Ok, so I can see why the came up with an excuse to cancel it but airing 1/4 of 1/2 a season is just stupid.
Now all I have left to watch on SyFy is Eureka. Once that ends, I don’t think I will have any faith left in that network every again.
DVDs out on 12/21/2010? This is one show that I’ll wait for the freebees - whenever they are aired.
And I was getting into being able to see SG1s Dr Frazier (Teryl Rothery) on the screen again…
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I never thought about why I stuck with Caprica, but the comments about how AMC would have been a better fit for the show makes sense as Mad Men and Rubicon are slow movers, too. While AMC wouldn’t have OK’d a full 22 episode season, you’d have had to settle for 13 ep arcs.
I’m with you. They air the first 10 episodes. Yes, the show got off to a slow start, but by episode six or seven things really started to take form, leading up to a nice cliffhanger episode where Zoe is running away and Amanda is plummeting to her apparent demise.
Then nothing. Any momentum built up, however slight, is completely lost. For months. Until they bring it back in the fall. So what do they do?
They change the night it’s on. They don’t promote it heavily. They leave it out there to die. It never stood a chance. What did they expect by doing this? I never understood these “programming experts.” To me, it’s simple:
- Develop a programming strategy.
- Pick good shows to spend your money on. Commit to these shows for at LEAST two seasons.
- Give them a time slot.
- Promote, nurture and promote again. Rinse and repeat. Keep your hands off the schedule. Don’t change your programming strategy. Manage your budget. Develop an audience. Don’t make your audience change their viewing habits or “time shift” to stay with shows.
- Keep looking at new shows that fit within your strategy. Slot them in every 4-7 years as needed.
I’m so sick of TV. Scripted shows that demand attention spans past 30 minutes neither get a chance to sink in with people and find a foothold, or generate any significant ratings. Season-long and series-long story arcs are the kiss of death, apparently. Let’s watch more Ghost shows or professional wrestling…
I enjoyed Caprica. The whole thing. I was looking forward to enjoying the rich storyline leading up to the beginning of the BSG timeline. Silly me, hopes dashed, ain’t going to happen now.
Uggh. I’m depressed.
I have been seething with anger all morning about this. I am not surprised that it was not renewed, but why the FRAK are they waiting to show the final episodes. Way to twist the knife.
There is a line between things that are annoying in our entertainment and things that are just wrong. I get when they move a time slot, its annoying but whatever. I get a hiatus break as well. But it is WRONG to wait almost a year hiatus, then take another 2-3 month hiatus on a show that has already been canceled. We are paying customers, at least in some way, doing what they are doing is treating the customer poorly.
If the show is done, then show the episodes. What else are they showing instead? As poorly as the show is doing ratings wise, do they think they have something better to pair with SGU on Tuesday nights?
I’d be done with SyFy if I didn’t love SGU so much. And Blood and Chrome sounds good. And Star Trek reruns… uggggggggggg.
I try to be a voice of reason and positivity here, but Frak that, this pisses me off. This was my favorite show, and if you do the math, the are not showing the final 30% of it, after it was canned. No reason to treat their audience like this. Its just wrong.
Pilot in mid 2009
50% of episodes in Jan-Mar 2010
20% in Oct. 2010
30% in Jan-Feb 2011
Its almost hard to believe they didn’t get the numbers they were looking for.
When you break down like that, it is really insane how they rolled it out.
I gotta say, I’m really kinda pleasantly surprised to see all the rage, anger, despair and frustration expressed in this thread in reaction to Caprica’s cancellation. I had assumed that the GWC community in general had gone “meh” regarding Caprica and that’s a perfectly valid feeling of course—not everyone can like the same thing.
But reading this thread, I’m glad to see that Caprica really made an impression on many of you.
I’d be more glad if they didn’t fraking cancel it, but such is life.
I find myself firmly in the “meh” category. I watche dthe first season but was generally left cold. I recorded the first episode of the second season, forgot to record the second, and just deleted the first without ever watching it.
I knew I didn’t even like the show when I read an article about how the show had no likeable characters and I realized it was true. Who was I rooting for? Who had scenes I looked forward to? Was there a shining knight? A tormented hero? A ruthless but charismatic villain? Was there dramatic tension?
It was a weird amalgamatio of concepts that may ahve smoothed out over time, but at the end of the day, it wasn’t terirbly good.
SyFy also completely mishandled it. It should have aired the fall after BSG. The way it was doled out, both on DVD and after, was abominable.
This really made me laugh !!
Thanks for the smile amidst sadness.
With this getting canceled and B&C coming out soon it makes me thing what would really work for BSG would be an ongoing comic book. The creative team obviously has a structured decades-long idea about how their universe evolves, but it’s going to be difficult to have it all pan out on TV (apparently). Though, there are even smaller profits in Sci-Fi comics these days.
