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BSG Prequel Series Caprica Canceled
Kethinov writes "The sci-fi TV series Caprica, a prequel spinoff from Battlestar Galactica, was just canceled by the Syfy channel. In response to the cancellation and the recent theme of many similar good sci-fi shows getting canceled over the last few years, I've written an editorial arguing that Caprica's cancellation reflects the decreasing sustainability of the cable TV business model. A better, more modern business model could have saved Caprica from cancellation. If this model is adopted in the future, it could save many other similar niche genre shows from the same fate down the road." Another perspective here might be that a boring, ponderous show got yoinked because nobody watched it. Just sayin'.
How many spinnoffs does a good SCIFI fan need!!
It could also have to do with HUGE break between the first half of the season and the second... Just sayin'
"You're awefully cute, but unfortunately for you, you're made of meat."
Wish they would stop repeating these mistakes
It all starts at 0
Seriously, most of the stuff the show is crap-and-drivel. Caprica seemed better than average there, which is probably why they canceled it, they only want to show garbage. If they get low enough ratings on their "science fiction", then they can switch it to the Wrestling Channel.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Any chance of a scifi series that isn't dystopian? Its old, its boring and it shows no imagination. Time to cheer up.
But like the summary says, it turned in to a boring show where they tried character development, but it just fell on its face. It was just about at the level of a plain drama with a little peppering of sci-fi.
Now SyFy shows wrestling on Friday nights. I won't say that's better than Caprica, but it must be paying the bills...
Instead of relaxing like I've done for the last 10+ years - watching SciFi channel on Friday nights (where did GvsE, Lexx, Brimstone, Dresden Files, Farscape, etc go?), I'm now doing other things with my Fridays... I'm not going to watch wrestling. Talk about fiction!
Nothing of value was lost.
Seriously, this series was even poorer than BSG.
It didn't help that the show is slow and plodding, and not one of the characters is likable. Where's the lovable characters that just make bad decisions. Instead everyone is lying to everyone else, the story seems to be stuck in the mud and we know that in the end it doesn't matter, as Caprica gets nuked anyway!
It seems a travesty that the company is even in business. Besides bsg and caprica they had nothing. Very stupid ghost shows and horrible movies. Not bad movies, but horrible. Not campy b-list, but stupid scripts with stupid actors and stupid plots. They even ruined Bruce Campbell in that horrible movie I can't even remember. I just don't get it.
Subby's a moron. His blog starts out: "Suppose for a moment that I had been CEO of NBC Universal at the time Caprica was picked up in 2008. If I had been CEO at that time, then Caprica would not have been canceled during its first season two years later because it would have been one of the many thriving, profitable properties owned by NBC Universal."
You personally would have managed NBC better than NBC itself? According to your blog, you're a web programmer at Paypal. Maybe you need to check that ego and realize that you don't have a clue what you're talking about. Why does Slashdot link to this crap?
The real problem here is the corruption of business. Greedy selfish people give senior jobs to friends, family and associates not based on skills but rather to "scratch backs". There's so much of this evil bullshit going on, that most of organizations are now composed of selfish spoiled incompetent and uncaring managers. It's no wonder that most businesses provide crappy products and services. If there was any real competition, most big businesses would fail. Face it, the world is in decline due to the degeneracy and over-affluence of the upper-class
"Another perspective here might be that a boring, ponderous show got yoinked because nobody watched it. Just sayin'"
I tend to agree. I gave "Caprica" a chance, but the story was not compelling enough to hold my interest. I gave up after the first part of the first season and never bothered with trying to watch any of the newer episodes. I keep thinking of the line from the 'reimagined' BSG "The Cylons Have a Plan" ... but the writers don't.
I found the first season to be really boring and when one summarizes the plot, I think that might become clear. I found the second to be unrelentingly depressing since not a single character had any substantial redeeming qualities.
My opinion is that spin-off storylines and crappy effects can hurt viewership more than the cable business model. Reality shows and sequel/prequels are no substitute for a good, original story with good writers and actors. (and certainly not wrestling on a sci-fi? channel)
Look at 'The Sopranos' 'Mad Men' or 'Battlestar Galactica' if you need proof that cable shows can be huge if done right.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Knowing how Caprica is going to end killed all interest for me.
and when I originally head about a spinoff, I was thinking "Great, the Cylon war!". It seemed like it'd be a home-run, start with the launch of Galactica, and you've got potentially years worth of adventures, and plenty of opportunities for great combat scenes in a setting that already proved that people would like it. Then I heard about Caprica, and I was confused. Then I actually watched Caprica, and I was even more confused. Oh, not by the story, it was easy enough to follow, but by the fact that they thought it was a good idea. Forget about the plot holes that were big enough to fly Pegasus through, the story itself just seemed like it was targeted at a completely different audience than BSG was.
I tried to get into it, but after a while, I just found hitting play on the DVR was a chore, not something to look forward to, so I gave up on it. As for it getting canceled, I'd probably have never noticed if I didn't read about it on slashdot.
Some bring out the best in others, some the worst. Some bring out far more.
I just "canceled" it from my Hulu queue. There were a number of reasons for me but the top three are:
The show was way too slow for me.
It felt more like a corporate drama than a sci-fi story. The only thing sci-fi about it was that it happens in the future. I'll admit it I am a simpleton. I want my sci-fi to have lazors and space battles or dragons and wizards.
That long break between seasons mentioned above didn't help.
In case you have not noticed, it seems that the syfy channel is showing anything but science fiction and made the switch quite some time ago. I really believe that the producers have no idea what scinece fiction really is or who the classic scifi authors might be.
Retired dinosaur, simple user, volunteer, guinea pig
Thanks for summing up my own stance so nicely. Very into BSG...Caprica not so much (not at all).
"You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline." - Frank Zappa
After the Battlestar Galactica finale proved that the writers had no plan except to pull a gigantic deus ex machina to resolve all their lose threads, I have lost interest in the franchise.
And the retconning... the horrible retconning... They fooled me once, I'm not giving them another chance.
You can't take the sky from me...
What do you mean 'good sci-fi shows'? Caprica's pilot was good although ended poorly, then it went downhill fast with mafia type rubbish, and just crap like some woman being married to someone 20 years younger or something like that and more rubbish, and this being some sort of lifestyle. Sci-fi? I vaguely recall seeing her or someone looking like her in another crap series, Rome. Perhaps it wasn't her, but she has the face for this sort of situation. Why you may ask? Because actors are chosen for certain parts, how they look, etc., so for a series with lots of soapy drama, people with soapy drama faces get chosen.
:)
Take Stargate universe. Before the first episode came on TV (or PC) I read somewhere it would have more drama. I watched the first episode, saw them coming through the stargate on the ship far away, and it was going so slowly (pauses between one, and the next coming through) with such camera work, that I said to myself "they were right, it IS more drama. Also, the faces of the actors told me enough, esp. one of the women (Chloe?), damn, that's just straight "as the world turns" material.
Please cancel stargate universe or put in a daytime slot and say it's a soap opera. It's not sci-fi, it's interesting/good drama, it's just boring, pathetic soap opera rubbish.
So, to get back on topic: I disagre with the statement from the poster about quality sci-fi getting cancelled, at least in these cases
after like 10 episodes it disappeared, and when it came back I had forgotten about it. the did that with BSG, but BSG had a lot of hype going for it, Caprica didn't. The only thing in the show that promised to be interesting (Tamara Adama in crazy virtual gangster world) turned out to be a waste of time storyline, so who cares?
--
Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
Caprica was a teenage drama about a stupid teenage girl in a robot body.
When I started watching Caprica, I was excited to see something chronicling the origins of the cylons. Is that what I got? Nope.
I got hannah montana with robots.
While the story line was arcing, the script was really garbage. The characters were so cliche and overdone it was cringe worthy. It was visually dull. Uneventful. Uninteresting. Meaningless. Meh.
Try Idiocracy...
Oh wait, that's a documentary...
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Well, the old scifi series such as Star Trek were utopian instead of dystopian. I think it's more like a sign of the times that everything on the future is dystopian these days. Not even suspension of disbelief can help people imagine a future where things turn out good for everyone, anymore.
Failed Sustainability of the Cable Model?
How about the failed sustainability of a bad spin-off of a great series?
No great loss.. obviously there was some mileage in a backstory about the origin of the Cylons, but not a whole series. Incidentally, if you're in the UK then you've only seen the first 9 episodes of 13.. the remainder should be on in the New Year.
