Jane Espenson is no longer the showrunner for SyFy’s “Caprica”, the prequel series to the acclaimed Ron Moore remake of “Battlestar Galactica”. Stepping into her shoes will be Kevin Murphy, recently brought on as a co-exec producer to work on the second half of the first season. BSG fans, I know you’re freaking out, but hold on! At first it sounds odd that they’d replace a BSG writer with a producer from “Desperate Housewives” and “Reaper”, but stepping down from the showrunner position was actually Espenson’s idea.
Espenson explains the change in roles:
“I’m still at Caprica. Running the room was very intensive and took a lot of time away from actually writing this amazing ambitious show. I missed the writing more than I expected and this was my decision to concentrate on that as we put together the big end of season one. Kevin is extremely smart and talented and brings fresh eyes and fresh energy to the project — we’re so lucky to have him!”
Thus Murphy’s new position as the day-to-day showrunner for “Caprica” has him also working as an exec producer with Jane Espenson, Ron Moore and David Eick.
Perhaps this move comes to address rumors that the show is having writing troubles. SyFy’s Mark Stern, exec VP of original content for the SyFy and co-head of Universal Cable Productions, addresses these concerns:
“Trying to find [the] journey with these characters has been really interesting. I know for the writers – in terms of where you think you’re going to go – turns out to be, not exactly where you … there are things that have been pitched out … this, episode 8, we’re going to do this, and it’s going to be a whole torture sequence on this other planet, and it’s like ‘no, actually that doesn’t work in terms of where the stories have taken us’. And we actually took a break. We shut down for a few weeks so that we could, at the mid-point … so that we could regroup and say, ‘OK, what have we learned from the first ten; where do we want to go from here?’
If it wasn’t for the Olympics, there wouldn’t even be a discussion, but unfortunately, because of the Olympics, we’ve been really up against when we really have to be out of production. So what would normally be a very easy decision in terms of ‘let’s take a hiatus and take a break and write more scripts’, became a very difficult and expensive proposition… but we did it anyway because it was worth it.”
Murphy himself is a BSG fan, stating:
“As a rabid ‘Battlestar Galactica’ fan, it’s hard not to go in that writers room and not just grin ridiculously. These are the people who made the best TV show ever. To be able to be a part of the legacy of that show, I’d be willing to pay them for that.”
The premiere of SyFy’s “Caprica” series is just around the corner in on January 22, 2010. This prequel series to “Battlestar Galactica” unfolds the story of the birth of the Cylon race and “deals with our relationship to technology and the question of ‘When is too much knowledge a bad thing?’”, according to SyFy’s Mark Stern.
The scifi genre is ripe with cautionary tales of how technology can turn against humanity. SyFy hopes that “Caprica” will continue the tradition and success of the momentum of BSG’s success. Stern describes the show as:
“…a strong character drama about people going through situations in extremis. There are characters who are driven to do things that are morally ambiguous because of the situations that they’re put in. There are characters who are driven to do things that are morally ambiguous because of the situations that they’re put in. And yet tonally, it’s not as dark, it’s not as grim. Because [the characters] are not on the run, having had their whole world destroyed, that allows more opportunities for poignancy and joy and celebration.”
Click image to embiggen.
“Caprica” premieres with a two-hour pilot ep that is already within reach on DVD. Read SciFiMafia’s review of it here. Eight more hours of the show will air through March, after which the show will take a break and the remaining nine eps will air sometime in the latter half of the year.
At the head and tail of this article is the new poster for “Caprica”, depicting Zoe Graystone (played by Alessandra Torresani) in an Eve context, which is fitting considering the choice the characters are faced with in the series. As January fast approaches, let’s hope that the “Caprica” writing team’s hard work pays off! We, fans, are eager for this new series!
[Source] THR, io9, ChicagoTribune
