Concept Caprica differs significantly from its parent series.
Ronald D. Moore had strong feelings on the matter, explaining his position that "...you don't try to repeat the formula," and going on to say, "...everything about
Caprica was designed specifically to not repeat what we had done in
Galactica." Although a critical success,
Galactica had a predominantly male audience, and both Moore and the network felt the "war in space" backdrop was a major deterrent to female viewers. With these considerations, and
Caprica's storyline already focused on events taking place prior to the two Cylon Wars, the series has a different tone, content, and style. While
Caprica contains references to elements of the
Battlestar universe, the series was intended to be accessible to new fans. Whereas the dark,
post-apocalyptic reimagined
Battlestar Galactica series revolved around a final struggle for survival,
Caprica is concerned with a world intoxicated by success. Ronald D. Moore states: "It's about a society that's running out of control with a wild-eyed glint in its eye."
Caprica is grounded in
urban locales rather than in space, and focuses on corporate, political, familial, and personal intrigue, similar in approach to a
Greek tragedy. With wealth, corporate intrigue, and the troubled relationship between two families at its center, Moore himself has likened
Caprica to the 1980s
prime time soap opera Dallas, Like
Battlestar Galactica,
Caprica had a
story arc format.
Development During the second season of
Battlestar Galactica, series developer
Ronald D. Moore and production partner
David Eick started speculating about the
Battlestar Galactica universe prior to the
Cylons. Unable to dedicate serious time to the notion, it remained in the concept stage of development until in early 2006, screenwriter
Remi Aubuchon, unaware of the ideas about a
Battlestar Galactica prequel, proposed a film about artificial intelligence to Universal Pictures. Though Universal Pictures turned down the project as a movie, Universal Television executives felt Moore and Eick might be interested in Aubuchon's take on the subject and arranged a meeting. Merging the existing thoughts for a
Battlestar Galactica prequel with those Aubuchon brought to the table, a general outline for a series emerged. While the Sci-Fi Channel management was enthusiastic about the idea, they had been engaged in a struggle with Moore about
Battlestar Galactica's long storylines, which the network felt kept new viewers from joining. Although Moore's subsequent retooling garnered negative criticism from fans and press alike, and the Sci-Fi Channel eventually admitted that standalone episodes did not work for the show, the network balked at the prospect of another series with a story-arc-heavy format and
Caprica got stuck in "
development hell". With Eick and Moore's announcement that
Battlestar Galactica was going to end with its fourth season, and after a drawn out pre-development cycle, on March 18, 2008, the Sci-Fi Channel announced that
Caprica had been picked up as a two-hour
backdoor pilot event, indicating a possible commitment to a series, contingent on ratings. On July 20 of the same year, Sci-Fi announced it was considering picking up
Caprica directly as a weekly series, and would make the pilot an extended season premiere.
Filming Universal Media Studios developed the show, in conjunction with
Remi Aubuchon and the executive producers of
Battlestar Galactica,
Ronald D. Moore and
David Eick. Aubuchon co-created the show and worked on the pilot, then left to become executive producer of
Persons Unknown. The pilot was directed by
Friday Night Lights veteran
Jeffrey Reiner. ''Battlestar Galactica's
Jane Espenson, Michael Taylor, and Ryan Mottesheard, Moore ran the writers room initially, but handed off to Espenson, who was promoted to executive producer and was Caprica'''s
showrunner The show was shot in and around
Vancouver,
British Columbia. In the pilot, exterior shots feature many regional landmarks, often augmented using CG imagery. Many of the external scenes were filmed in the
Yaletown area of the city, including one distinctive shot of the old railway turntable next to the Roundhouse at Davie and Pacific. The city's
library is also featured in one shot (when Daniel and Joseph meet for the first time), just as it was in scenes set in Caprica City in various episodes of
Battlestar Galactica. Vancouver's
SkyTrain and one of its stations (
Granville) feature in the sequence prior to the terrorist explosion. The production chose to keep the same font and sign style used by the real SkyTrain, but with rebadged signs featuring the name "Caprica City". Several structures found in the financial district of
Dubai,
United Arab Emirates, have been digitally added to the images of Caprica City to enhance its futuristic look, including one of the
Emirates Towers, the
Khalifa Tower, and the
Dubai Metro. The exterior shots of the school attended by Zoe Graystone,
Lacy Rand and several other characters were filmed outside the
Vancouver School of Theology, on the campus of the University of British Columbia. When Daniel takes Joseph and William to the Pyramid sports match, the colors of Caprica's team (the Buccaneers) are identical to those of Vancouver's real life hockey team, the
Canucks. Navy and green stripes adorn the walls outside the team dressing room, suggesting that the scenes were filmed at
Rogers Arena. One of the encounters between Daniel Graystone and Tomas Vergis was filmed in the University of British Columbia's
Museum of Anthropology. The sculpture "
The Raven and the First Men" was in the background. There was also significant filming at
Central City Shopping Centre in Surrey, B.C., and much of the
Simon Fraser University Surrey Campus was transformed to represent various locations in Caprica. For instance, the mezzanine and registrar's office at SFU were used to represent the Caprica Inter-colonial Space Port. The interior shots of Graystone Industries were almost exclusively filmed at
BCIT's Aerospace Technology Campus in Richmond, B.C. The filming of "Little Tauron" was done in and around
Vancouver's Chinatown district with a small number of stores in the area having Greek language signs (ancient and modern Greek was used as the language of the Taurons in
Caprica) while the rest of the shops retained their Chinese language signs for the duration of the filming. ==Music==