Never email donotemail@WeAreSpammers.com
I think another partial reason for the lack of ratings is that a large segment of the target audience recently got burned by the endings of two popular shows. The final seasons and series finales of both BSG and Lost might have been emotionally satisfying from a character standpoint, but from a plot perspective, they both proved that the writers were simply making it up as they went along. (The ending of BSG made the entire history and culture of the Colonies pretty much pointless as well, but that's a whole other issue.) None of the new genre "mystery" shows, weather it be Caprica, The Event, or Rubicon, are doing all that well in the ratings. Granted, not all of them are amazing shows in their own right, but I think part of it is that viewers simply aren't willing to invest in a "mystery" show when the writers have proven time and time again that they won't actually deliver a consistent answer when it comes to the "mystery" aspect of the show.
one whole season and they still had only one cylon
the whole idea of making a human mind out of essentially a google search sounds extremely stupid
no leading character. was it supposed to be adama or the kid from breakfast club?
too much emphasis on the side story inside the computer
story moved way too slow. with the big risk they took they didn't have time to build the story over a few seasons, they needed to get to the point fast and explore in future seasons
art is business first
A lack of cocaine and an ability to determine which shoe goes on which foot in the morning may be the edge required to be a better manager than the CEO of NBC. The "rock star" MBA CEO type may be entertaining but they are very rarely effective.
Right, good luck with that. One of the most important things the future will bring is biotech, esp. life extension and rejuvenation. It's happening whether we want it or not. But try to discuss life extension with supposedly forward-thinking people like on tech sites, and watch the knee-jerk fear and conservatism. The same people who have no problem giving birth in hospitals, living in climate-controlled homes with fridges full of food and driving around in technological cocoons suddenly think life-extension is "unnatural"... Hysterical.
http://xkcd.com/299/
Caprica wasn't bad. Wasn't the best thing on TV, but wasn't bad. But, much like BSG, SyFY didn't know what to do with it and tried to milk it for all it was worth and killed it in the process.
Stupid, stupid stunts like calling NINE SHOWS a "season" and postponing new shows for almost a YEAR. Who can follow a complicated story arc after that?
And horrible, horrible publicity. In 1978, many people enjoyed the Cylon ride at Universal Studios. Although there were a few billboards and a window painting in Hollywood during BSG 2003's last season, and the Vanity Fair spread was a nice touch, often it seemed that BSG was the bastard child of Universal. Even though BSG was owned by Universal, there was NO promotion of BSG when I went to Universal Studios during season 4! A golden opportunity to promote a show in a venue that people from all over the country visit, and there was NOTHING for BSG except in a privately owned comic store on the Citywalk. Lousy, lousy promotion. Yet disposable crap like the "Mutant Shark of the Week" or whatever is everywhere.
It is obvious that SyFy has no clue whatsoever what to do when it somehow stumbles on decent programming. Even as the critics were raving about BSG being "the best thing on TV" Universal/SciFi did not know how to pitch it, nor did they seem to want to try.
So, we know wrestling is pretty much scripted, but how many times do I get home to the TiVo to find that the first 15 minutes of a show I recorded have been taken over by a wrestling "overrun". So I can't even watch the show I recorded anyway because the last 10-15 minutes haven't been recorded for me. Then I have to somehow track a rerun down, if they have one.
Some of the shows I record are in the hope the show will get better eventually, I am looking at you Stargate Universe and Sanctuary, so my motivation to track down a full version of the show to watch is minimal anyway. Sure, I could go online, but I like the lean-back mode of watching TV programs.
That has to be killing some of the ratings as well...
From now on, unless they finish the damn series, I'm not even watching the first episode. I'll catch them all if and when it's over.
Somehow this has to have something to do with Windows sucking, Steve Jobs being a vampire, or a Linux kernel update.
Yes, it was flawed. I liked it in spite of that, perhaps even for some of those flaws. Yes, it could frustrating, yes, much of the characters were not likeable or identifyable (no "everyman" character). But it was trying to do something, really, it was. The acting and production values were top-notch, and they really did delve into all manner of interesting topics for debate, from morality to philosophy to the nature of humanity. And we just got one payoff this week, a nice action sequence with a cylon followed by an iconic phrase ("by your command") at the end. I guess we can re-edit that scene to be syfy headquarters. I'll miss caprica. It was the last reason I had to tune into the pathetic shell that occupies what was once the Sci-fi channel.
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
I feel the same way about Firefly.
It's called Star Trek. We've both been there, and done that. The major problem is that if the future is a shiny, happy place where everyone gets along, you don't really have a show. Plot is driven by conflict. You need some form of antagonist, which means a true utopian setting is fraking boring. That's why even Star Trek had unreasonably belligerent species like the Klingons, Romulans, etc. Man vs. Environment doesn't make for a good TV series, and Man vs. Self isn't good for ensemble casts and protracted plotlines. So, that leaves Man. vs. Man, so, fighting and dystopia it is.
Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.
It is just a soap opera with robots.
This is sad news. I thought Caprica was even better than BSG, one of the best new SF-themed shows. Compare this to major network drivel like "No Ordinary Family", a cartoon remake.
My own opinion is that the themes in the show were too mature. They were aimed at viewers over the age of 12. Future writers are probably learning that lesson.
None of the new genre "mystery" shows, weather it be Caprica, The Event, or Rubicon, are doing all that well in the ratings. Granted, not all of them are amazing shows in their own right, but I think part of it is that viewers simply aren't willing to invest in a "mystery" show when the writers have proven time and time again that they won't actually deliver a consistent answer when it comes to the "mystery" aspect of the show.
Mystery? What mystery?! I don't recall a single mystery in Caprica, it was more like straight-up chronicling. If there was some mystery, even a little, it might have had non-zero interest. It was just so cliche and predictable it couldn't die soon enough.
Maybe. Star Trek as Federation Propaganda is a fun thought process.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
A boring series that nobody watched got cancelled. Big deal.
All his nonsense about the non-sustainability of the cable television model is bunk, too; SyFy's shows were available on iTunes before NBC pulled them; that didn't really change much. That's the point, anyhow, that the fact that a show was produced for cable doesn't preclude it from showing up on iTunes, Hulu, Netflix, etc.
Aaargh!!! Oh, the anguish of being a fan of slow-moving sporadically entertaining cerebral sci-fi!!
I do believe the show had hope, but it certainly suffered from the same problems that affect almost all long-story-arc television these days: 1) the producers don't know how many years they are going to have to tell the story going into the project. (In LOST, for example, this resulted in a good 2-3 seasons of 'filler material' during which the show became so convoluted that basically everybody stopped caring enough to try to understand it. 2) the shows don't provide any resolution of major plot points on a season-by-season level. 24, of course, is the best example of a program doing this well. Every season there is resolution of the main plot. Mad Men also, has a separate central theme for each season which is fully explored and then discarded by the next season. Caprica didn't have that. It just sort of slowly ground on, and given the producers had no idea how long it was supposed to go on for, it's difficult to bring major plot points to satisfying conclusions in a timely enough schedule to keep audiences satisfied.
But I, for one, was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt... Oh well, now I guess I'll have to turn all my attention to the new Sherlock Holmes on PBS. Go Sherlock! (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/sherlock/watch.html)
And what was the point, anyway? Supposedly there were only a limited number of different models, so how come none of the original actors appeared in the series?
I used to watch SciFi Channel nearly all the time, but when all the psychic and ghostbuster wannabe shows started popping up I spent less and less time watching the channel. I made it through the first 2 seasons of BSG but then lost interest and since changing providers almost 2 years ago I still couldnt even tell you what channel # its on. Anyone remember SciFi friday? All evening it was good sci fi programming what in the hell made them loose focus on something that at least based on those around me had to be doing at least ok. Oh well at least there is still BBC America.
The problem was the show. It just wasn't that good. It was OK. But the ONLY reason it was OK was because there is no other good Sci-Fi on TV except Stargate Universe, and even that isn't great.
Gone are the days of good sci-fi shows that are light and fun to watch while still invoking that sense of wonder and inspiration that lets you detach from the present world and wish you were part of this future or alternate world. Stargate Universe and Caprica are perfect examples. They eschew the fun parts of sci-fi for what production studios and writers deem as a necessary foray into the "drama" or "darker" side of things, when all we want are good shows like the sci-fi classics yesterday such as Stargate SG-1, Star Trek TNG or DS9 (or even Voyager!), or Babylon 5. The difference is all those shows DID have a "dark" side, but it was kept separate from the feel-good parts of the show. The parts of shows that made people say "wow, if this is how the future is going to be I can look forward to it!". Most of the sci-fi around now makes you go "ugh" because it just isn't fun to watch.
I miss good sci-fi. And I am willing to bet a lot of others do too, especially based on the cancellation rate of sci-fi shows and the fact that the big networks just won't pickup a big sci-fi show anymore. Thing is, if someone would just stop this whole move into "drama" for the sci-fi genre, I think the viewers would come back in droves.
"I hope you know how very lucky you are to know me, because I am so incredibly incredible."
