Another report from the Caprica panel

TV Squad posted a report from the Winter Press Tour here. David Eick talked about Zoe's character and the decision to do the scenes with both Alessandra Torresani and Zoe's Cylon body.

"The reason for that," said Eick, "beyond just how difficult it's proven to be on production to accommodate that, because it does tax us greatly, but it was so critical because the emotions are so important.

"And you can only get so much of an emotional point-of-view from a CG creature. And we had this magnificent actress in Alessandra, who we knew could deliver all the complexities of this angst-ridden young woman that we just thought it would be cheating the show, the audience, and just our storytelling ability to limit it to just visual effects."

And he and Jane Espenson also discussed the similarities and differences between Caprica and Battlestar Galactica. Espenson said, "There's no stark bad guys and good guys, that this is a world that is perceived by some of its residents as sort of sliding over the edge, and there's a whole bunch of people who think they've got the answer."

Eick added:

There are the occasional Easter eggs and nods and acknowledgments for the Battlestar faithful to enjoy or maybe deepen some of their appreciation for it, but I think legitimately the show stands on its own. And other than the fact that if you happen to know Battlestar Galactica, you know that that show had its roots in some of the stories we're telling now, there really is no relationship between the two shows whatsoever.

Caprica - Winter Press Tour report

Ausiello at Entertainment Weekly has the first report from the Winter Press Tour. You can read the article  here.

“Caprica, like Battlestar Galactica, doesn’t treat the [sci-fi] genre like a toy department,” exec producer David Eick told reporters at Winter Press Tour. “We take it seriously.”

Translation: The drama, starring Eric Stoltz, Esai Morales, Polly Walker, and Paula Malcomson, will be brimming with BSG’s trademark moral complexity. “There are no stark good guys and bad guys,” said fellow e.p. Jane Espenson. “Everyone has moral shadings and we can tell very complex stories as a result.”

On the flipside, Eick stressed that non-BSG loyalists will not be lost if they tune into Caprica. “New viewers will find that there’s virtually no tether to BSG from a storytelling standpoint,” he maintained. “Legitimately, the show stands on its own… It’s not called Battlestar Galactica: Caprica [for a reason].”

Caprica screening in New York

New Caprica video: scene from episode 1x02

Here is a clip from the second episode, with Alessandra Torresani and Magda Apanowicz, from The Daily Beast:

Interview with Caprica producers: Ron Moore, Jane Espenson, David Eick

The Daily Beast has a lengthy new article about Caprica here. 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.”

New interview with Jane Espenson

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 on Caprica: Too domestic

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."

Source: About.com