Well, I was ‘meh’ until it’s return. since its return it has been a much better show. better pace, better story.
can’t say i am shocked.
Im not shocked about not gettign a2nd season…kinda saw that coming.
But seriously SciFi…Or SyFy…or whateverthehell…just cutting it now? Really???
What the FRAK???
I don’t know about you guys, but it’s getting harder and harder to get invested in new shows. There’s no trusting that you’ll get more than 5 episodes. I royally sucks.
Not to mention that our favorite geeks (Big Bang Theory) made reference tonight to watching Caprica… tear
I’ll join the chorus here. I am very disappointed and seriously pissed off. Why do they have to delay the last few episodes? That makes no sense to me at all.
I’m also not surprised about the cancelation (Very surprised they pulled the episodes tho). Not one word was said at Comic Con and that’s really the place for news, so no news is never a good thing.
I felt like the show really got moving. When they have these disjointed starts and stops with broadcasts, it’s hard to get grounded in the world. (LOST had some issues with this & they stopped breaking up the season)
I agree that it’s hard to get excited about a show when they’re so quick to cancel something. I feel very betrayed by SyFy. I don’t feel like they care for our audience at all. Why isn’t there another network out there with Sci-Fi programing? BBC America has some good options, but not everyone can get that channel.
FRAK, FRAK, FRAK!
It makes perfect sense to me. They are trying to make money by making people buy the DVD set before it is aired on TV. Just like the Stargate movies. Just like The Plan.
Lost was moved around and we endured the schedule changes. I was a mad fan when they did that- I let them know.
I was mad when Dancing with the Stars ran over into Castle messing up my DVR. I wasn’t alone because it hasn’t happen again, ABC delayed Castle, starting it two minutes late.
So yeah, I don’t think SyFy cares about it’s fans when it has a show with a loyal following. ABC learned not to mess with loyal, crazy fans.
In about 3 weeks, the final five episodes (complete with full frontal dong shots) will be leaked and torrented and everyone that wants to see them will get to. Then SyFy will stream them from their website (dongless) and then the DVD will be released. Then and only then will SyFY actually show it on the channel for the 3 people who have yet to see it. At least, that’s my theory.
Caprica really got the shaft in terms of schedule, and suffered way worse than LOST. Lost had issues, but the issues were similar to all other shows on network tv - having to run 22-24 episodes for an entire year, and thus repeats were unavoidable. So they tried fixing it with S3 where it had the weirdest schedule ever (6 episodes, then half a year later, the rest), but at least after that season, they finally fixed it for good and did it 24 style - airing in January and letting the show run without repeats for 3 seasons.
Whereas Caprica never had a straight up normal schedule.
- It was a DVD pilot first, right after BSG finished (where I think Caprica also lost viewers there because not everyone was pleased with the finale of BSG, at least not right after it ended.)
- Then instead of airing the season straight after that release, only months later, the actual pilot aired on tv with the supposed full season.
- Then that changed, and it only ran for 9 episodes/half a season, and it got cut off just when things started getting good on the show.
- Then they announced 1.5 to air a year later, which is a LONG hiatus, especially since the show wasn’t even meant to be aired as two separate seasons with a giant hiatus in between to begin with.
- Only to have that date changed again and moved up earlier. Which sounds great, since it’s to a better time slot…
- but at the same time, because they moved up the schedule maybe a month prior to the airing of this season, it got virtually no promotion (or at least, not promoted at the right time slot in the major events like comicon and whatnots). If they wanted to air it earlier, which is great, why not announce it sooner so the show can receive all the promotion it can get?
- And then after 4 episodes of the 1.5 run, they cancel the show.
- Which is a little expected, especially after they moved it up, but then they do us in finally by taking the show out of the schedule completely and not airing the final episodes til god knows when.
- So, at no point in time did Caprica ever had a normal schedule as a show. It changed at every juncture it could change at.
I think other than Firefly (which got royally screwed because the episodes ran completely out of order), I don’t know any other show that had as screwed up (or a as setup to fail) a schedule as Caprica did. I’m less pissed about the cancellation (which was expected given the ratings, and to be absolutely fair, it was an imperfect show with some great stuff but also some not so great stuff, unlike BSG, which started off with a BAM!) than how Scifi treated a show they have no reason to treat so shabbily (in order to make short term money of it, or maybe they were too confident that BSG viewers will watch any BSG related stuff, and thus made decisions - like putting out a pilot DVD first months before the actual season began - they thought wouldn’t affect the show, but did. But Caprica is very different than BSG tonally (plus it took a lot more time for the show to get its bearings - in a way, it is still doing that right now), and it needed the nurture Scifi never gave it).