The show was stupid. It was cancelled because it sucked. Poor attempt to piggyback on the popularity of a great show (BSG). Don't overanalyze this or try to glean any special insights. Bad show sucks, aired on bad network, is cancelled. The end.
rooooar
The show had some interesting themes. Its the only mainstream-ish media that I have seen address uploading and its implications even semi-intelligently. But those interesting themes were surrounded by the most boring writing I've ever endured. It was all so predictable and cliched that I had to force myself to watch for the bits of real sci-fi. Gladiatorial combat between virtual teenage girls? Really? And yet the monologue during the fight addressed how a copy of a person isn't the same person, starting from the first diverging experience. A sci-fi theme if I ever heard one. Very mixed feelings about this, hopefully someone will pick up the memes and wrap them in better writing.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
Caprica had a chance to develop as much thought-provoking depth as the new BSG, but for some reason the show's premise went in another direction. Maybe it was just so the whole show could revolve around a young, cute Zoe??? Ratings, ratings, ratings! How can such a great idea fail?!
The potential for genius in these series was the dichotomy of the Cylons as monotheists who believe in an imminent and transcendent God versus the humans who believe in a worldly pantheon. Why would the once-mechanical Cylons believe in the concept of God? How could this happen with machines? This is the dilemma that needed to drive Caprica, but the creators/writers blew it big time. "I've got it! The avatar or 'spirit' of a monotheist Caprican will be transferred into the original Cylon. That's how they come to believe in God! Plus, that Caprican can be a cute, sexy young girl!!!" Lame!
The question they should have explored is how the Cylons came to their faith. The dilemma they could have developed is, did the programming of their consciousness/AI evolve to develop transcendent spiritual dimensions, or were the Cylons touched by God and given an inextinguishable spirit by him? Mind you, this may be too religious a storyline to be popular, or for a major production company to sign off on....
sigfault (core dumped)
Nobody gives a damn about Caprica.
Nobody ever did.
the confusion between soap opera in space, and actual sci-fi writing.
If they had stuck with the sci-fi part, the series would have more popularity for sure.
What about the mystery of how it took 1.5 years to get from the pilot to the end of one season?
How about they cancel the frakking wrestling, or at least move it to another channel. Wrestling is not SciFi by any definition. Theres a lot of other crap on there that is arguably not SciFi either.
You have to be able to measure advertising. I like the idea of no DRM and such on the downloadable content as much as the next person here. But the reality is that TV creators must be able to measure how many sets of eyes see the adds, and what kind of eyes they are. TV ratings are not about which show is most popular. TV rating are about who's watching, and what value those viewers have to advertisers. Without metrics like "how many" and "what age/gender/ethnicity/etc" it is a very hard sell to advertisers that have limited budget to spend, and want to spend it on the best possible audience for their products.
Stargate Universe is going to follow. Just watch.
Dark scenes, absolutely boring episodes. We just
sit around waiting for it to get better, but it
does not.
The last episode, the one where the guy gets the
blue growth on his arm, was dreadful; just
plain dreadful.
Where the other two series, the original one with
the G'uld, and the later one in Atlantis had a
good story line with good filming and effects,
Universe has poor shooting and poor storylines.
The premise; ie, the spaceship lost in space is
not bad, but the implementation sucks.
This was the only show I was actually watching currently. And seriously? Waiting till sometime beginning of next year to give us the final 5 episodes? That's just a huge fracking slap in the face.
"why don't you just slip into something more comfortable...like a coma!"
This is so much the suck. I really liked this show and it is what pushed me into watching the reboot BSG series (I didn't have cable when it came on the first time). Why did I like it? Well for one, it was different. It wasn't about high action all the time, but offered a more philosophical kind of series. I also loved that it was connecting all the pieces and back story that set the world of BSG. Seeing the how cyclons came into being and why, plus the growth and change of the Adama family was really fascinating.The mixture of past and future tech gave it a nice switch up as well. Now how are going to find out what happened and why? SyFy, or whatever cute thing they are calling themselves these days, really just ended any interest I had in watching the channel. Most of the rest of their titles and showing are b-list at best. The BSG/Caprica line what the only good thing they had. Such a shame.
"This technology stuff is just plum crazy!"
It was not the business model, it was the show. I haved watched all of Caprica so far, and for a show about killer robots, it's very low on the killer robot quotient. I know Moore said it was about a collapsing society, but I came for the killer robots. BSG: Blood and Chrome, which will replace Caprica, should be much better for that. While some of Caprica was intriguing, such as V-World, other story lines were blah. Too much of painting a society (in essence Moore's view of our society), and not enough boom-boom If I want to watch that kind of show, I will watch the History Channel. I want to see robots with guns for hands again... got that SyFy
I think he's right to look at piracy as competition. But his cures are worse than the disease. I mean, give away your shows, simultaneous to air time, in hi def, with no interstitial ads. Just because any other way would not be competitive with piracy. Balloney.
First, if you want a high def copy of the show, you're going to wait an average of 24 hours. If the big networks streamed high def copies of the show in real-time, that is already a huge competitive advantage! You could air it with full commercials for the first 24 hours easily without turning away the audience. Maybe 24-48 hours after the show has aired, you can turn off interstitials and just go with an opening 30 second ad. This would also recognize that one of the chief annoyances to anyone discovering a show and catching up to it would be sitting through the same stale interstitial ads over and over again as they plow through a show.
You don't have to beat a competitor at every level to be competitive. The content producers have the following competitive advantages.
* They own copyrights and they are legal.
* They can release their material at the same time as the show airs, or even BEFORE if they choose.
* They can release pristine copies in high def.
* They can properly support subtitles easily.
* They are easy to find, and their websites SHOULD be free of malware.
* They can hold archives of past shows in an obvious, easy to understand, search, and index way.
* They can monitize some of these perks (early showings, subtitles, etc) with a subscription model if they choose to.
I'd almost prefer a model where I don't subscribe to channels per se, I subscribe to shows. I buy "season passes" to my favorites for $15/season. I'm sure they'll figure it out, but them "figuring it out" will not be them giving away their product, for free, in high def, with no restrictions whatsoever. If this character was NBC's CEO, they'd go bankrupt.
Like my comments? Try my podcast: http://www.baldmove.com
Why are the extremes the only choices?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I only saw previews for it during Stargate Universe, and based on that Caprica didn't look very good.
If anyone watched it, I'd like to know how it fared on the spectrum of Firefly -> BSG -> Space 1999.
Is it worth seeing when it gets to Netflix?
Caprica was a terrible show.
Cylons are spoiled teenaged girls, deep down, where it counts...
Pthththt...
Good riddance.
Make more episodes of Stargate Universe...
Goofy, Geeky Gifts and More!
It all depends on your baseline of miserable/happyness. If your utopia is threatened the loss is that much greater than if your baseline is pretty miserable already. Miserable, grey, claustrophobic, misanthropic. It just doesn't float my boat. That's for 14 year old goths isn't it?
YEH! less of this Sci-Fi shit and more Wrestling!!!!
ugh... they should cancel that whole fucking channel....
if they were worth anything they would've picked up Enterprise when UPN dropped it (and changed the opening song, ye gods...) and they would've given JJ Abrams as many blow jobs as he needed to bring firefly to sci-fi.....
but no.... they're more interested in becoming like SPIKE... good riddance.... first Caprica, then Universe? well, there'll be nothing left for me to watch on that channel...
SyFy has had an endless sequence of short-lived series for the past few years, and most deservedly so. SOSOADS: Same-old-"stuff"-on-a-different-set. And they spend all weekend re-running fourth rate monster/disaster movies. I don't bother tuning them in for anything but Eureka anymore.
If they need a new business model, it's "come up with a good idea and stick with it". Or maybe science fiction just can't compete against sitcoms with jiggly tits and a gay man to be the butt end of all the jokes. If they're in it for they money, they should be selling porn.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
It was true with VR5 and it is still true today. Shows about Virtual Worlds = FAIL. It doesn't matter how much blood and sex appeal they try to insert, unless the characters mean something to the viewers and it feels real, it doesn't matter in reality. More gold spandex and closeups can't hurt - I'm just sayin'.
I'm surprised that Syfy's Sanctuary hasn't been canceled too and what's the deal with all the "ghost" crap. Ghosts don't exist any more than god or GOD does. Pure fantasy folks.
The actors aren't to blame as much as the writers. All the "Lost" clones this season should die too.
Where are all the Saturday morning cartoon spin-offs from Avatar? Clone Wars may be the best TV on TV these days. Sad, I know.
While I mourn the loss of another sci-fi series, I can't say I'm sorry to see this effort cancelled.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Now we won't get to hear frak used in every other sentence. So much for it making the OED.
I never really thought that Scifi would work on commercial tv... yeah stargate SG1/atlantis did well, but still never really hit the look and feel I would like from a scifi series (although it was better than nothing)... What makes most sense is to get HBO or some other subscription channel to do a really good movie-quality series on hard-scifi, rather than a drama series with sci-fi tones (i.e. the SGU series, although it is getting better)... lastly, I do believe that caprica was growing into a good show, the first season had its' major faults, but the second season was maturing...
