I got into BSG late and really only watched maybe four episodes, all said, but it never really hooked me.  The space fights looked cool, but despite liking some of the actors cast in the show, I really disliked all the characters, the constant shaky cam (MTV or first season ST:TNG anyone?) and I couldn’t quite figure out why.

So the two hour pilot for Caprica was on recently and I thought “hey, here’s a chance to get in on the ground floor and get invested in what’s going to be the next big step in the BSG franchise.”  What I ended up seeing was confirmation that I really dislike BSG and I’m going to dislike Caprica as well.

I would say that this isn’t necessarily a “this is where they lost me” qualifier because usually I’d say that would be reserved for otherwise great shows (or shows I enjoy, at least) that pulled a WTF or two.. or were just about to jump the shark.  But since this is all subjective and it’s all about ME ME ME! and where *I* got lost, I figured this qualifies.  So don’t count this so much as a wakeup call to the TV producers that they could be losing audience to bad writing/directing as a general statement about what doesn’t work.. for me.. in these two series.  They’re obviously popular, so Caprica/BSG fans need not read any further.  People who have watched these shows and can’t quite pin down what’s wrong with them, or people who may think about watching these shows who want a glimpse into what they’re getting, please continue.

So with BSG, I wasn’t sure what I didn’t like, but I figured I just didn’t know the characters well enough and didn’t get into the intrigue of it all because I had no investment that would have made the situations make any sense or give any dramatic weight to them.  After watching Caprica, a prequal and supposedly “accessible to non-BSG fans with plenty of easter eggs that fans will squee over”, I see what it is that I dislike about both series.

The common element in both is the complete unrelatability the characters have.  The main, human, characters are as fake and unhuman as the cylons.  The reason I loved BSG growing up is because the cylons were ROBOTS.  Not human-looking robots like a scifi series that doesn’t have a costume or CGI budget!  Would Knight Rider (burlesque or not?) have been as good if KITT had been a guy sitting in the passenger seat and NOT a talking car?  It’s like watching events unfold through an inch thick frosted glass.  You can see what’s going on, but it’s distant and unreachable.  And since this is uniform in both series and through all the actors in the series (not just a handful of bad actors who you just can’t “buy into”), I think this effect falls completely on the director and maybe a little on the writing.

Now, admittedly, I’m not a big fan of deep hardcore drama.  I watch “House“, which has won numerous awards in various drama related categories, but I wouldn’t call it a drama.  I think it has many dramatic elements that drive the story and people who are prone to irrational super-empathy, may get drawn in by these dramatic elements, but I wouldn’t count it as a drama.  Anyway, that’s probably the closest I get to liking a ‘drama’.  Caprica/BSG are pure drama driven.  If you took away the special effects and changed the story just a little, it could easily be another “As the World Turns“, just with slightly better story lines (and a finite television run.. none of that 30 years of rehashing the same tired plot twists).

With Caprica, specifically, I found it almost distracting and forced how often they threw “bleeding-edge-technology++” in our faces.  That is, the tech they were showing off and the discussions of technology they were having were all things we’re currently working on (but still a few years out), just taken one step further, to enhance that near-future feel for us techies who are aware of how close some of what they’re talking about are.  It was like they were trying to prove how young and connected they were to be aware of all this stuff.  I love future concept stuff and love seeing people’s ideas for where technology is heading, but this wasn’t that.  There was nothing original or inspiring about what they were showing.  It just looks like concepts from someone who reads too much Wired and Boing Boing and cobbled together concepts from their RSS feed.  Those are great periodicals and websites, but reading their stories and twisting the ideas a little is a far cry from original thought and extrapolating what a realistic future tech is going to be like.  I was almost a little embarrassed for it like when you go back and read those predictions for the future written decades ago and see how wrong they are.

Another thing that drove me crazy with BSG (at least in what little I saw and played a big part in advertising the show and some of the specials) was the gratuitous substitution of fake words for swear words.   I could go my entire life without hearing the word “frak” again.  It was cute/amusing and added a little bit to the show when “Farscape” did it YEARS ago, but it wasn’t overused.  Even the little I saw of BSG and, like I said, the promos for the show and the specials, the word “frak” was used SO MUCH it was frelling retarded.  I’d rather see decent writing be executed with other words, TV safe words, or even censor beeps, than substitute nonsense words and have to listen to fans repeating it.   Even Oxhorn, in his “Inventing Swear Words” series, understands it’s retarded and rediculous and does it BECAUSE it’s retarded and rediculous.  It has no place in a hardcore drama.

Anyway, once again the casting is great, but like with BSG, the heavy drama, unrelatable characters and inaccessibility of the world in general keeps me at a distance and I can’t find any way to enjoy it.  This is dumb scifi trying to pretend it’s smart.  It’s soap opera for teenagers with fancy window dressing to masquerade as science fiction.  Which, honestly, is what Joss Whedon did with Buffy and Firefly (except Buffy was horror, not scifi), but he did it with humor and style and you were actually allowed to LIKE the characters.  They seem to be human, not as fake as a cylon.  Wasn’t the point in Caprica/BSG that the cylons were made to be like humans, not the other way around?

Bonus: Remember when I mentioned KITT as a human passenger and not the car?  Here’s a little taste.  William Daniels, who did the voice for KITT, actually appeared in an episode of Galactica 80 (where the original BSG meets 1980′s earth).  ‘KITT’ is the guy dressed as a clown.  You get a great taste of the ‘KITT’ voice around 2:45.  Thanks to TheWilliamDanielsFan for posting this.  It blew my mind when I stumbled across it on Syfy (then, ‘Sci-Fi’) one day: