Battlestar Galactica

Caprica is set 50 years before BSG on Caprica, which in only a few decades will be obliterated by Cylon nuclear weapons. The show, apparently, will focus on political, religious and moral issues through the eyes of two families – led by Daniel Graystone, a super-rich genius who is on the verge of recreating life (read: Cylons) and an outsider with a powerful past, Joseph Adama. Similar to today’s issues, the seemingly bright and shiny civilization of Caprica is cracked with questionable ethics, corporate greed and personal ambition that, as we all know, will eventually lead to their downfall.

Whether BSG fans – myself included – stick around rests entirely on the quality of this new show, which doesn’t officially debut until 2010. However, Sci-Fi smartly – both to whet appetites and make a few million in the process – will release the pilot episode of Caprica on Tuesday, April 21, 2009.

The pilot episode both complements BSG and differs from it, and does just enough to keep me wanting more. The way the story flows, the way the show looks and the underlying moral issues that accompany the plot ring similar to BSG, and it is these qualities that should keep fans engaged, at least in the beginning.

And yet, Caprica is strange – strange enough that not all fans are going to stick around. BSG was popular not only because of its overall quality but because it succeeded in being a science fiction show without relying heavily on science fiction. People who wanted good drama and action – but not all the geeky stuff that usually accompanies sci-fi shows – were able to watch BSG, and not as a guilty pleasure. Furthermore, the show was filled with space battles and other violence.

Caprica, on the other hand, feels more futuristic and sci-fi-y, despite being a prequel. While many things don’t look that much different from today, the characters carry around computers on “pieces of paper” and are able to log into holodeck-esque worlds with little headsets. While BSG explained away the lack of technology with Adama’s reluctance to be networked to the grid, Caprica does feel a bit like the Star Wars prequels – things were much more advanced in the past.

But it’s not the gizmos that may turn some fans off. Much of the pilot episode revolves around a virtual world where Graystone discovers that his daughter – a computer genius who was murdered in a terrorist explosion by a group that accepts only one true God – has installed a “copy” of herself. In this world, his daughter exists with all her memories, characteristics and flaws – just without a body. But Graystone, who has been working on creating cyborgs, realizes that his daughter may have figured out the missing link – and that he can bring her back. However, the bigger question remains: can he bring back her soul, and even if he can, should he?

Caprica raises some very interesting questions, and it’s these questions that will drive the show going forward. And yet, dabbling with the reincarnation of one’s daughter is quite a bit different than BSG, which despite all the strange things that happened always tended to be grounded in reality (except for the fate of Starbuck, which I’m still scratching my head over). Will the average BSG fan accept this very different environment that is Caprica? I’m not sure.

As for me, I liked the pilot episode, but didn’t love it. The acting is strong, and I liked the characters. The show looks great, though the producers are going to struggle with the visual effects as it’s going to be much harder to gloss over a TV budget in daylight, versus the perpetual darkness that BSG benefited from. The train explosion could have been done better. Overall, though, the producers have done a good job of creating a show that is similar in appearance and delivery to its predecessor and yet vastly different in its core focus.

Unfortunately, the pilot episode didn’t blow me away. It sets the stage, but it’s unclear how things are going to unfold, how suspenseful things are going to be and what other characters are going to be introduced. The number of likable supporting characters is next to zero, and even the leads are hardly protagonists; Graystone is a bit crazy, and Adama works for mobsters. Whereas BSG worked in the grays as the show went along, Caprica starts out with no redeeming characters. If Caprica is just going to be a talky drama with political maneuverings and religious questions, it could get old quickly; if it ends up being a little more exciting than that – perhaps like Damages – then it has potential. The pilot episode just doesn’t answer these questions.

The Caprica pilot is worth seeing, but it is going to have to show the audience what we should expect early on to keep people around. It looks to be an interesting show, but without a genocidal war raging on in every episode, it has the potential to lose audiences quickly, especially given that it is on the Sci-Fi Channel, a place even I dared to tread only on Friday nights at 10pm.

In other words: time will tell. The pilot episode is enough to lure me along, and yet not enough to hook me.

Now, you might have caught the extended preview of the prequel Caprica while watching the series finale. I keep going back and forth, and this preview swung me back to the “I don’t know” category. The show looks like it could be good, but the preview was poorly manufactured and failed to create much excitement. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Or will we?