Kethinov speaks the truth. The show was lame even after it had an actual premise (human survival in the brutal cosmos). Why should it be any fun BEFORE they have anything to do and AFTER we already know how anticlimactic humanity's fate is?
"If I were to ask you a hypothetical question, what would you like it to be about?"
Perhaps if it weren't for that horrific last episode of BSG more people would have given it a chance.
I for one had no interest in any prequel or sequel after that.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
I find tech commentators very funny at times. There are quite a few who are writing good, incisive stories, but at the same time there are a large number who have either disconnected from reality, or just aren't giving credit where it is due. I think it's because some people get a sense of superiority by declaring that "X is a dinosaur business model, and I'm smart enough to see it!" The writer of the original article falls under one of the latter categories.
Here's the thing - most of the suggestions he made were implemented in some at least a year ago. From the article:
"All of NBC Universal's properties should immediately begin offering full episodes in high definition on the web. These episodes should be available online at the same time they air on cable TV. Delaying the posting of these episodes to the website will only drive people to piracy."
This one has been happened for at least two years, by my count. It may not be high-definition, but most shows ARE put on the web the day after they air. Geographical boundaries are enforced, but that probably has more to do with broadcast rights than business models (if you've given your broadcast rights in Britain to the BBC, for example, you're not going to undercut them online).
"Episodes offered via this medium should display no interstitial advertising. Ads should only appear just prior to and just after an episode plays. Interstitial advertising will only drive people to piracy, which shows no interstitial ads."
Already the way it's done.
"No DRM should be used to protect against consumer copying or saving of the episodes from the website to their computers. This will only drive people to piracy."
Can't speak to the DRM side (I've never tried to copy a show, I've only just watched it). But I know that the BBC allows downloads of shows, and it wouldn't surprise me if other stations did too.
"The online episodes should be the same high quality aired on cable TV. Reduced quality will only drive people to piracy. Bandwidth costs can be reduced by leveraging bit torrent."
As far as I know most are offered in at least standard definition. I know that the BBC, for example, also offers downloads in HD, and it wouldn't surprise me if others do too.
"A subscription service should be offered which completely eliminates all advertising for the subscriber and offers other benefits, such as discounted merchandise and other additional services above and beyond the basic TV content without ads."
Well, this might help, and to be fair, as far as I know the television stations don't offer this. And, it's not a bad idea. So, point to the author on this one. But, at the same time, it should be pointed out that what the consumer is interested in is the show, and they're already getting that for free - so there wouldn't be much incentive to use this service in the first place.
"Nothing behind the subscription paywall should be something that can be pirated. Services and physical merchandise cannot be pirated."
Okay - this one needs a reality check. It's a television network - what services precisely is it going to offer? Anything audio-visual in nature can be pirated. And, as far as physical merchandise goes, there is an entire market out there of cheap knock-offs - which is a form of piracy.
"But it's not just NBC Universal. It seems like every major TV company is playing with fire by ignoring the internet."
Um...right. Which is why most networks have websites on which you can watch their programming, as well as launching on-demand services.
So, to sum up - the author of this article is ignoring what television networks are actually doing so that he can prop up a straw man and declare them to be following a dinosaur business model. If he was writing back in 2006, he might have had a point. Unfortunately, he's writing in 2010, and the person who is behind the times in this case is him.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
Seriously. Syfy has been invaded by wrestling (that properly belongs on SOAPnet) and wild goose chases (Ghost Hunters, Destination Truth, etc.) and other crap and they cancel shows like Caprica. It's becoming unwatchable.
The first part of season 1 was reasonable and had some interesting concepts. But GOD, it was simply horrible since the second part. It was an embarrassment to the BSG franchise. Frankly, i'm glad they cancelled this piece of garbage.
calendar years, could it?
I've been watching Caprica, and Stargate Universe. Both suffer from the same disease that infected BSG from the start: Tooooo much 'Fi', and not enough 'Sci'. Do we really have to sit through 57 minutes of character/story-building crap to get 3 minutes of the science-y part? Cripes, these new sci-FI's are more like soap operas than anything else - a total fucking snooze-fest. These writers better get over themselves and figure out what makes a sci-fi show cool to watch. Hint: If it could happen in a western or a soap opera, cut it from the script.
- The Kessel run is for nerf herders. I can circumnavigate the entire Central Finite Curve in a lot less than 12 parse
We watched it and although we didn't like it at first, we stuck with it and it got better. So instead of being able to watch something that was at least getting interesting we get to watch more weight loss shows and wrestling, yeah. This was our only reason to watch SyFy. Bye Bye.
as much as I hate comcast they need to buy nbc and save SCI-FI.
stuff like wcg ultimate gamer needs to be on g4 and not SCI-FI
move the WWE to any other network
fund a SGA mini series or movie to end the show.
move the top shows back to Friday.
His proposal. A rough condensed translation would be networks need to reduce budgets by 90% or more and effectively go nonprofit to compete. It's called PBS and it's drowning. Going internet only is hardly a fix given the severely limited profits and some of us are under draconian caps. I'm finding it tough to stick within my cap just watching a couple of one minute clips a day with normal surfing. Hour long shows are out of the question. Bandwidth usage would go up exponentially and no one is ready for that one. He's proposing exactly what I've heard proposed a 1000X before on Slashdot but you'll notice no one in the industry is proposing a similar model. It's not greed it's the fact it'll never cover production costs even if everyone worked for minimum wage. Most of the similar services are surviving off content that has already had it's nut covered through traditional services. I've yet to hear of a service surviving off all internet only 60 minute shows. FYI I realizing people would like commercials easier to avoid by putting them at the beginning and end of shows but oddly enough advertisers are less inclined to pay for them when no one watches them. Just trying to be realistic.
"All of NBC Universal's properties should immediately begin offering full episodes in high definition on the web. These episodes should be available online at the same time they air on cable TV. Delaying the posting of these episodes to the website will only drive people to piracy.
Episodes offered via this medium should display no interstitial advertising. Ads should only appear just prior to and just after an episode plays. Interstitial advertising will only drive people to piracy, which shows no interstitial ads.
No DRM should be used to protect against consumer copying or saving of the episodes from the website to their computers. This will only drive people to piracy.
The online episodes should be the same high quality aired on cable TV. Reduced quality will only drive people to piracy. Bandwidth costs can be reduced by leveraging bit torrent.
A subscription service should be offered which completely eliminates all advertising for the subscriber and offers other benefits, such as discounted merchandise and other additional services above and beyond the basic TV content without ads.
Nothing behind the subscription paywall should be something that can be pirated. Services and physical merchandise cannot be pirated."
It was almost great, but missed.
Bad camera usage, needing to rely on device and trick to imply emotion instead of getting some of the actors to actually seem emotional themselves, and the over use of the word frak.
The last one was the reason I stopped watching it. It's bad enough when someone delivers a cuss word, any word really, that seems to be i the dialog just to be in the dialog. Add to that a nonsense word and it's just jarring.
And there use of shaky cam at the wrong times was also stupid.
The rest of the show was awesome. The world was interesting, the technology was believable. I think if they stopped forcing the word frak, and had better camera use, the show would have been unstoppable.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
In Star Trek (the original series) Klingons appeared in seven episodes; Romulans, in two. There were 79 episodes. There were a bunch of other gimmicks that were used to set up conflicts -- Weird alien artifact; monster-type alien creature (e.g. salt-sucking shapeshifter, blood-sucking cloud, acid-spewing horta); one or more aliens with superpowers who toy with humans for various reasons; strange disease or infestation. The Klingons usually made for better TV, which is why they're more often remembered.
Of COURSE your magic business model would have saved Caprica! It had nothing to do with ratings! It's not an expensive show they could have just kept it going with all their hulu revenue!
Idiocracy
That movie's fatal flaw was that is had Eloi, but no Morlocks, and those idiots couldn't build those irrigation systems and monster trucks by themselves.
You can't take the sky from me...
WFT, I might as well just cancel TV :(
Seems like the networks need to get off their arse and change away from the "neilsen ratings" because they apparently SUCK. Clearly all the Grandmothers that are their source base watch nothning but Dancing with Idiots and Crap Scene Ingestion...
MacOSX, because making *NIX better is a lot better than waiting for Micro$loth to fix Windows
No, the ending wasn't great but come on... this story wasn't going to have a great ending. It just doesn't support one. They sure did beat how the original BSG ended though!
Likable quirky characters that are human. That's why Friends was so popular...that's why Seinfield is big.
Bitch Bitch Bitch and Cancel. That's all anyone does today!
I like the show. I've watched it from the start and actually hated it at first, but after GIVING IT A CHANCE, I found a lot to like and have enjoyed it very much.
But now they are going to cancel it. Just like they canceled Heros, Jericho, Bionic Women, The Lost Room, Angel, Firefly, Enterprise and, for f* sake, even Star Trek: TOS. The list goes on and on.
