The Daily Beast has a lengthy new article about Capricahere. They talked to the show's executive producers Ron Moore, Jane Espenson and David Eick. Here is some of what they had to say:
“[Caprica] continues on the thematic aspects of Battlestar in terms of what it means to be human, how our personal, familiar, emotional decisions can have sociological or political impact, and that… the greatest wrinkles in our culture and our history can be boiled down to an emotional response to something,” said Eick. “It’s an ironic sort of commentary that small, personal motivations are what contribute to the biggest changes in society.”
“It’s got a very different flavor,” said Moore of Caprica. “It’s setting out to tell a very different story… It’s planet-based, instead of space-based, it’s not action-adventure, it’s much more centered on two families than a military environment. We wanted it to be much more about contemporary society and problems that are coming up on a social front as well as a technological front.”
The main distinction between the two shows, said Eick, is that Battlestar was a war story while Caprica is set during times of peace. “It’s more personal,” he said. “It’s how those very universal feelings that we all have, feeling ostracized from our families, feeling misunderstood by our loved ones, not feeling like our potential is being realized or appreciated, lead to these enormous sort of technological avalanches of discovery… and huge cultural shifts.”
Espenson agrees. “The conflicts come more from the clashing of people from different cultures and representing different life-philosophies—capitalists, technocrats, mobsters, polytheists, monotheists, terrorists, federal agents,” she said. “It’s a portrait of a culture in transition, trying to find its moral footing. It feels contemporary without being in any way a literal reflection of today’s headlines.”
“It doesn’t really have the sense of a new dawn, which is the guiding idea of the Obama administration,” said Moore. “[That’s] about new beginnings, hope, and change. These are people who think that they are making things better, who think that they have a handle on what their society wants, but they are watching it fly apart at the seams without even realizing it.”
Eick said: “We never sat down on Battlestar and still don’t… with The New York Times and say, what episode should we write this week? To whatever extent there is an infusion of suggestive, allegorical current events in the show, it’s very slight and oftentimes subconscious… and rarely if ever do we go to any great lengths to remark or wink or comment on some current event.”
“If there’s a fine line… we’re trampling all over it,” wrote Espenson in an email. “This is the glory of doing a sci-fi show. You can say what you want to about extreme polytheists and (pre- or non-Christian) monotheists and really say some stuff about religion without saying anything about any particular living religion. It’s amazingly freeing.”
Additionally, the difference in perspectives between generations is an important distinction between Caprica and its forebear, stressed Moore. Battlestar’s characters were all adults; Caprica purposefully has strong teen characters. “Where’s the youth culture leading this society, because ultimately that is where societies go,” Moore said. “And there was this idea at the heart of the show that we were very intrigued with, which was that this apocalypse is born from an angry, 16-year-old girl.”
“One of the frustrations we found on Battlestar was just getting people to sample it,” said Moore. “There was a barrier to particularly female viewers, who just wouldn’t tune in to a show that was about people on spaceships.... I always felt that that was a really artificial barrier to entry. We wanted to create a piece that was definitely a science-fiction piece but make entry easier: Make a society that looks like our society, let people talk more like us, make it much more contemporary-feeling.”
Those who can put aside preconceived notions will find Caprica to be a complex family-driven drama as well as an exploration of many contemporary themes.
Or as Espenson tartly sums up the show’s first season focus: “Robots, religion, sex, torture, late-night talk shows, murder, robot-abuse, virtual crime lords, virtual drugs, and robot-fondling.”
IF Magazine has a new interview with Jane Espenson. She discusses her role as executive producer, continuity with Battlestar Galactica, the casting of James Marsters, and other things. A few snippets below, for the full article, go here.
JANE ESPENSON: I’m still executive producer. Really the only thing that’s changed is Kevin is running the room now, as we’re breaking the last couple episodes of the season, so that I can go write on the last couple episodes. It’s really pretty much a procedural change, as much as an organizational one. Running the room and doing all the show runner stuff and all the production stuff was taking a lot of my time and it wasn’t the stuff that most interested me and I was really, really suffering from missing the writing, and I wanted to be able to get in for at least these finale episodes and not be distracted by production and actor issues and be able to genuinely do a lot of the writing. So this was initiated by me and Kevin is fantastic. Kevin has this amazing decisive equanimity that is allowing him to see it through, get stuff done, get everything lined up, so that I don’t have to be in the room, I can be at my computer, writing like a fiend. I’ve done more writing in the last couple weeks – I just couldn’t be happier. It was a matter of me asking for what I needed and getting it and it’s really a good change for the show and for everyone involved.
iF: How involved are Ron Moore and David Eick?
ESPENSON: They’re both very involved, thank the Gods. They’re fantastic. They’ve worked together for so long, they’ve got a wonderful shorthand and I’m just learning, because a lot of the producer things are things I [had] never done before, so I [was] trotting alongside them going, “Wait, what do you do when something’s way over budget? When do you cast a role in Canada and when do you cast a role in the U.S.? How much should I be listening to notes from the director, versus notes from production? How much should I be delegating to my writers versus handling myself?”’
iF: Were there things you enjoyed about hands-on producing/being the show runner?
ESPENSON: Oh, absolutely. I [enjoyed] the interaction in the room very much, because whenever there is one of those debates where everyone is all with their hearts in their throats because they really want the decision to be made in favor of the story that they think best serves the characters, and they’re going to be a little disappointed when it doesn’t come down their way and they have to embrace this other path. I never [had] to be the one who’s disappointed, because I got to say, “Oh, no, we’re going on that path.” And that’s wonderful. And I [liked] that if I read something in a writer’s script that I didn’t feel was right for our world, I had the authority to say, “No, no, this feels a little too earthbound, this doesn’t feel like …” for whatever reason, I [could] give the note. I liked having that much say.
iF: With CAPRICA, are you finding it hard or easy to write into the BATTLESTAR narrative that already exists?
