How do space operas begin? In the first decade of the 21st century, the idea of creating a slow-burning backstory for a somewhat familiar interstellar odyssey was, for whatever reason, the norm. In 1999, George Lucas changed the nature of Star Wars by making The Phantom Menace into a kind of political intrigue film. In 2005, Rick Berman and Brannon Braga attempted to create a Star Trek prequel that blended a Western with a contemporary adventure show in the form of Enterprise. And, right on the heels of the most successful sci-fi reboot/reimaging of all time, Battlestar Galactica, a prequel series called Caprica, from Remi Aubuchon and Ronald D. Moore, briefly became the most audacious early-2000s sci-fi prequel, telling the story of how people on the titular planet Caprica let the Cylons become the machines that rose up and destroyed humanity. Sort of.
15 years ago, on January 4, 2011, the SyFy Channel finally aired the last five episodes of Caprica, a show that had already been canceled, and had already aired its final episodes in Canada. This inauspicious end to the series was fascinating, partly because it did manage to conclude some of the show’s biggest arcs, but also because, by the time these episodes came out, it was hard to believe that less than three years prior, its parent series, Battlestar Galactica, was the epicenter of sci-fi geek culture. When the Caprica finale aired on SyFy, it proved that prequel fatigue had finally become a thing. Because when we knew this much about Cylons, we suddenly didn’t give a frak. Mild spoilers ahead.