The problem with TV is they keep canceling the fucking shows!!!!!!!!!! Who wants to watch any show they can't rely upon to see things through to the end.
So as of this day I NEVER WATCH ANOTHER TV SHOW EVER AGAIN!
FRACKING IDIOTS!
:T:R:A:N:S:
Not only 14 year old goths, as it seems, 'emo' appeals to a much wider public than 'tech'. So for commercial reasons they usually try to downsize the sci-fi element and amplify the drama. Which is why you won't see a happy sci-fi series any time. It would mainly appeal to nerds like us who are excited about science, physics, technology of the future and what is possible with it :)
You might want to try something like the Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex series. It's not a perfect world that people live in, but i wouldn't consider it your standard dystopian future.
About a week ago it was announced that there would be a BSG spin off movie and which might also be a backdoor pilot: http://www.tvsquad.com/2010/10/22/syfy-adama-blood-and-chrome/
I'm not sure I would call it good scifi.
Your post sounds all pompous and faggy to me. Obviously, your shit is all fucked up.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
And that's why it got cancelled.
Flash Forward on the other hand, who knows...
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
Watch instead? Roald Dahl on what to do when you're not watching Caprica:
How used they keep themselves contented
Before this monster was invented?
Have you forgotten? Don't you know?
We'll say it very loud and slow:
THEY...USED...TO...READ! They'd READ and READ,
AND READ and READ...
Wait a minute. Is this because of the Tauron allegory to the Palestinian conflict that aired in the last episode?
That's not as crazy as it might seem. If you know about the history of Hollywood, many of the producers are Jewish. They might not have liked those reference and had it pulled. Honestly, this only comes to mind because there have been a rash of events like this recently. Helen Thomas was fired, then Rick Sanchez. Mel Gibson just got his first acting gig in years and then abruptly he was fired. I'm not prejudice or anti-semitic in anyway. But facts is power corrupts.
Pacing needed some work, needed to have the futury-neat techno stuff not feel bolted on just for a scene, but hey, the robots were just starting to kick some ass. Oh well, I guess there's a new slot for more stargate reruns.
Yeah I know: "You must be new here." Well I did:
Episodes offered via online websites should display no interstitial advertising. Ads should only appear just prior to and just after an episode plays. Interstitial advertising will only drive people to piracy, which shows no interstitial ads.
How dumb can one person be? First off nobody ever watches the ads at the end of an episode. They click "stop". Therefore no (or few) advertisers will be willing to buy the end spot.
Second, episodes cost about 2 million each. An online 30-second ad goes from about $100,000. That's not enough to fund the episode, so you need more than just one or two "ads prior to the episode". While his conclusion that people will not need to pirate if they can get episode without ad-breaks, his financial model will merely send NBC/Syfy to bankruptcy as they spend more money (2 million) then they are taking in (0.1-0.2 million).
I'm also wondering why he thinks the "cable model is bad".
FOX and NBC Broadcast just recently said the cable model is BETTER than broadcast, because even when the economy is bad, cable channels have a guaranteed income. (About 50 cents per home.) That's why they are trying to shift their channels over to the cable model, and rely less on advertising.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Lord, where to begin?
First, NBC and all the major networks already present programming in full on the Internet via their websites. As of two minutes ago, SyFy does, too.
Second, the author grossly overestimates the pervasiveness of broadband Internet.
Third, most people do not use their computers as their primary media outlet; generally, people watch actual television, usually with cable, and supplement regular television viewing with "On Demand", DVR, and/or movie purchase and rental (either from brick-and-mortar stores or increasingly via services like Netflix and Vudu).
Fourth, advertising revenue doesn't just magically appear. If I'm a company looking to advertise, I'm not going to pay you a premium for advertising time if it's going to be easily ignored by the viewer. That's why the most expensive commercial time is half time during the Super Bowl. If the viewer can easily ignore the ad, then the advertiser isn't getting their message across, and they won't pay for more commercial time.
Fifth, if you remove the references to Caprica, this could've been written ten years ago, and would have been about as accurate. Yes, media consumption is moving away from conventional television and paper news, but it isn't killing them off. People are supplementing traditional media with online, mobile, and on-demand media. The subscription model seems to work best because it can be supplemented with minor advertising to keep consumer costs down, but still provide a high enough quality to beat totally free media.
Sixth, the author is too caught up on the Internet angle. The key to keeping ahead of the wave here is not for networks to make increasingly more media-rich websites, but to improve accessibility to media in general. If I'm already paying for cable, I don't want to buy a series of devices to link media accessed via my computer to my television if I can instead buy a single device which allows me to access media at will with a minimum of effort. That's why the real future of media is stuff like Blu-ray players that can access Netflix and Hulu, not an ad-based torrent service (which I believe has been done before, IIRC).
Seventh, sometimes shows fail because they're not profitable, and sometimes they're not profitable because they're not that interesting.
Eighth, and finally, someone who cares about the author needs to tell him that a Lester Molester sparse moustache is worse than a bad combover. If you can't grow it right, do yourself a favor and don't grow it wrong. Seriously. It just looks creepy and gross.
This unbiased moderation brought to you by the Porcine Aviation Group!
From the article:
"All of NBC Universal's properties should immediately begin offering full episodes in high definition on the web. These episodes should be available online at the same time they air on cable TV. Delaying the posting of these episodes to the website will only drive people to piracy."
This one has been happened for at least two years, by my count. It may not be high-definition, but most shows ARE put on the web the day after they air. Geographical boundaries are enforced, but
The kept doing music distribution wrong until Steve Jobs stepped in and made them do it right. Now they're doing video distribution wrong; google made them accept to profit from youtube clips instead of wasting money fighting them, but the media moguls still insist on doing it wrong with new content.
You can't take the sky from me...
How about the fact that there was never really any serious tension? The Star Wars prequels made telling the backstory mildly interesting (Jar Jar Binks not included) even though you knew what was ultimately going to happen. It's not like anyone thought Obi Wan Kenobi wouldn't survive his fight with Anakin at the end of Episode 3. Caprica had too much existing backstory to deal with. You knew that no matter what happened there would be a decades-long peace with the Cylons and then they would destroy the colonies. They never built up any tension and the show got boring.
This space for rent...
TV rating are about who's watching, and what value those viewers have to advertisers. Without metrics like "how many" and "what age/gender/ethnicity/etc" it is a very hard sell to advertisers that have limited budget to spend, and want to spend it on the best possible audience for their products.
Yes but how does Cable TV provide that? Neilsen ratings are only generated from a relatively small subset of viewers. How many people actually know anyone who's household is a "Nielsen family"? Wikipedia indicates only only 25,000 total American households participate in the Nielsen daily metered system and that's out of 114,500,000.
How accurate can that really be?
Wouldn't an online survey provide just as much information but with a substantially increased sampling size? Think about it, you could provide a very short simple form for registering on a site (lets face it, registering on a broadcasters site wouldn't be so bad if it really meant you were getting the kind of DRM-free, high quality media for free like the article mentions) and now you have the basis for your demographics. Next, make it so that when you select a show to watch, it simply asks you "how many people are watching with you tonight?". Now you have some data on how many eyeballs are watching the content. The user goes on, maybe watching one or two short commercials before their show.
Granted, you're going to run into some people that just quickly select an answer to get through it to watch the content but you could probably weight the answers partially based on how quickly the user selected a number (very quick selections may indicate people who just hit something to get passed the question or a automated script to achieve the same result).
Didn't see the point to Caprica, other than NBC/Syfy ("The Syphillis Channel") piling on, riding the coattails of BSG. BSG is done; they should have just let it rest instead of cheapening it by trying to squeeze every last penny of profit possible out of it's legacy. It may be years before I'll go back and watch BSG again from the beginning, but I will not watch Caprica.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
In theory the idea behind Caprica was the corporate politics and foreign policy machinations behind the creation (and then abuse) of cybernetic life in the form of the Cylons, but there was effectively the first working Cylon by the end of the pilot, and she was created by a semi-supernatural deus ex machina. Also she just happened to be a copy of the personality of a religious fanatic with a pathological and completely unmotivated hatred of her parents. So before the series has even begun we already have the Cylons, and the mystery of why they turned out they way they did is just because they're spoiled, angry, borderline psychotic teenagers. (Actually, the virtual reality fantasy of a spoiled, angry, borderline psychotic teenager) Monotheism wasn't a great competing philosophical system, it was just a creepy cult with no point to it other than a pretext for adding lots of pretty teenage girls to the story.
There was one nice touch with the early 20th century clothing. There was something creepy about seeing fashion your brain is telling you is old juxtaposed with futuristic technology. I found that more convincingly alien than any costume or prosthetic.
...when it became focused on the STO and New Cap City and forgot about the evolution of the Cylons and the backstory hinted at in BSG itself.
I'll be commenting on this on my podcast this weekend and invite people to respond with their opinions as well.
