The last ten episodes of Battlestar Galactica will air starting January/2009, announced SCI FI Channel President Dave Howe just a few seconds ago…
ETA: (later in the afternoon)
SCI FI aired a short teaser of Ron Moore’s Caprica, the Battlestar prequel set 51 years before the Battlestar time-line, for the critics. The tag lines:
Two families rise…one with strength, one with vision….one family’s loss is another’s opportunity… a conflict that will shape destiny….
The end of humanity has a beginning….
During the Caprica panel, creator Ron Moore talked about how the concept of Caprica came about, and in the process distributed a small hint about the Battlestar finale.
"[Battlestar executive producer] David [Eick]and I were talking about various ideas about what a possible companion piece to Galactica would be…the way we are going to end Battlestar doesn’t really hold itself open for another story. We’re going to end the Galactica tale with a period at the end of a sentence."
"And then we said, what is it?" he continued, "is it another Battlestar? No, that’s boring. You could do the first Cylon war which is part of our backstory, but then it’s just another war story and we felt we’d already covered that ground….when Remi’s [Aubuchon] idea came in….we realized there was a great possibility to do a different kind of story. This show is really nothing like Battlestar. It has a completely different tone, mood and way of telling stories. It’s shot very differently…I was particularly attracted to the idea of doing a science ficton piece that’s not built on a foundation of action adventure. It’s really a character piece, a drama infused with political commentary and religious overtones that really digs into a people and a society, and why and how it came unglued."
Executive producer David Eick said the "technological emphasis" in the series is "on
artificial intelligence…that’s the new technology, the new frontier in this show rather than space travel."
According to Aubuchon, the 12 planets in Caprica are divided. "Each planet has its own government," explained Aubuchon, "part of the plotting will be the conflict between the 12 Colonies."
Moore said that Caprica is "a vibrant society…at the height of power and decadence…so it’s a thriving, vibrant culture that’s going to come apart as we watch…..what we are playing in the show is the idea of assimilation in an immigrant society. The Adamas came from the planet of Tauron, which is one of the 12 planets of the 12 colonies."
Moore also said an on-going arc of the storyline will be an exploration of "ethnic and racial identification" and the clash of cultures. "Here’s a group of immigrants that came to Caprica and are struggling with the melting pot versus their own cultural identification," Moore clarified. "Joseph Adama…changed his name, has tried to assimilate, and is having struggles about who and what he was exactly."
SCI FI executive vice president for original programming Mark Stern said the channel expects to take delivery of the two-hour backdoor pilot "in the next few weeks." The network will "then decide whether to air as a full blow series," according to Stern.
