, with the series falling even further in the ratings since, raising speculation about pending cancellation. But Despite Caprica’s cancellation, the Battlestar Galactica legacy will live on at Syfy, at least for now. The cable network just greenlighted a two-hour pilot for Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome, about the young years of Ensign William Adama, which hails from Battlestar Galactica exec producer David Eick.
TV Editor Nellie Andreeva - tip her here.
Loading ...
Maybe if SciFi, sorry just can’t make myself type that insipid excuse for a new network name, stopped spending all of their time coming up with insipid new things to call themselves all the while turning themselves into the Wrestling Channel (or should that be Wrystlyng Chynnyl?), they might start winning back fans. I enjoyed the first half of Caprica, but then they put yet more wrestling in its place and moved Caprica to a night where I already have shows I’ve been watching for some time and expect me to happily follow. They need to get the people who think that mindless, soap opraish staged sports belong on a network for people who want to watch good science fiction and fantasy out the door and hire some people who have some knowledge and understanding of the genres their network is supposed to cover.
I think Sci Fi financial model can be blamed as well. This splitting of seasons – with way too much time between them – causes the casual viewer to find something else. The devoted will wait, as they always do. But viewers easily cowed onto watching game/reality shows, and prediticable franchises like CSI, will always disappoint.
R.I.P. Caprica. You never had a chance. I am sorely disappointed and surely won’t be watching SyFy again.
after watching the whole of BSG, and given the way the story concluded, Caprica sounded really redundant. That’s why i and i guess many more bsg fans didnt turn out in the same numbers as they did for its predecessor.
I didn’t even know it was back on till I saw this… Promo would have been nice, SyFy!
This is horrible!
A show with such a talented production company, writing team, effects team, actors, etc. Commercial capitalism kills artistic life once again. The future will be brazenly be brutal for “Blood & Chrome” if it ever gets picked up as a series. Why not skip the ‘not-so-hidden’ back door pilot and go straight to the BIG SCREEN?!
I find it incomprehensible how a show with such wickedly intelligent, manipulative, flawed and struggling characters could be thought of as “boring”. Yes, it was a show about characters interacting with other characters, but that’s what made Caprica so f’ing great. It had phenomenal writing, acting, pacing and did a truly brilliant job of creating a world so strongly evocative of our own that when a dissimilarity popped up it was often genuinely shocking.
Unfortunately, I think the new BSG spinoff sounds pretty terrible, largely because *we’ve already seen that show* — and it was titled BSG. There are only so many space battles with robots you can have before they become indistinguishable from one another (talk about dull). To make Blood & Chrome interesting dramatically, they’d first need to show us the ‘verse pre-Cylons and then detail what impact the Cylon revolt had on Colonial culture.
Which, oh yeah! Was exactly what Caprica was doing.
I’m really, really disappointed by this news. Let’s face it: with few exceptions, Syfy is a wasteland of crap. And now that Caprica is gone, I suppose the channel executives will find even more time to push their inane (and maddeningly nonsensical) slogan and STD-inducing original movies. I can barely imagine a greater travesty.
Nigh perfect post.
Last season rocked but this one, not so much.
I was just not getting this show and was slowly losing interest. The Graystones were becoming one huge yawn fest – if they were trying to make you hate Daniel Graystone, it worked. If they were trying to portray the Adama’s as ruthless thugs – bingo!
I think it was beginning to lose sight of where and what this all meant – sure, we had the robot but um… yeah, that was pretty much it. Still sucks tho because I do believe there’s still a story to tell.
Again, there has only been one season of the show. But to address your criticisms…
The second half of season one actually had Amanda becoming something more than a withered husk of a woman, controlled by her inadequacies, Daniel confronting the reasons he has ended up where he is, Adama (and the entire Tauron storyline) actually having something interesting to add to the plot, Clarice on both a pedestal and on the precipice, and who knows where the Zoe plot was heading (I assume we’ll find out). Yeah, it was definitely losing sight of where it was and what it meant… OR maybe it was just really beginning to explore those things.
Yeah, I totally agree with there about Amanda. She was getting out of her shell and seemingly slowly getting over all the past tragedies – she was willing to spy on Clarice and that surprised me.