ESPENSON: Actually, shockingly easy, because of this wonderful fifty-eight-year cushion between our events and those events. BATTLESTAR was my last home before [CAPRICA] and I still feel very much a part of that. Really, BATTLESTAR’s the mother ship. You don’t feel the need to set up stuff. I mean, we’re setting up stuff in this big wonderful broad-stroke palette that we have to work with, which is, we have the war coming up, then we know the skin jobs are going to arrive, then they’re going to help the Centurions make more skin jobs and we’re off and running. All we have to do is make sure we don’t contradict anything that’s been said about that road to that first war, and not a lot’s been said. We’re inferring things that seem natural to us, which is a lot of fun, because you go, "Before these twelve colonies were unified under one government, they would have certainly had separate national anthems, national creeds, national identities. Maybe they would still use some [different] languages, they would still use cultural markers like the Tauran tattoos that we’ve seen. All we have to do is backtrack what we know and create a livable, reasonable, interesting culture." For sci-fi writers, that’s a dream – that’s not a chore, that’s fun.
iF: James Marsters has a recurring role on CAPRICA as a terrorist. How instrumental were you in getting him hired?
ESPENSON: I was very instrumental in the hiring of James Marsters. I knew he was right for our show, creatively, and [wanted him on] for the joy of the BUFFY-meets-BATTLESTAR, which just gave me personal delight. I knew he was perfect and I pushed very, very hard for him.
iF: Given the fact that you presumably are showing the prototypes of the Cylons, will we be seeing actors we recognize as the Twelve?
ESPENSON: The thing about the prototypes of the Cylons is that it is a bit down the road. What we’ve got right now is one girl and one robot. I don’t know that you would see the actors [who played Cylons on BATTLESTAR]. You would see – well, I’m not going to answer. It’ll be fun to watch it unfold.
Jamie Bamber shared his impression of Caprica with Digital Spy and it seems the pilot left him a bit underwhelmed.
"I liked it," Bamber told Digital Spy, but--"I've got to be honest, for me it was a bit too teeny and domestic to really fire my imagination. But they're trying to make a different show to Battlestar."
Caprica deals with the family dynamics and rivalries that lead into the first Cylon war. "The things I enjoyed about Battlestar was the social-political side of it and I felt it was a bit domestic."
The Krypton Site network reports that Ryan Kennedy has been cast in a recurring role on Caprica and will make his first appearance in the 14th episode of the show. No details yet on what character he will be playing.
Kennedy is a familiar face to fans of the genre. He played Cosmic Boy in Smallville and also recently appeared in ABC's V series and SyFy's Stargate Universe.
Caprica premieres only a month from now, on January 22.
SyFy has released eight new Caprica clips, including an exclusive scene from the pilot and a couple of behind-the-scenes clips with the cast talking about what's to come on the show.
This is the new official synopsis:
On the vibrant world of Caprica, in a culture recognizably close to our own, two dynamic families – the Graystones and the Adamas – live separately on opposite ends of society until they are brought together by tragedy.
Daniel Graystone (Eric Stoltz), a computer engineering genius, owns a large corporation that is spearheading the development of artificial intelligence. His unwavering professional pursuits are driven to extreme measures when personal tragedy strikes him and his wife Amanda (Paula Malcomson): their strong-willed daughter Zoe (Alessandra Torresani) dies in a terrorist bombing fueled by an underground religious dogma. Unbeknownst to her parents, the teenager had also been dabbling in these radical teachings, which were secretly propagated by her school’s headmistress, Sister Clarice Willow (Polly Walker).
Also living on Caprica but deeply entrenched in a cultural heritage that sets them apart from the rest of civilization, is the Adama clan. The family is helmed by Joseph Adama (Esai Morales), a renowned criminal defense attorney – with questionable ties and sometimes-devious methods – and father to William (Sina Najafi) and Tamara (Genevieve Buechner). When Joseph’s wife and daughter perish in the same attack that befell Zoe Graystone, Joseph’s path soon crosses Daniel’s, and the two become united in their grief.
Soon after, Daniel lets Joseph in on a sinister secret: he’s discovered that Zoe, a computer genius in her own right, had been experimenting with perilous virtual reality technology along with her friend Lacy (Magda Apanowicz), and managed the impossible: she created a life-like avatar of herself, a perfect digital copy. Obsessed with the possibility of seeing his daughter once again, and preying on Joseph’s shared emotions, Daniel implores his new confidante to help him make Zoe’s vision a complete reality. Appalled by the ethical implications of recreating a soul, but aching to bring his own daughter back to life, Joseph complies… and the fate of the human race is altered forever.
And here are the clips:
Caprica exclusive scene: "What If They Could Come Back?"
Aleks Paunovic, who appeared in several episodes of Battlestar Galactica as Marine Sgt. Omar Fischer, has been cast as the grandfather of Edward James Olmos' William Adama, also named William, and father of Joseph Adama. He will be a recurring character, appearing only in flashbacks.
Aleks has been cast in the recurring role of WILLIAM ADAMA in the television series CAPRICA. This character is the father of Joseph Adama (Esai Morales) and grand father of William Adama (Edward James Olmos). Aleks will appear as William Adama in flashback scenes.
You can see Paunovic in the December 11 ep of SyFy's Sanctuary and then in Human Target on January 20 on Fox.
