Monday 18 January 2010

Interviews with Jane Espenson and David Eick

Io9.com has a couple of interviews up with Jane Espenson and David Eick here.

Espenson talked about the central conflict on the show being not between humans and robots but between different groups of humans, while Eick talked about the beginnings of the show.

According to Espenson, the "other" in Caprica is other groups of humans, instead of the Cylons which barely exist at this point. You have twelve colonies, with diverse ethnic groups, all in conflict with each other. And that doesn't even include the monotheists, who are a minority in all the different colonies. The show's being very careful to make clear that not all monotheists are evil terrorists, adds Espenson. The whole stew of conflict, with each group believing it has the right answer to all of society's woes, brings a society that's at peace closer to the brink of war and disaster. And those elements — a peacetime society where different groups of humans are fighting over cultural and religious differences — allow Caprica to tell very different stories than Battlestar Galactica. It's still just as allegorical as BSG, however, and it still has something to say about the times we're living in.

Eick told us that Caprica started out as Remi Aubuchon's pitch for a totally unrelated show about robots, and then Syfy suggested turning it into a BSG prequel. And that opened up all sorts of ways to explore the same questions as BSG, only from the opposite side — instead of a show about machines who are becoming human, you have a show about a human girl who becomes a machine. Either way, you're getting to ask some questions about what humanity really is, says Eick.

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