Darryl L. Pierce "What do you care what people think, Mr. Feynman?"
Kethinov's assertion that the cable business model needs fixed because syfy can't figure it out is a bit naive, considering shows like Burn Notice, The Closer, Psych, etc. etc. are doing very well on cable networks. I think the problem is that SyFy is clueless as to what makes good science fiction, evidenced by idiotic sharktopus like programing making the cut. You can't just change the i's in your name to y's and expect that to get the consumers a flocking.
Thats what they used to do.
I remember when scifi first came on, they started out with a block of morning scifi cartoons: Robotech, Bionic Six etc. They then would show for the next 8 hours different classic scifi programs (6 million dollar man, buck rogers, quantum leap etc). Weekends were simliar with Cnet news, some comics oriented programming (The anti-gravity room?) then old movies followed by maybe a scifi original movie.
I can understand the need to bring in more viewers, or perhaps different viewers, but you should know what demographic is watching the scifi channel. You should be advertising video games, scifi movies, dvd sets etc, whatever products would appeal to those who like scifi. In fact syfy should be able to charge a premium for targeted advertising, instead of going for lowest common demominator advertising.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
After they turned the series into a christian parable, I totally lost interest. What is it with science fiction shows these days? They almost all come down to a finale that just says "god did it".
Man vs. Environment doesn't make for a good TV series, and Man vs. Self isn't good for ensemble casts and protracted plotlines. So, that leaves Man. vs. Man, so, fighting and dystopia it is.
But the point wasn't shifting from one extreme (pure dystopia) to another (pure utopia). The point was suggesting to shift from one extreme to a combination of the various conflict and world types. A constant dystopian Man vs. Man world is terribly grating, as it starts getting, well, dystopian and hopeless to the viewer. It's miserable and depressing and you start wondering why you're caring about a story where everybody gets emotionally abused week after week with no apparent hope. It turns into an empathic snuff film, in effect. End result is, you need some variety to make a truly engaging story. Not dogged adherance to extremes.
Demanding constant attention will only lead to attention.
The first time we saw a huge, terrifying Cylon Centurion come to life, stand up, and make a phone call in a squeaky, teenage girl voice, was I the only one who died a little bit inside?
In Star Trek (the original series) Klingons appeared in seven episodes; Romulans, in two. There were 79 episodes. There were a bunch of other gimmicks that were used to set up conflicts -- Weird alien artifact; monster-type alien creature (e.g. salt-sucking shapeshifter, blood-sucking cloud, acid-spewing horta); one or more aliens with superpowers who toy with humans for various reasons; strange disease or infestation. The Klingons usually made for better TV, which is why they're more often remembered.
Don't forget Space Hippies. That that episode where Spock got high on spores and slapped Kirk around.
Yes, US cable TV sales are flat. In fact, they peaked in 2001. That's before video over the Internet was popular, but when digital over-the-air HDTV was ramping up.
We'll know that cable TV is in trouble when the sports networks start expressing concern over declining viewing. So far, that hasn't happened. What has happened is fragmentation. Network and per-channel market share is declining.
Meanwhile, Univision just passed The CW in market share, and is about to move into the #3 position. Univision has little competition in the US Spanish-language sector, so it's become the main network for a big chunk of the population. The original author has no clue. SF has a minor market share. The action is in telenovelas.
Any chance of a scifi series that isn't dystopian? Its old, its boring and it shows no imagination. Time to cheer up.
If you eat the other pill, the Matrix had a utopian side. Cypher almost pulled it off.
Then again, you asked about a series, and Matrix had no sequels.
Fatal flaw only depending on your imagination. I had imagined manufacturing to become an almost completely automated process - product development would have halted, but the assembly line and raw material mining could occur autonomously, indefinitely. If the machine breaks down, it triggers....well..there are no AI repair robots in that universe I suppose. Because if they existed, then robot AI would be running more of the show. So maybe just better machinery that never broke down. We are talking about a considerable jump into the future.
Why do SF shows/movies have to choose between utopian or dystopian futures? Maybe the future will be like most of the past, not entirely good, but not completely bad either.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Welcome to the American standard of TV.
With SciFi changing it's name to imply they are more than science fiction. Then taking one of the greatest cult classic Science Fiction classics to a prequel that is brooding and dramatic, and neo-social-political rather than anything actually SciFi (other than the occasional scene in the virtual world, which was incredibly like the real world for all intents and purposes, and a quick 5 minute robot scene a season)... Are they trying to convert geeks into socialites, or convince socialites they are geeky???
I mean really, to say that science fiction (which made them one of the greatest channels on cable) is too much of a niche market, they need to be like every other cable channel is kinda sad, and depressing.
It's hard enough that MTV switched to TV shows, and Cartoon Network is going to Live Action... What next, Comedy Central actually getting a Real News Show???
(btw, if that last one actually happens, I will turn off cable for life... and I will know that it is truly the end of the beginning of the end)
Haven is good, it holds a strong character base, the story lines are fairly original while holding to the sort of traditional ghoulies. Sanctuary is up there, and I am glad it's back. Story and characters are all over the place, but it's fun to watch... Eureka is just fun (ok getting a little like heros with it's constant character reset, and the fact that you can tell the writters have NO CLUE what they are doing). Warehouse 13 is Friday the 13th the series re-invented. Probably one of my favorite shows.
Caprica... well, they could have gotten rid of the cylons, and left everything else in, and ran it on USA and nobody would have known or cared... It actually probably would have sold as a show if it was played right after psyched (ok maybe a little too dark for that... after dead zone maybe...)
I guess its back to watching Sharktopus. At least they cancelled it and have qualitty B-movies playing all the time
Please don't set me for trolling, that was sarcasm
The world is how you make it
1. Reading over the comments, it seems everyone didn't like the finale to Battlestar Galactica, or BSG. Why? I mean, other than that silly part about travelling a trillion trillion miles to an alien planet with aliens that had 99% compatible DNA, the rest of it was great. Sad, interesting, cool, exciting, surprises, it was great and had all the ingredients of a good final episode. 2. Nobody likes Caprica? I thought it was very interesting about how AI which becomes so similar to humans and it thinks its human, it was exploring all these cool ideas about that such as religion.
Just because the U.S. is a republic does not mean it is not a democracy. Democracy/republic are not mutually exclusive.
oblig xkcd
Granted I might have been expecting too much from Caprica, but I was watching to see the Big Steel Monster Destroy All Humans hour. It has been laborious to say the least, but I kept watching because I really wanted to try to care about the religious politics of a made up colony.
... the religious politics of a made up galaxy. And meetings alluding to the fact that at one time in the past, or perhaps some point in the future, cool explosions from arrays of awesome guns are/were a part of the show.
However, SyFy still shows Stargate SG-1. A show that, unlike Atlantis with its arrays of guns and cool explosions, seems to just show meetings about
I like music
I live in Mexico, and became a fan of BSG after buying the mini-series in DVD. Didn't understood this was the beginning of a tv series after a couples of years, when the first season aired at Universal almost at midnight. Then the second season was moved with no explanation to another channel (TNT LA) at dinner time and the third season to another channel (I-Sat or something) almost two years after that. Season 4 never saw the light here.
I don't know what happened, but if I as a fan didn't have opportunity to follow the show correctly, imagine what happened with the common, non-geek public.
I wouldn't have approved of Caprica. At least, not as a prequal to BSG.
Prequals suck. They are too restrictive. You already know the ending. It is just a way to cash in on family names and familiarity and such.
I might have approved of a show with Caprica's premise set in its own "universe", not trying to cram the Adama family into the history.
And if anyone wants to see why exactly this "business model" would sink like a rock, look at how badly the Humble Indy Bundle did. All the high moral reasons and justifactions people try to give for piracy go straight to hell when actually try to cater to them.
Fatal flaw only depending on your imagination. I had imagined manufacturing to become an almost completely automated process - product development would have halted, but the assembly line and raw material mining could occur autonomously, indefinitely. If the machine breaks down, it triggers....well..there are no AI repair robots in that universe I suppose. Because if they existed, then robot AI would be running more of the show. So maybe just better machinery that never broke down. We are talking about a considerable jump into the future.
See, you can't even rationalize it properly: Fatal flaw :)
Things work too well for them to be so broken down; there needs to be an elite feeding off the domesticated herd, or else it makes no sense that the herd has a paddock.
The story it tells of an average man rising to the top of a pile of idiots is still a good story, and adding a shadowy society of cruel geniuses would hurt that story, but the science fiction background needs this balance.
You can't take the sky from me...
>>>>>"Episodes offered via this medium should display no interstitial advertising. Ads should only appear just prior to and just after an episode plays."
>>
>>Already the way it's done.
Not quite true. NBC.com, Syfy.com, and hulu.com insert either 1 or 2 ads at every standard commercial break. The writer is saying they should stop doing that, and just play the episode straight through w/o interruption.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
under the trappings of SCIENCE and science's attempts to understand faith.
