If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. There is a massive free screenwriting forum Here and a ton of free screenwriting advice here! Thanks for visiting!
I finally succumbed and got the pilot for Caprica from iTunes. (I know, but I live in the UK. It’s hell keeping up with US drama sometimes.)
I loved the first three series of Battlestar Galactica, deeply, fervently. Apart from a nostalgic cleaving to some Doctor Who episodes, on the whole I tend to avoid telly science fiction, as it’s only ever a pale shadow of what written SF can achieve.
While Battlestar was fairly straighforward space opera rather than mind expanding science fiction, it was nevertheless smart, astonishing, entertaining, complex, convincing – even, on occasion, moving (which you don’t often get in science fiction)
To be honest it was one of the best TV shows I’ve seen for years.
I don’t want to call it on the pilot alone, so let’s see this as an interim report from the front line, but Caprica, the prequel series to Battlestar Galactica, seems, so far, to be the opposite.
Dull. Unengaging. Predictable. Flat. Are all words. I would use to describe. Caprica.
The phone rang five minutes from the end of the ep, and instead of letting it ring I jumped to answer it, glad of the escape, and I didn’t remember to go back to finish the last five mins, for a couple of days. That’s just not right.
Can’t work out what’s going wrong without a proper time spent breaking the ep down, and I’m not inclined to do that right now. Anyone got any theories?
How To Write A Screenplay
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
The show gets a lot better from episode 1×04 on. I’m hooked, myself.
Still, it took a while to adapt to the five act structure. Different feel to it than Battlestar, which IIRC had four.
Oh, that’s interesting. That’s what I always thought about The Wire too – you had to get past the boring first four eps while they were bedding down to get to the point where it became irresistible.
I am interested though, so I will keep trying – plus I did like that final moment of the pilot, (not to give too much away) where there was a hint of premeditated darkness in one of the lead characters. I hope they pick that up and run with it.