Today Syfy officially pulled the plug on Caprica and showrunners’ Ron Moore and David Eick’s elaborate plans for a second season, ending one of the more bizarre runs of a television show in recent memory. Adding insult to injury of Caprica fans and stars Eric Stoltz, Alessandra Torresani, Esai Morales, Sasha Roiz, Polly Walker and Paula Malcomson is that the final episodes of season one have been immediately postponed will not air until sometime in the first quarter of 2011.
The cancellation comes as Caprica could only muster 889,000 viewers per episode and a 0.4 rating with adults 18-49 since its return from a more than half year hiatus earlier this month. Ratings have been dropping from each new episode to the next signaling the cancellation could – and now did – become a reality.
Caprica’s writing appeared to be on the wall four days ago when Syfy announced their intentions to pick up a pilot for Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome, a potential new series that will be set during the first Cylon War and focus on ensign William Adama fresh out of flight school. A lack of colonial military presence and war-mongering Cylons in Caprica has been partially blamed for the show’s decline.
Caprica’s pilot first debuted on Syfy back on April 21, 2009 as a prequel spin-off to recently concluded Battlestar Galactica after having been available exclusively on DVD in late 2008. New episodes did not begin airing until late January of this year but were cut short in late March 8 episodes in. The second half of season one debuted on October 5 after being moved up from a previously advertised January 2011 release. The first half of season one was released over the summer on DVD but not Blu-ray Disc where much of Caprica’s potential tech-savvy audience has already found a home.
It will have taken Syfy more than two years from pilot to the closing episodes to air one season of Caprica. That kind of nightmarish programming schedule makes it hard for any show to succeed, much less one without armed toasters running around or the support of re-run Battlestar Galactica episodes as a lead-in.