I didn’t see Daniel confronting anything – the scenes of him black mailing his colleges, I found really disturbing. The widow the next day pounding on his car as he ordered his driver to drive on… that’s what i meant about Daniel – I was seriously starting to dislike him and was failing to see where this was going – other than he was driven to badly to do anything to get his precious company back.
As for it just starting to get where the story actually was, in this day and age and especially with the Sci Fi channel, series can’t afford to give too much back story without any real meat and potatoes or they’re over fast. Sucks but that’s Sci Fi’s history – I’m still bitter over Farscape. :p
The only plot that had be curious and willing to follow the series was Zoe and what Tamara both had in common – what happens/happened to them.
DirecTV!!! We need you!!
Oh, this is so infuriating! Those who say it was boring must’ve been watching a different show. This was a show that made you think – about life and death and God and reality and virtual reality and relationships and all of what those things entail. I guess it’s too much to ask audiences to think these days, eh? And to not even give the fans who were loyal a decent sendoff? Rotten.
I think the problem with the conception of the show is that there were no heroes. I can’t think of one character that I admired or wanted to be. Understandably, the show was supposed to be about Caprica before the fall – and how it’s mostly corrupted, entitled, & apathetic society led to the creation of an abused race of robots – the birth of the Cylons.
But the show was not grounded with any heroic characters like Admiral Adama, Laura Roslin, Apollo or Starbuck. You need some relatable characters in relief to the ugliness and confusion around them. Granted — all of the BSG characters had their own flaws and struggles – but they were heroic from the beginning of BSG. If your lead is an anti-hero – you have to at least like parts of him/her. Unfortunately, Daniel Graystone is no Don Draper.
I’ve seen so many people give this criticism of Caprica that I’m compelled to ask this out of honest curiosity, so even though I *strongly* disagree, why does a show — any show — need heroic characters who the audience can “admire(d) or want(ed) to be”?
I have never needed or wanted a television show to help me figure out who I am or who I want to become. I have real life for that, you know? I watch television and movies to be entertained. I don’t need some moral paragon on the screen to make me care about what’s happening. If a show is sufficiently intriguing, I’ll watch. If the show is dull and predictable but has a plethora of noble characters running around being noble, I still won’t watch because it’s not interesting to me.
Caprica was about a world so, so similar to our own, filled to the brim with people struggling to find their way in an uncertain universe composed of ambiguous decisions with unknown consequences — exactly like our world. Aren’t those sort of characters *easier* to relate to than heroes? Certainly I find them so.
So yeah, while I can’t think of anyone on Caprica I want to grow up to be (maybe it helps that I’m already grown up?), I can certainly *identify* with nearly all of them.
Why isn’t that enough? In fact, why isn’t that *better*?
Beautiful show – shame they didn’t let it run.
Gutted! Was really looking forward to the show starting again in England. Its a great series
Syfy sucks ever since they changed their brand name, and it shows with Caprica’s cancellation. They are no longer interested in any quality television. Might I bring up The X Files, which took a while to build a fan base? Even at BSG’s height of popularity, it got nowhere NEAR being a ratings success. I believe SYFY would have canceled, while SciFi gave it a shot. I’m afraid this portends that the end is nigh for thought provoking, serialized shows. Oh, and by the way SyFy – NO ONE believes Ghost Hunters has a shred of truth in it.
SyFy just keeps getting worse and worse.Caprica is one of the ONLY good series on the network (along with SGU,Haven and Eureka),the majority of their programming has turned to “reality” crap and the most godawful bottom-of-the barrel “movies” ever aired.The original “Ghost Hunters” was OK,but it’s gotten to the point of “seen one,seen ‘em all”,and the spin offs (GHI and GH Academy) are stupid,boring,wastes of time. And SYfY’s practice of showing a few episodes here and there,changing time slots constantly,breaking up seasons,etc.,is just infuriatingly ignorant.And now they’ve even brought back “Friday Night Smackdown”…..REALLY?????? It seems they’ve decided their demographic consists solely of 12 year old boys of below average intelligence.Who the hell is running that frackin’ train wreck,anyway?
