Jane Espenson talks about Caprica

Jane Espenson talked to io9.com about Dollhouse, the Buffy comic book, Battlestar webisodes, and Caprica. The interview is here.

Is there any chance you could just do a funny horror/science fiction comic every month? In your spare time? It seems like all your writing projects lately are more serious.

Spare time is starting to seem like something I imagined once. But when you see my episode of Dollhouse, I think you'll see that there's still some funny going on. And — you heard it here first — Caprica is absolutely going to have moments that will benefit from a very light touch.

Congrats on becoming the showrunner at Caprica. Do you get a lot of input in crafting the first-season character arcs in Caprica, as the showrunner? How much of that stuff was already in place when you came on board?

I'm pleased to say that I will have a lot of input in crafting season one of Caprica. Ron is still the ultimate king of us, and I hope that doesn't change, but I will be getting a lot of my ideas in there. We also have an amazing staff — Michael Taylor, John Zinman and Patrick Massett, Kath Lingenfelter, Matt Roberts and Ryan Mottesheard — and they will be contributing mightily.

The thing that intrigues me most about Caprica, from what I've read so far, is the idea that these super-powerful robots, the Cylons, actually come out of human grief. Does this give you the chance to look at the Cylons in a whole new light?

Oh, yes, of course. Caprica is going to shed light on the Cylons, of course, but also on the history and culture and beliefs and prejudices and lives of the human colonists. This is great rich material. All that, plus strong characters and at least ten flavors of conflict — it's the coolest thing ever.

The Sci Fi Channel and Ronald D. Moore have both talked about the hope that Caprica will reach more female viewers. Do you feel a lot of pressure to make it more female-friendly? Or, conversely, does that open up opportunities to do different types of stories?

Huh. I like this question. It has never occurred to me that I would write different types of stories to attract women viewers. Maybe there is some truth to the idea that war stories traditionally held less appeal for women since it wasn't a real-life arena in which women were well-represented, but even that has to be changing, don't you think? Isn't a good story pretty universal? At any rate, the stories on Caprica are simply going to kick ass and I certainly expect some of that ass to be female.