Guest Review by Sam LeGassick
One of my favourite TV series of all time – Battlestar Galactica – sadly finished a while ago but the makers came back with prequel spin-off Caprica, or in other words – CRAPrica.
If anyone is thinking about starting to watch this then let me begin by telling you not to. Read this review and save yourself the chore of putting yourself through watching every episode. I mean it. There’s a reason why it’s cancelled.
Let’s start by saying what it’s about. It follows Joe Adama (Bill’s father) who has lost his wife and daughter in a terrorist explosion, set off by a friend of Zoe Graystone. Zoe is the daughter of Daniel Graystone who is basically the guy responsible for creating cylons. At the same time, there’s a religion going on with extremist leader Clarice getting people to blow stuff up and all that. It’s this religion of the One God that we know through Battlestar and, well, that’s about it.
There’s different storylines going on with stuff like a virtual world, the Adamas finding their Tauron roots, Zoe as a weird Neo in The Matrix, Zoe’s friend Lacy joining the terrorists and Daniel trying to keep it all together. The problem is a lot of things, firstly the acting is average at best, Eric Stoltz does reasonably well but by the end you feel like he’s running on empty and I’d argue he’s the best there, even Esai as Joe Adama is tough to watch at times, often giving hammy performances at crucial times.
That’s the least of their problems – which is really saying something. The real trouble here are the stories – they are so so so boring and worthy that it’s often cringe-worthy. They string things out for ages, there’s a lot of talking, not much action or indeed Sci-Fi (for something that is supposed to be a staple Sy-Fy show) and you spend the whole time waiting for something to kick off, which it doesn’t. It’s a disappointment after another disappointment. Each episode was slow, convoluted, poorly executed and completely soulless. I heard some backlash about it getting cancelled but, seriously, who is watching this? What are they getting out of it?
Another huge issue is the characters – they are so wet, so pathetic and even when they try to be strong, it feels so fake and awkward that you just want to turn over. Zoe is shit, Lacy is shit, Joe is shit, they’re all shit. Everything is so serious all the time, about boring stuff, it tries to be pseudo-political, pseudo-religious and it makes me think that Battlestar Galatica might have been just a fortunate series of events that turned into a good series. The story, in theory, doesn’t really even make sense. Fortunately, it’s been announced that Bill Adama will be back for another spin-off series about the Cylon Wars which at least will have some action in it. Caprica however was a complete disgrace, it might have been a good idea in theory but in practise it was an abomination.
Not only this, but it shatters some illusions people would have thought about where Battlestar’s roots come from. Everything about the Cylons, the One God, Joe Adama – it’s all shit and I wish I hadn’t watched any of it. It doesn’t know if it’s a sci-fi show, a drama, a teen cult favourite or what, it was too big a project to handle and with such awful writing, it deserves to be a lesson learnt that sometimes stretching storylines out, not giving your audience anything and having such an egotistical self-belief that your characters are strong enough to hold a show together just doesn’t always work.
Craprica.
Rating: 2/10