Watch the first seven video clips from Caprica now:

This move makes sense in so many ways. While Caprica is already highly anticipated, releasing this movie so shortly after the end of Battlestar Galactica allows Sci-Fi to maximize the exposure to its new show, build hype and also make some money off it long before it was ever supposed to. Sci-Fi has done a wonderful job of taking advantage of its viewers’ wallets, as evidenced by their half-season releases of BSG (not to mention that they make advertising dollars off all the other crap they have on the station).

If you can’t wait that long, Battlestar Galactica: Season 4.0 comes to DVD on January 6th.

Battlestar Galactica: Season 4.0 begins with the return of Starbuck, who was assumed dead. Her return is regarded with suspicion, as her death was witnessed and the logical assumption is that she is indeed a Cylon. But Adama puts his faith in her anyway, and lets her set out with a crew of dedicated soldiers to search for Earth, something she realizes she has been dreaming about since she was a child.

Other storylines continue the revelation of the Final Five Cylons, whose destinies are yet to be determined. The defintion of what it is to be human is explored in greater detail, especially when the Cylons fraction, causing a civil war. Adama, President Roslin and others find themselves forced to make a huge leap of faith: join forces with one faction to eliminate the other, all in the quest to discover Earth.

BSG: Season 4.0 is as rich as the other seasons, and its character and story developments continue to expand our expectations and make us question what is right and what is wrong. At the same time, the show also presses further on its ideas of destiny and fate, something I’ve never really liked, at least not when the production is otherwise grounded in reality. While it works, the show’s mysticism continues to irk me some.

Every episode comes with a series of deleted scenes, and also included is the one-off BSG movie Razor (strangely with different, rather rudimentary font and packaging compared to the rest of the discs). Special features include those previously included on the Razor disc that was available to own last year, and a bunch of featurettes and video blogs. The featurettes found on disc four are pretty interesting and include each actor’s perspective on their characters. The Music of Battlestar Galactica is surprisingly funny. I didn’t watch all of the video blogs.

This DVD review is pretty useless, as fans of the show no doubt already have preordered Battlestar Galactica: Season 4.0 to own. If you haven’t watched the show, you have to start from Season One, Episode One. BSG is one of the best shows ever made.

The show is a masterstroke of action, espionage, betrayal, alliances, love, relationships and, perhaps most importantly, social commentary. It took a great sci-fi premise and turned it into something more, a drama with complicated, interesting characters that just happens to be set in space. It’s a shame that some people still shrug Battlestar Galactica off as a sci-fi show, because even though it does feature an “alien” race, space battles and [admittedly, not-so-great] fate stuff, it is grounded in reality more than most shows.

So, when Sci-Fi Channel announces that they have ordered 20 hours of Caprica, the new original series spin-off of Battlestar Galactica, I should be thrilled, right? Wrong.

Sure, Caprica may be better than most shows on television, but:

1. It’s going to be set on a planet, before any wars. Dramas are all well and good, but without the Cylons, this sounds a little too far removed from the Battlestar Galactica we know and love.
2. It’s going to have different actors and characters. Can the writers strike magic twice?
3. It’s about two human families competing against one another. Didn’t Shakespeare already write a masterpiece with this concept?
4. The show will, eventually, lead to the first Cylon war, right? I sure as hell hope so. But how many seasons is it going to take to get there?
5. From the first minute, it is going to be compared to Battlestar Galactica. And it just can’t be as good.

Again, Battlestar Galactica: Caprica could be very good. Still, it’s not going to be as good, so it’s setting itself up for poor comparisons. Beyond that, there is going to be so few similarities in terms of characters, plot and so forth that those wanting more BSG may be disappointed.

I love the drama and social dilemmas that are raised in BSG, but I love the balance it has with some kick-ass Cylon action. Without that balance, will I be that interested in watching a space drama that’s not set in space?

Of course, I’m still going to watch it. What do you think?

An hour later, I continue writing… I just finished watching the Battlestar Galactica Season 4 premiere, and it’s pretty good. As good as the Season 3 premiere, which introduced to life on New Caprica post-Cylone invasion? No, of course not. But it’s still a good starting point for the final season. The first several minutes are devoted to a gigantic space battle, full of shootings, explosions and special effects. Maybe it was just the quality of my screener DVD, but the special effects don’t look as good as they did in past seasons. Either way, for television, and especially for the Sci-Fi Channel, Battlestar Galactica still offers some of the best space action there is, and after the rather action-less second half of season three, it’s a refreshing change of pace.

