Ahead of the much anticipated debut of Battlestar Galactica’s offshoot, Caprica, SyFy has created an immersive web experience to heighten the buzz. Cleverly presented as a newspaper styled blog, The Caprican delivers all the news worth printing from the 12 colonies. Of course, it’s all done with a very Caprican slant. Growing threats of monotheism and militant religious activists are downplayed. Caprica’s premier magnet school, Athena Academy, gets glowing coverage of its record-setting enrollment. And the C-Bucs latest score in a disappointing season of Pyramid defeats is prominently displayed on the front page. For earthbound agencies hoping to create an online news presence, The Caprican offers a worthy role model: a nice balance of photographs and content, user-friendly design, and plenty of whitespace.
But the most compelling aspect of the site is the social commentary that’s beginning to form around the articles. Those of you familiar with Battlestar’s central themes have already spooled your FTL drives up and jumped ahead. For the less invested among you a summary will suffice.
Cylons, the cybernetic antagonists of the series were created by man. Through scientific hokery pokery they evolved into sentient beings that have the ability to “download” their memories and experiences into a cloned body upon their death. Think reincarnation. Along the way, Cylons have developed a monotheistic philosophy that is distinctly at odds with the beliefs of much of the 12 colonies’ population. The show Caprica predates the reimagined Battlestar Galactica by about 50 years. It answers many questions that BSG’s end-of-series movie didn’t, and it poses others.
The parallels between Caprica’s religious problems and issues we face earthside are undeniable. The mythical planet’s residents share our theistic views. Monotheist, polytheist, atheist and agnostic alike have to reconcile their differences or learn to live with the occasional suicide bombing or bout of ethnic cleansing. It’s an unsavory prospect in either world.
If one chooses to infer real world meaning from the eager scribblings of Caprican’s readers, then recent post-article comments at the site keenly reflect how religion divides us as much as it unites us. Through a fisheye lens, this microcosm of dedicated fans provides an invaluable research tool for SyFy in general and Caprica’s producers specifically. The site’s Terms of Service leave no doubt the network understands the crowdsourcing potential for future plot material.
With the success of 2012 and the insatiable interest in apocalyptic themes (Book of Eli anyone?), it’s easy to accuse SyFy of simply profiting from a current entertainment trend. But with Battlestar Galactica we’ve seen producers Ron Moore and David Eickman handle religion, rape, honor, betrayal and loss with both fierceness and finesse. If the movie premiere of Caprica is an indication, the acting will be on par with if not better than BSG.