SciFi is heading towards a perfect storm of failure, if it’s not already in the middle of one. Caprica in itself had its issues, simply put it progressed far too slow. The current story line as of last week could easily have been achieved in about three episodes. It is unfortunate that the failure of a lot of shows seems to be a slow pace. Which is fine if the current plot and story arc can carry the show. This was one situation where it did not, better to knock the viewer’s socks off in the first 1-5 shows, there will always be new ideas for a working show. But all the “Great Ideas” the writers may have had for Caprica will never be seen. After sitting through a 1 hour show of Caprica I would come away with 5 minutes of true story. Don’t get me wrong the director of photography made some beautiful shots, but when 75% of your show is establishing shots or artistic scene setting, its simply not enough. Think back on specific story elements from the show. How many items can you pick out? Enough to justify the number of episodes it has taken to get to this point? I can think of 3 maybe 4.
Now compare this to another show like Mad Men. For that show (13 eps a season) its start to finish entertainment. Has garnered a huge number of awards and it’s a show about ADVERTSING. Could you imagine that pitch? “We want to put on a show about advertisers from the 50-60’s” “It’ll be great!” But yet there it is and a great show it is. And what’s next for AMC? A show about zombies! How is it that AMC is doing a show about Zombies and I have to put up with non-scripted reality crap and wrestling on what is billed as a Science Fiction show? Sad to say I get my Science Fiction shows everywhere BUT here.
Can someone please tell us who’s responsible for this travesty? The poor scheduling, the cancellation, the refusal to air the rest of the episodes? Thanks.
If “Caprica” had been left at Friday’s at 8 central, and not moved to Tuesday’s at 9 central after that ridiculous, pin-headed wrestling crap of all stupid things, it’s fan base could have slowly grown with the story lines. For a network that puts ignorant fare like WWE and “Sharktopus” in front of it’s potential viewers, SyFy sure didn’t show “Caprica” much faith or respect. I’ve ’bout had it with those idiots. Oh, and ‘Pissed @ SyFy’ nailed it. The paranormal stuff is crap too. The new series they’re talking about…”BSG: Blood & Chrome”? They’ll crap it up. ByBy, SyFy. Eat +!#$ and die.
Not a surprise, really. I watched from the inception and while the plot was intersting, the pacing was so slow. Moore was trying to create not one, but twelve new cultures (one for each colony). While he only concentrated on two (Caprica and Tauron), he unnecessarily complicated matters with the virtual video game (New Cap City).
But, I was really hoping that in his iteration that the Cylons didn’t just turn out to be a bunch of downloaded virtual daughters with “daddy issues”.
Moore had years to introduce viewers to the various colonial cultures on BSG, but he didn’t have that luxury with Caprica. The story-telling was too ambitious and too slow and it lost viewers each week as a result.
It would have been interesting to see how the Cylons were created and what caused them to rebel, but after one and a half seasons, Moore lost the opportunity to tell this potentially action-packed and compelling story.
I believe in the hands of a more capable show-runner, Caprica could have succeeded on SyFy (not on broadcast). But we’ll never know.
I love how anything with less than ONE MILLION viewers is deemed a failure.
Fuck you, Network TV, and Fuck you, SyFy.
I loved this show- I have watched every episode the day that it airs and was patient when they split the season. To have to wait until 2011 to see the final five episode is insane! Alas, I love this show and will end up watching those episodes as well.
As for “Blood and Chrome” sounds like something I won’t be watching– I’m tired of science fiction that deals with war in space. I guess after Caprica I will go back to reading books.
*sorry about grammar- I’m not very good with English.
why even bother wathcing this station, everything gets cancelled.
The first 9 eps I thought did a good writing job of building an interesting Cylon origin story, with the emotionally angry, brilliant girl as the accidental beginning of the rogue robot race. Alessandra Torresani was great in the role.
Unfortunately, when the show came back this month, it immediately morphed into a drawn-out, sluggish soap opera. Completely lost its conceptual science-fiction intrigue.
Almost felt like Sy-Fy tried to get away with going cheaper on production in the resuming episodes, & attempted to hold viewers with soap-talk, more than giving some good futuristic visual story elements. A few lame jaunts into “New Cap City” wasn’t enough to keep the imagination stimulated. Needed to stay with the rise of the robot intelligence.
RIP, Chit-chatted itself to death.
Good, it was boring anyways. More monster originals, no wait. Sci-Fi channel stinks.
Maybe if the show hadn’t been so convoluted and boring. I tried but lord was it boring.
AND YET, Syfy wouldn’t even think about FIREFLY when they had the chance and THAT would have had a great audience.
Oh well I suppose it’s not too long before it’s all wrestling all the time.