Create a free profile to get unlimited access to exclusive videos, sweepstakes, and more!
This Forgotten Battlestar Galactica Prequel Told the Origin Story of the Cylons
Battlestar Galactica wasn't the end of the story - it was just the beginning.
SYFY’s Battlestar Galactica reboot in the early 2000s remains one of the seminal modern-day science fiction series, tackling the questions of mortality, humanity, war, and religion all through the lens of a rag-tag group of survivors on the run from robots of their own creation.
It was a compelling story of a civilization at the brink, paying for its excesses and hubris with just a few thousand survivors shuffling through space left to represent humanity at large.
But what about how that story began? What about the hubris, and the creation of the robots who would eventually go on to obliterate their makers? That was the story of Caprica — a short-lived prequel series that ran for one season on SYFY in 2010, and is now streaming on Peacock in full.
How Caprica told the origin story of Battlestar Galactica
Caprica premiered in 2010, one year after the conclusion of the Battlestar Galactica series, which aired on SYFY (nee Sci-Fi) for four seasons (plus a miniseries) across 2003-2009.
The prequel was set 58 years before the events of the main series, which had kicked off with the destruction of Caprica and all Twelve Colonies by the Cylons. Caprica drops us right into the middle of a civilization at its height. Rome before the fall. A technological civilization on the cusp of a breakthrough that would come to define — and doom — the Twelve Colonies just a few decades later.
The show starred Esai Morales as Joseph Adama, father of eventual Galactica admiral William Adama; Eric Stoltz as technologist Daniel Graystone; and Alessandra Torresani as Daniel’s daughter, Zoe Graystone, a young woman killed in a terrorist attack but “resurrected” thanks to the technology that would come to be the Cylons.
The show was co-created by BSG creator Ronald D. Moore, and in an 2010 interview with Den of Geek, he talked about how they wanted to play with the period setting in a way that created unique visuals — even with it being a sci-fi series. “Well, we wanted the show to mostly look like today. A show that looks contemporary in its city and landscapes and so on, which had elements of futuristic technology,” he explained. “But, because the show takes place 50 years before Battlestar Galactica, I thought it was also important that it has a period feel, that you’re reminded that this was something that took place before Battlestar, so we went with the idea of giving it a slightly retro feel, and giving it a 1940s and 1950s fashion and touchstones of the culture and having vintage automobiles and things like that, just to remind you that it’s something of a period piece.”
The show is set firmly within the continuity and world of Battlestar Galactica, but its setting on the bustling, vibrant planet of Caprica gives it an entirely different feel from the series that inspired it. On Battlestar Galactica, we only got a brief look at Caprica before its destruction in the minutes before its attacked by the Cylons. But in Caprica? We get to see how the people there lived and worked, and how technology had started to define their lives in new and different ways that would eventually lead to their downfall.
It’s a big story, but at its core a family story. A story about two families intertwined by a tragedy, and how the desperation and grief of loss would play a role in spurring the technology behind the Cylons and their eventual ascension. Put simply, it’s the opposite of Battlestar Galactica, an action-packed war series set on the brink.
“That was part of the attraction –– to do something that hasn't been done before,” Moore explained to IGN back in 2010. “There have never been any science fiction shows that are just character drama, we just decided that we would try and do something new. Battlestar was something new and different as well and we felt that –– whilst we might lose some people along the way –– we'd pick up some people too.”
The first and only season of Caprica is streaming now on Peacock.
