Syfy has announced that it will not pick up Season 2 of its Battlestar Galactica spinoff / prequel Caprica. The final five (heh, final five) episodes of Season 1 have been rescheduled for 2011. The statement from Syfy:
The remaining first run episodes of Caprica—airing Tuesdays at 10/9c—will be removed from the schedule as of next Tuesday, November 2. These final five episodes of the season will be re-scheduled to air at a to be announced time in the first quarter of 2011, and will conclude the run of the series.
“We appreciate all the support that fans have shown for Caprica and are very proud of the producers, cast, writers and the rest of the amazing team that has been committed to this fine series,” said Mark Stern, Executive Vice President of Original Programming, Syfy and Co-Head of Content for Universal Cable Productions. “Unfortunately, despite its obvious quality, Caprica has not been able to build the audience necessary to justify a second season.”
I gave Caprica a go when it premiered earlier this year, but after about five episodes, it just wasn’t working for me. The look of the show was great and production value high, but the pace was slow and the biggest hook was an alternating POV from a Cylon and Alessandra Torresani’s Zoe Graystone avatar. When you’re coming off of one of the most highly regarded genre series ever, one that I thought ended about as perfectly as it could have, then the game has to be stepped up, and Caprica didn’t do it.
This comes on the heels of the news that the next BSG spinoff, Blood and Chrome, is a go for a pilot. B&C was announced earlier this year in The Chicago Tribune as an online series, before plans changed for the pilot. It’ll focus on the First Cylon War and the young Viper pilot, William Adama, who’s just been assigned to the newest Battlestar, Galactica. Exec producer Michael Taylor compared the tone of the show to The Hurt Locker in that Tribune piece, which sounds good to me.