The 90-minute “Caprica” pilot, long available on DVD and Hulu, at last arrives on Syfy tonight. It’s highly compelling, free of space battles but loaded with imaginative visual effects. While I judge it to be not as strong as 2003’s “Galactica” miniseries, it’s easy enough to imagine a great series emerging from it. Find my April 21 review of the DVD here.
And though she wasn’t involved with the pilot/movie, Jane Espenson – of “Buffy The Vampire Slayer,” “Firefly,” and “Galactica” fame – ran the writers’ room for the stronger “Caprica” series that arrives on SciFi next week. As those who follow my twittering know, critics were just before Christmas sent both tonight’s supersized pilot and the two regular episodes that follow. I could not ask for a better present.
… Clarity was never a Battlestar strong point, but the writers now seem to have adopted incomprehensibility as a virtue. It isn't. Again, if you loved all things Battlestar beyond measure, Caprica may satisfy. For all others, this is a planet best left unvisited. …
… All this high-minded stage setting could produce an intriguing drama of ideas or a talky futuristic soap opera. The goal, presumably, is to achieve both — it’s the “Battlestar Galactica” combo — but it’s going to be harder to do now that the humans have left the spaceship. Back on the surface, without the ironclad premise and heightened atmosphere of “Galactica,” “Caprica” is, almost by default, a more ordinary show.
In the midst of all its programming woes, [Syfy overlord] NBC has managed to achieve something close to the impossible -- a prequel series that should not only please all comers but may expand the demographic of science fiction fans everywhere. …
… The two-hour pilot is quite compelling. Morales and Stoltz are well-matched in their subtle approaches to their characters, and the pilot asks the kinds of questions you'd expect from the creators of "Battlestar": When should we let go of what we've lost and how do we use technology to avoid painful truths? … If the show is guilty of anything in the first few episodes, it's of trying to do too much, which is preferable to a lack of ambition. …
… not only differs from "Avatar" but improves on it. … There's enough going on in "Caprica" to keep a sci-fi fan, or anyone who likes to settle into a good story, satisfied and even beguiled -- and though it's shot too dark those watching on an upscale, big-screen TV will be treated to a visual spectacular. … Syfy is owned, as you probably know, by NBC Universal, so there's one added pleasure to be gleaned from "Caprica" -- the rare sight of NBC doing something right.
… superb new series … Like "BSG," what makes "Caprica" so instantly compelling is that it succeeds with a strong story in a unique setting and isn't afraid to tackle big issues - religion and race being two of the largest. …
… grapples with many of the contemporary dilemmas that "Galactica" handled -- religious strife, terrorism, overreliance on technology -- but, in placing them in a world that looks like the one outside our window, it can be blunter about it. The holo-band nightclub where Zoe and her friends meet in secret -- an online Sodom and Gomorrah, filled with (virtual) sex, drugs and even human sacrifice -- is like every parent's worst nightmare about what his kids are up to on Facebook, Twitter and the rest of the web. And by casting all of the prominent Tauran characters immigrants with Latin actors (and the Capricans with whites), it emphasizes the race and class distinctions in a way that "Galactica" couldn't with its use of Cylons as stand-ins for Muslim extremists. …
