Caffeinated Clint
I liked “Caprica” – but I didn’t love it. Being a big star of Ron Moore and his “Battlestar Galactica” universe I really wanted to, too. Series star Eric Stoltz warned me that the spin-off would be a very different show to ”Battlestar Galactica” – despite being set in the same world,er, literally – and he was right, it’s apples and oranges. But like the fruit, both are tasty – albeit many prefer one fruit to the other.
I loved Ron Moore’s hip spin on Glenn Larson’s classic science-fiction TV series (never bothered me that Starbuck was a female, either), and like every other fan of the groundbreaking series, wasn’t quite prepared to say goodbye to ”Battlestar” when it concluded last month (but what a finale it was! Wow!), but I didn’t shed a tear – not with “Caprica” coming.
Set 50 years prior to the events in ”Battlestar Galactica”, ”Caprica” essentially tells the story of the first Cylon – and the man that made it so. Stoltz, in what was his first regular TV stint since playing heartthrob ‘Dr Bobby’ on ”Chicago Hope” all those years ago, really embodies Graystone; it’s almost as if the character was written for him (or in the least, re-written for him). There’s something warm about Stoltz, which is interesting because Graystone is such a cold, calculating character. Granted, what the inventor does, he does because of love, but that doesn’t mean he won’t step on anyone to get what (or who) he wants. When Adama lets Graystone know that, not only will he not involve himself in this harebrained idea of his to rescue their daughters, but that what he’s doing is wrong in a human sense, it only pushes Graystone more towards the grand plan. He likes to win, it seems. And who better to play a determined scientist that doesn’t mind playing with fire than The Son of The Fly!? I’d go so far as to say this is the best Stoltz has been in years. It was a meaty role for him.
In addition, Esai Morales (who, ironically enough, played Edward James Olmos’s son in the Ritchie Valens biopic ”La Bamba” in the 80s) was both a brilliant and smart choice as Joe Adams/Adama. He mightn’t be as gruff or macho as Bill Adama (who appears in the series as a youngster – obviously), but he does embody much of the qualities we’ve seen from his commander father on ”Galactica”. He even looks a little like his grown-up son.
”Caprica”, I guess you’d say, is more of a straight-up family drama than a science-fiction actioner like ”Galactica”. There’s not a space-fight in sight, yet it still has its elements of sci-fi – and how could it not? Still, it’s not a full-blown science-fiction show… and that may be one of the reasons why it failed.
One of the show’s shepherds tells The Hollywood Reporter why he believes “Caprica” didn’t fly as far nor as long as it’s predecessor.
What say you, Kevin Murphy?
In a case like Caprica, I came in halfway into the order. After a week or so, Ron Moore and David Eick promoted me to showrunner and one of the interesting things there was figuring out how to make it grand — how to make it live up to the [Battlestar Galactica] franchise while being realistic about the fact that the show had ended up costing NBCUniversal a lot more than they had originally expected or budgeted for. Part of that was the nature of the beast. When you’re doing a show set on a spaceship, you can always do a bottle show where you can have a perfectly good episode where everybody stays on the standing sets of the Battlestar Galactica. Because the overall jeopardy is the imminent of the human race, it can be an exciting, suspenseful ride having people standing around on the bridge talking.
So what he’s saying is that “Caprica” was always going to have it’s work cut out for it because it was ‘all talk’?
On Caprica, it was conceived to be this wide canvas with multiple families, blue skies and outdoor locations. You’re not just seeing the ruins of Caprica, you’re seeing it 24/7 on the show and you have to make it not look like British Columbia. That required a lot of CGI adjustment and changing the skyline of Vancouver. I arrived the moment the cookie jar was empty. I learned more doing that show in eight episodes than I learned on three years with Desperate Housewives. On the CW, you’ve only got so much money, doing all the tricks when you’re trying to save money, so those skills have come handy on this particular show.
Murphy is now the showrunner of the very popular CW cheerleading series “Hellcats”.