At least, that's what they became after the writers for both series decided to head in those directions as both teams never had clear plans of what the show was going to tell the audience. And don't drag out that old "they knew what the final image of LOST was going to be" because even though they knew it would be SPOILERS Jack closing his eyes where he woke up in the pilot END SPOILERS. they had no idea how they were going to get there since the beginning, and that's a complete cop-out.
Caprica is also apparently a show of faith under the trappings of science, but much more overtly so, and as the OP writes, it is quite ponderous and I stopped watching it 2 episodes ago after it bored me to tears. Very likely the prequel concept was announced and then thrown to a bunch of writers without an actual plot and they had to scramble to write something that ended up being much too direction-less.
Ah, okay. Up here (Canada), Space and Comedy Network don't insert ads at all, as far as I know, and I think the same goes with Global and CTV.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
They keep canceling TV shows, especially those that have a storyline, and then they wonder why people don't watch TV anymore and why they cancel their cable or satellite subscriptions?
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles: Cancelled. There was something about "humans helping machines against machines" in the end, we'll never know.
Reaper? Cancelled. IMHO it was much funnier than Chuck.
Heroes? Cancelled. Seriously, fuck you NBC.
Better Off Ted? Cancelled. There was a lot of good jokes in there, especially the synergy between the Phil and Lem.
Caprica? Cancelled. It was about to get interesting, explaining the mindset behind the whole Cylons war, but we'll never know either.
So, what's on the air? Wrestling on a channel that can't spell Sci-Fi. Contests like American Idol. Unfunny rip-off of Robot Chicken made by freakin' Mad TV.
If you have more than 15 brain cells, it seems the TV networks executives don't want your money.
> "A better, more modern business model could have saved Caprica from cancellation."
Better writing and pacing might have saved it. The only business model that would have saved it in it's current form is federal subsidy. Or nudity. That might have helped.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
On the first remake what caught my attention was Cylons infiltrated colonial battlestars and fighters with software "kill switches." Since everything was networked together then this virus can spread to other computer systems. Damn, I'm thinking that is what can happen to us as all computers and cellphones are designed and made outside USA.
On the remake, Adama (Edward James Olmos) Battlestar was not infected because he was an old duffer who didn't modernize his systems (none of the Galactica's PDP-11s were networked, all his Vipers used Mocom 70s).
mfwright@batnet.com
FlashForward was a victim of piss poor planning by the network. They took like a 3-month hiatus, then put it up against tough competition (I think like American Idol or something) that already had strong viewership, and wondered why their numbers were down from before. It's a crying shame too, because FF was, in my opinion, the best show on TV, and its single season stands as the best scifi thriller series ever. Some of the episodes were really, REALLY good. I recently purchased the dvds as a gesture of my support for quality television and have been rewatching them for the third time.
Can we have another season or two of Firefly please?
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
The mantra he is pushing is
1. Caprica got canceled because it isn't making enough money.
2. If businesses made more money, they wouldn't have to cancel shows that are less profitable.
3. If businesses took away most of the pirate's incentives, piracy would disappear. His argument is that if you release the best possible version of every show, free of charge, with ads either at the beginning or end of the show, then piracy would disappear.
4. Set up a subscription system in which subscribers get comercial-free versions of the show (but put nothing that could be copied behind a paidwall; contradiction?). Also, give subscribers discounts on merchandise.
5. This would have saved Caprica.
My response:
1. Probably.
2. But they would, anyway.
3 & 4. I agree with 3, but I disagree with the assertion that you would make more money doing it. If the first fifteen minutes of the video are ads, in a drm-free player, people will skip the ads, and ad revenue will be lost. So, you're reducing your ad-driven profits, losing subscription fees that cable companies would have paid, and hanging your hopes on the idea that people will pay a monthly fee for the right to visit your gift shop.
5. NBC doesn't care about Caprica. If they can make more money with Caprica, they will do so. If they can make more money throwing those resources at something else, then Caprica will get canceled.
Maybe, just maybe the shows were getting so close to the truth that TPTB decided to cancel the show(s) before anyone caught on. Most sci-fi shows are not much more that an indoctrination of the future yet to be. There, fixed that for ya.
Long live Firefly, shiny.
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
it was crap compared to BSG - un-emotive, cheap drivel.
This one has been happened for at least two years, by my count. It may not be high-definition, but most shows ARE put on the web the day after they air. Geographical boundaries are enforced, but that probably has more to do with broadcast rights than business models (if you've given your broadcast rights in Britain to the BBC, for example, you're not going to undercut them online).
If they made more money on a world wide online release than the reduction in broadcast right value, they'd do it. That would just be business. However, I suspect the TV networks intentionally price such a show unrealistically low to maintain their position. They absolutely don't want to teach people to go online and watch it, that would be shooting themselves in the foot. So as long as no one can do without broadcast income, they can effectively dictate the terms.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I don't agree. Tekwar is an example of a world that I would hardly call dystopian; it pretty much extrapolates what's going on now with technology and applies modern social issues, such as drugs, to the setting. Now I'm not going to argue the quality of Tekwar (I liked it, but I know not everyone did), but what it attempted to do is an example of a society where it's not exactly dystopian and still had at least a good shot at a reasonable plotline and interesting stories.
Or a lot of Phillip K Dick's stuff would fit that role too. His stuff has a lot to do with the nature of technology and how it affects identity, or opens up new avenues in our lives that we never considered, such as in Minority Report and allowing the main character to explore avenues of understanding and altering his future, something no one today can do, and the story was driven by this moral question that we hadn't considered.
Again, the examples above may not be the best in terms of quality, but they are examples of decent Sci-Fi that doesn't have to be Space Opera warfare or dystopian settings.
Well, I'm not at all surprised. I LOVE BSG. And I still think a show like Caprica could kick ass. I think the problem is that Caprica didn't get in to the real action of things.
They should spin off another series that takes place about 10 years later. Call it "Thirteen" (after the colonies) and have it be centered directly around the war with the Cylons before the cease-fire is signed.
I saw it as a snapshot of a fatally wounded system, much like a headless chicken. Sure, most of the signs of life were still going on, but it was slowly dying. When something wore out, nobody would be able to fix it or build a new one. Civilization would gradually die out, humanity would once more become hunter-gatherers and history would repeat itself.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
I know I'm going to get flamed to hell and back for this, but I contend that none of these shows are *real* science fiction. I've long argued that even Star Wars isn't science fiction, and that's kind of why I hate it. The main conflict in any science fiction story should arise from, y'know, science. Not whiny politicians pondering who they should attack next or who will attack them next. You could pretty much replace the Death Star with gunpowder, the Millennium Falcon with a sailboat, and the evil Empire with some sort of old timey monarchy, and you pretty much have the same fundamental story. The same kind of replacement trick is a little harder with something like nanotechnology and the grey goop scenario (though certainly not impossible), giving it much stronger leg to stand on as 'science fiction. So perhaps 'scifi' writers should STOP RECYCLING STORIES WE'VE ALREADY SEEN BEFORE!
... even americans get tired about the daily dose of "omgterroristsweallgonnadie!!!!!!"-crap...
I stop watching the PsiFly channel when it started to produce those horrible turn-key monster movies, ala Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus. "Tremors" was better than most, but after the 100th rerun ...
The writers have to 'conserve bodies' - the 'dumb jock' plays too much of an instrumental roll in the crew (he's their main shuttle 'pilot', and one of the security/military). When people are dead on the show, they aren't easily replaced (although, with the addition of the 'Lucian alliance' (I may have spelled the name wrong) people at the end of Season one, I suppose things could work out that some of the alliance people end up being integrated into the earth crew, a la Deep Space voyager and that rebel group which ended up stuck with the federation crew at the other side of the galaxy, so you *could* potentially get some 'replacements' from that group.
But, my point is, you can only kill off so many key crew members, before it begins to seem ridiculous that the remaining people could even *survive* without them.
There was so little sci-fi in Caprica. I tried watching it but couldn't stand the writing or the acting.
Hard Core BSG fan here. Like many of you are.
What really pains me about the killing of the show is that I was fully expecting to see the events leading up to, and eventually the actual events of the Cylon War. Including all the expected retconned hooks into BSG.
And especially battlefields full of badass TOS era Cylons wielding swords, and the back-story of why a particular Battlestar was built so shoddily (mob influence on the labor unions?).
But now that all won't be seen.
Huh?
So I was wondering if people would even check my link or would the just "know" which XKCD I linked to
Capirca was boring. I loved BSG (especially the early season, the later seasons, well the five was lame, and the finale sucked.), but Capirca was just so damn boring. At no point did I care about anyone.
IMHO, the primary reason for Caprica's failure is its use of soap opera style multi-episode story arcs. The majority of TV viewers want *something* resolved within an episode. One current show that does this is Burn Notice, which uses the formula of one complete story per episode, intermixed with parts of a longer story spanning the season. This is a somewhat simplistic approach, but it works. The over stretched story lines is also where Lost went off the tracks. Presenting a weekly TV series as chapters of an epic novel is just lazy, in my opinion. You have to fit your work to the medium.
