By now you've heard that Battlestar Galactica co-creators Ron Moore and David Eick are in talks with the SciFi Channel to make a prequel spinoff called Caprica. Eick has said in interviews that it will be set in a Microsoft-like company on Caprica that is developing the first Cylons. What has the fans up in arms, however, is his hint that the show will be "more of a soap opera" than BSG. Whoa – do we really want to get soapier than Baltar having torture-gasms while his Cylon lady friend administers pain and pleasure simultaneously? More soapy than Starbuck having sex with Apollo's dead brother, while Apollo secretly has a crush on Starbuck, while Admiral Adama is Apollo's estranged dad who is still in mourning for the aforementioned dead brother? Plus Tigh's ongoing drinking and Sharon's ongoing triangle with Helo and Chief Petty Officer Cuteypants?
Now you can find out what the fans are thinking without actually having to dredge throught the sludge of the BSG forums on SciFi.com yourself. Here are some highlights from a recent thread called "Caprica to be 'even more of a soap.'":
Ex-President: on The Guiding Light they're thinking about doing a spin-off seriesnext year. It's about an advanced civilization in outer space fleeingfrom killer robots
JLDG: Thank you fraktard executives.
Koenigrules: Oh well, I love to hold soap while I am watching Galactica. It gives me that clean feeling as I watch "gritty realism" unfold.
DB: What, is Eick competing with Sackhoff for the "foot in it" award? My hopes for"Caprica" just took an extreme nosedive from bullish to no comment.
DM: I was wondering if this would get any commentary from you.
DB: Well, I wouldn't follow you intoyour backhanded attempt to spin this into being another statement ofBSG's soapiness, but it is definitely bad news for Caprica, at least asfar as PR goes. When are these users of the word 'soap' going to getthat it's not about the scifi audience vs. the rest of the audience? Assoon as you say the word 'soap' you have just shut off almost everyonewith a 'Y' chromosome, whether they like sci fi or not.
DM: DB, I am sure you can pilot a search engine competently. There is awealth of material on how Bonnie Hammer brought up the WWE ratings onthe USA network by encouraging the use of a "soap opera for guys"
approach in scripting "pro-wrestling." They believe the guys will watch.
AndrewJ: Anyone else think DE may have made that comment deliberatelyto provokea reaction - given all the discussions lately re the "soap " commentsby Katee? I wouldn't put it past him. This is the same guy that washaving an afair with katee in one of his video blogs, after all.
DM: It wouldn't shock me to see his next vidblog as an All My Cylon Children episode. Itwould indeed please me greatly to find that it is all a joke. Thatseason 3 of BSG will not suck, and that Caprica would be a good showrather than "Dallas" on another planet. Those would all be pleasant surprises.
CaptTightPants: They can call BSG Scifi, or a soap, or a treatise onpost 9/11 politics, or Home Improvement Reality, for all I care. Humans are horny and lonely creatures, they hookup/fall in love, etc.
DM: The issue for me is, will the show be high qualityif it continually panderes to the "who's frakking who" game.
Alis79: Whenever I scroll past this thread, my eyes read "Caprica, even morefun than soap!" and I have to do a double take.
Sighphi: toolate, we are controlled by the media and make our decisions based onvery little information.... because we are... AAAAAAAMERICA,
AAAAAAMERICA !
Isn'tDaveOne: i like soap, it feels good!
DB: The term 'space opera' is not related to the term'soap opera', nor does it imply any combination of sci fi and soap. A
space opera is a science fiction story that is epic in scope andusually involves the story of different political elements battling forcontrol of the galaxy/universe. Star Wars is a space opera.
Babylon 5 is a space opera. The term 'opera' here is not borrowed from'soap opera'. It's borrowed from 'opera', period. As in Wagner.
Jairam: again with the labels, the evidence, the proving right...let it go
CaptTightPants: He needs some bananas to cheer him up.
Mazzy (in response to the "I like soap" comment): you smell good after you use it too dave!
CaptTightPants: It helps prevent what we software types from the olden days (i.e., themid 90's) used to call "that DBA smell".
HolyTraitor: I for one would rather see a showthat is driven by the story rather than beeping gizmos and ray-guns...I
would rather see a show that deals with the human involvement with thesociety that it lives in, and in the case of BSG...Thisis about a technological society that created life and then tried towash its hands of that fact when it realized that it was not matureenough to recogmize what it had done, and what it was doing to the verylife that it created...That happens to be at this point: Sci-Fi...Itinvolves topics that we as a society are having to deal with. That weare confronted with as something that IS going to happen in therelatively near future (within 10 to 100 years: ie, 1 to 3
generations)...Caprica will still have to be Sci-Fi. TheColonies were a Space-Faring civilization from their foundation if thehistory is kept intact... I am one person who is dying to see thestories and struggles of those who created the Cylon...
frakinbaltar: That's a wholelotta bananas, hope you have a pet monkey who is hungry.
Soap Opera Thread [Sci Fi Forums]