The episode overall is quite good, setting the stage for the stories that will unfold over the rest of the season. It’s funny that I started this review with a mention about God, because it is clear that religion, or at least faith, is going to play a big part in this season. Gray-toned Baltar finds himself taken in by a group of predominantly young, sexy women (go Baltar!) who are of the creepy cultish religious quality, but will a miracle and some naked breasts make him born again? Will Adama accept Starbuck back into his life, even though all signs indicate that she is not what she seems? What will the Final 5 do, a good chunk of the series’ cast that are now, suddenly (but have always been) Cylons?

The episode is fast-paced, exciting and thought intriguing. As always, don’t expect a conclusion to the storylines presented here; you’ll have to wade through several more episodes before the show begins to tie things together once and for all (assuming it does). The show offers a little bit of humor, mainly revolving around the naivety of the religious cult and a line where Starbuck tells her husband that she would kill him if she found out he was a Cylon (which he is).

I signed a contract saying I wouldn’t talk about the ending, and so I won’t, other than to say that the episode ends with a pretty good cliffhanger – except that, unless I’m mistaken, it’s going to be one of those cliffhangers that is going to end rather simply at the beginning of episode two. Still, it’s clear that the writers have a very specific plan in mind and that this final season of Battlestar Galactica will be a thrilling one.

I don’t think it will be able to top the occupation episodes that took up the beginning of season three, but I pray (as much as I can pray) for some good action, some thought-provoking politics and not too much fluffy destiny stuff which the show has hinted at as being its focus.

I was never really expecting a whole lot from this TV movie, which seems like more of a ploy to make some money and pitch the new season; after all, if it was a legitimate entry in the Battlestar Galactica series, then it would have been the season premiere. Still, considering that Battlestar Galactica is one of the best, if not the best, television shows in recent memory, expectations were high.

Razor is not bad by any means, and it is certainly entertaining, but it suffers from chaotic storytelling and poor focus. It tries to do too much and delivers too little, and the end all you can do is shrug your shoulders and look forward to the actual season premiere in a couple of months. It has plenty of action, but it lacks the depth, intrigue and politics that make Battlestar Galactica so great; without those elements, it just feels like your standard sci-fi television show.

Razor focuses on one new character, Kendra Shaw, a young a woman who rises quickly in the ranks of the Battlestar Pegasus, commanded by Admiral Cain (the bitchy, merciless admiral who took over the fleet in Season Two only to find her life cut short when the Cylon she was torturing broke free – okay, was released – to shoot her in the head). The movie is essentially a flashback episode, and it uses Shaw as a vehicle to see how and why Cain made the decisions she made, and how those decisions reflected on her crew. At the same time, we also get to see some glimpses of the first Cylon War with a young Adama, and some more “modern day” character interactions from when the Pegasus was still in existence.

Razor suffers from a few issues, most of which that it just seems out of place from the rest of Battlestar Galactica. While most of the Galactica characters and actors are involved with this picture, the very fact that its “modern day” is set in the past seems a bit odd – and it’s also sort of confusing. The focus of the story jumps between two many things, from the present day attack on a Cylon ship to the early days on the Pegasus to Adama as a fighter pilot, and none of the storylines tie together as well as the writers were hoping for. The character of Kendra Shaw is also quite disappointing, and seems to serve as more of a tie to connect the modern day story with the flashbacks to Cain’s Pegasus. I was hoping to see a movie that focused solely on Cain and that explains how she came to make tough decisions, but instead Cain really doesn’t get much screen time, and we don’t get to see much we didn’t already know. Furthermore, Shaw herself is an unlikable character, and you never really feel empathy for her.

I also didn’t like that the movie depicted Cain as a lesbian. Why do all tough, badass women in power have to be lesbians? It seems a bit sexist to me, although the lesbian bit does provide an interesting “twist” in a certain relationship (albeit an underdeveloped one).

Again, Razor does feature some good action scenes, and does show us a few things we haven’t seen before, but the whole affair feels like a bloated, watered down version of the regular show. Even the special effects seem slightly off, a little less edgy.

Fans of Battlestar Galactica don’t need to read this review to decide whether to watch Razor or not – they will watch it, as they should. But if you’re using this movie as an entry point into the series, I suggest otherwise: rent the pilot and start from the beginning. Razor does not do the series justice.