Eureka? I haven't seen a lot of it, but it seemed fairly non-dystopian to me.
That reason would be that it was appallingly bad. Eric Stoltz was trying his best to hold up the series with both arms but eventually it collapsed even on him! His Baltar-like character was the single only likeable character in the entire pantheon. Everyone else just could have died brutally and it would have been cheering! And WHATS WITH ALL THE RELIGION??????? The religious aspects were one of the most tedious parts of BSG and most of us spent our brain CPU just filtering it out (or hoping it would turn out that god was a Super-AI that was driving the Cylons). For it to be emphasised in the new series was just painful. Pity, it had a good cast and some really nice eye candy, but yet again, series executives forgot to hire a writer.
...but this prequel often had trouble with its story. It's special effects were extremely ordinary in alot of circumstances. You can only suspend your level of disbelief TO A POINT - an extremely obvious fake car explosion ruins this immersion a little bit. This whole thing with sects and that manipulative woman irritated me and is boring. Sure, Zoe's hot but it doesn't make up for the rest of the shows issues. Quite simply - even if BSG did have average writing occasionally, it's miles ahead of this prequel.
But it's OK! Lots of 'tards go on to live really kick-ass lives. My first wife was 'tarded, she's a pilot now!
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
My wife and I have been watching Caprica. The biggest issue I was finding with it though wasn't knowing the ending, but seeing no realistic way to tie Caprica's story into BSG.
The connections just weren't there, and Caprica would have been better off standing on it's own as a sci-fi than the minor and lame attempts to connect the shows (Like having Bill Adama as a boy in the show at all).
This leaves EUREKA as the last show worth watching on the channel formerly known as SciFi. I suspect as soon as this season of DEXTER ends, we will yank out the DISH receivers, erect an antenna and install a Mythbuntu box. There's $960/year we will save; not bad.
There is nothing wrong with yr Internet. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling the transmission - NSA
I always wondered about the intensity in which the toasters loved God so much, how that evolved. I though the Caprica series delived into that. I don't think a multi season episode list would have worked, but one season, wrapping up those loose ends would have satisfied me. One the new SciFi buz model, isn't that what Sanctuary was all about?
I've read through most of these comments, and I agree with a lot of what I read. Just my .02 here...
Caprica played way too heavily on the teen angst/religion angle. Honestly, I pretty much shit-canned the show after I tuned in and saw a cheesy ocean backdrop and "elders" running around with robes on, while some holier-than-thou "mother" sipped on tea and ordered people around. Wow, really? How about even a cursory examination of machine intelligence? Its ability to reason? Learning engines? Anything? PLEASE? The swooping eye? Explanation? WANT TO KNOW MORE. No. I got crumpets and religious prima donnas circle jerking themselves into oblivion. Ugh.
My other .02 on the finale of BSG: SCREW EVERYTHING EXCEPT THE ROBOT CYLONS GETTING THEIR OWN BASESHIP. Hell yeah. In episode Six of One (I think it was...) one of the Six models removed the Centurions' telencephalic inhibitos, enabling their higher logic/cognitive functions. After that, I feel it was strongly implied that they -chose- to fight with humanity. I reaaaaaallllllly wish they could have worked with that more in depth.
WHY CAN'T WE GET MORE ABOUT THAT!?!? Maybe it's just me, but I see enough "human drama" on a daily goddamn basis, what with work, the economy, the gutter-ass city I work in, the news, etc. I want to explore new ideas, new concepts. I want to see those machines make decisions and learn HOW they do it. Caprica fell woefully short on this for me, and while BSG touched on it, they didn't deliver enough in my mind. BSG is the reason why I delved into Cybernetics, getting into von Foerster's work especially, and I would backflip outta my recliner if I saw a show really take some of this stuff seriously and put it into an entertaining and accessible format to people. Tall order, I know, but goddamnit I can dream.
Get off my lawn, M$ = Fail, Taco, Beowulf cluster, ..overlords, etc. You get the point.
Whether or not you liked Caprica, what the channel-formerly-known-as-SciFi did with it is unforgivable. The whole channel is unforgivable, at this point. They had the opportunity to make themselves into a GREAT genre channel, given the number of ideas and shows they could create/steal from BBC/ITV, but they went the cheap route, instead, and fed the mindless US viewers that want pseudoreality programming. That's what SyPhy claims their viewers want, at any rate--along with things like Sharktopus movies. The kicker is they green-lighted a pilot by Eddie Olmos called BSG: Blood and Chrome (or something like that) that follows Adama during the first Cylon war--more explosions than drama, and I guess they think THIS is going to appeal more to their audience. Don't EVEN get me started on their unnecessary remake of Being Human....
Only interesting thing wind up in stories. The reason you and I are probably not characters in a TV series (ala "The Truman Show")... we don't do enough different things, day to day, to entertain an audience. The stories worth telling to a large group of people are by their very nature extreme, at least along some axis.
-Dave Haynie
at least thats where the paychecks came from
A better idea might be to improve the writing, pick up the pace, and make the show just a little less FRAKKING BORING. Then who knows, more people might watch it.
I mean geeze, how COULD the plot go any slower?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
>Caprica... well, they could have gotten rid of the cylons, and left everything else in, and ran it on USA and nobody would have known or cared..
Hell, they could have gotten rid of the cylons, left everything else in, and ran it on LIFETIME and maybe it'd still be on the air. Or Oxygen.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
(1) I can't tell you. They lost me in season 3, so I never saw the end. I heard it sucked, though. I heard words like "directionless", "implausible", "senseless", "a waste of time", "a huge let-down", all terms that just guarantee I run right out and not see it.
(2) I think most of the "fun" in Caprica was in waiting for something to happen. Oh, and looking at Alessandra in various skimpy evening wear -- that was nice.
Unfortunately, most of the interesting stuff (including, incidentally, most of the effects) was in the pilot, and I think we started to get restless after a dozen episodes of emoting. You just can't take a show off Oxygen, add a few sci-fi elements and expect it to be a hit sci-fi show. It doesn't work like that.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Babylon 5 established that having a multi-season plot arc is a good and viable approach to writing a television series. It allows you to do things possible in novels that aren't possible in the traditional model of television series in which each episode hits the reset button. In particular, you can set up mysteries and enigmas, connected to a larger-scale plot, that extends beyond each episode; this gives viewers a reason to watch each episode closely and take pains to avoid missing an episode.
However, to be effective, plot arcs must be written first, and kept in mind as each episode is written. If a writer simply throws in enigmas without the writer actually knowing what those enigmas signify, than eventually the entire thing will fall apart.
What amazes me is that while story arcs have become increasingly common, it still seems rare that the writers actually have the story arc plotted out first.
I was very angry at the conclusion of BSG. I had foolishly assumed that the plot arc had been meticulously written out from the beginning; I kept extending credit to the series, expecting that many of the enigmas would have some significance, and that everything would come together in the end in some intellectually satisfying resolution. I kept extending credit after the New Caprica episodes, ignoring the evidence that the writers were just winging it.
One example that I found particularly irritating about BSG, that I'm surprised I haven't seen pointed out elsewhere: at the end of one of the earliest episodes (was it the pilot?), Adama returns to his cabin to find a note, saying only, "There are twelve Cylon models," with no indication where that note came from. We never find out who left the note, or why they thought Adama should know this. Worse, since the conclusion of the series, I found out that not only had they not worked out the identity of the Final Five, but that they hadn't even planned for the Final Five to be part of the plot; the writers even forgot that they'd only invented six of the Significant Seven. So, the writers called attention to an enigma -- why exactly twelve Cylon models -- which they hadn't even thought about themselves, and which they never explained.
In short, while BSG had some interesting elements, while at the episode level the writing was good, there was very bad writing, to the level of incompetent and amateurish, at the overall plot level.
I'm tempted to think that this is a problem of sloppy postmodernism: suspicion of meta-narratives lapses into blindly neglecting meta-narratives, forgetting their importance to good storytelling.
(I'm writing too much already, but in fantasy, "A Song of Fire and Ice" seems to me to suffer from a similar problem.)
I was hoping for a show about robots kicking ass and all I got was a show about terrorists smoking and bombing people.
No wonder why it's canceled.
The above is not worth reading.
Could also do with the move to Tuesday nights. Who watches TV late night when code needs coding and money needs making? Scifi and Friday go together like milk and chocalate. Even the writers of Back To the Future knew this to mock it.
Nielsen ratings do NOT work. The people chosen by Nielsen are not representative of the general population let alone people who like sci-fi.
The TV studio execs should pull their heads out of their asses and get the cable box companies and cable companies to provide anonymous data from viewers directly rather than going through Nielsen.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.