While Ronald D. Moore’s Battlestar Galactica is often lauded as a classic of sci-fi TV, the creator’s SyFy follow-up deserves just as much credit. Even though SyFy’s space opera Killjoys should be just as famous as Battlestar Galactica‘s reboot, it is admittedly easy to see why Ronald D. Moore’s earlier show is still singled out as a unique achievement in sci-fi television storytelling decades after its premiere.
Starting life as a three-hour Sci-Fi Channel miniseries in 2003, Battlestar Galactica‘s reboot proved popular enough to spawn four seasons. Ostensibly a reboot of the original 1978 series of the same name, Battlestar Galactica took a major risk by introducing a complex new mythology to the franchise. In Moore’s show, human survivors live in the Twelve Colonies of Kobol. Cylons, man-made robots, fight a devastating war against them as the survivors try to navigate their new reality.
Initially, Battlestar Galactica‘s story focused on the ship’s inhabitants, but this soon gave way to a more expansive, immersive epic saga that spanned thousands of years. One of the most ambitious sci-fi shows ever, Battlestar Galactica stood out among a fleet of sci-fi ensemble shows with its complex serialized storyline and unapologetically morally complex story. However, Moore’s follow-up, Caprica never got the credit the prequel deserved for keeping this innovation going.
Caprica Takes Battlestar Galactica In A More Cyberpunk Direction
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Although Caprica was a prequel to Battlestar Galactica, taking place 60 years before the events of the reboot series, the show felt as much like the British cyborg drama Humans or HBO’s 2016 reboot of Westworld as it did Moore’s earlier reboot. More concerned with virtual reality, AI, and corporate overreach than interstellar war and existential battles against robots, Caprica owed as much to Blade Runner as the original show did to more traditional stories of space battles.
In its lone 19-episode season, Caprica humanizes the Adama family. Set on the titular planet, Moore’s prequel sees Eric Stoltz’s wealthy entrepreneur vow to bring back his dead daughter via a new technology that will transfer a digital version of her personality into a cybernetic body. In the process, the show’s protagonist inadvertently creates the first Cylon, one of Caprica’s many reminders that even technological disasters can have their roots in well-intended innovations.
While Battlestar Galactica was concerned with intergalactic war, Caprica is more focused on the ways that corporate overreach sets the stage for the Cylons to defeat humanity in the first place. This does mean that the series abandons the space-set thrills of Firefly, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and the Battlestar Galactica reboot itself, which may not have sat well with some viewers.
Caprica Lives Up To Battlestar Galactica (& Deserved More Seasons)
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However, Caprica still undeniably lives up to the potential of the prequel’s premise, and deserves credit for doing something thoroughly new and original with the central conceit of the franchise. It would have been easy and tempting to follow up an acclaimed space opera with another series that followed the same basic format, especially in an era when everything from the Babylon 5 reboot to Star Trek: Enterprise to the Stargate franchise shows were all this same subgenre.
Instead, Caprica took a major creative risk by flashing back to the creation of the first Cylon. Critically divisive classics like Blade Runner prove that cyberpunk has often been a tricky sell for audiences. Even hits like The Matrix movies are balanced out by unambiguous flops like Johnny Mnemonic, and the small screen had even fewer successful cyberpunk projects when Caprica debuted in 2009.
Despite this, Ronald D. Moore’s Battlestar Galactica prequel still opted to expand the world of the franchise by exploring another sci-fi subgenre entirely. Not only did this make Caprica an unpredictable series, but it also allowed the Battlestar Galactica reboot to become an even bigger, more expansive story than ever before.
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