DVD Reviews

Caprica Season 1.5

I don’t often start a review off talking about the packaging but I felt I needed to with this release.  Caprica Season 1.5 is a 3 disc release contained in a keep case which is held in a slipcase. Nothing wrong with that and though the slipcase is simply a rehash of the keepcase cover art and is completely not needed, it does have a little bit of embossing to help the release stand out on store shelves. The front cover contains a nice image of a cylon with Caprica Season 1.5 printed above it. It looks quite nice though I’m not particularly fond of the .5 term.  You can have a season 1 or a season 2. You can have parts of seasons (part 1, part 2) but a season 1.5 indicates something that was in between the two seasons. It’s just a marketing ploy and the only people who use terms like this are the people making them. I’ve never heard anyone refer to the second half of a season as .5. This leads me to the problem with the packging. The back cover has an image of some of the main characters followed by a short description of what Caprica is all about.  There’s a list of the special features and technical aspects of the release. Nowhere does it list which episodes are included, how many discs are contained within, nor how many episodes can be found in this release. Not only do you not know what you’re spending your money on but considering this release is hitting shelves so close to the final episode airing on television (instead of the usual month or two following) it might cause some confusion. 

Caprica takes place 58 years before the events of Battlestar Galactica (BSG). Mankind is wrestling with the question of what makes one human, and sealing its own fate of certain destruction. Alliances are made, secrets are revealed and lives are forever changed while the conflict between man and machine takes shape. As the season races towards its stunning conclusion, the seeds are sown for the inevitable brutal clash between the newly born Cylon race and its human creators.

Audio for this release comes in a Dolby Digital 5.1 surround mix which is very, very good. Dialogue (which there is quite a lot of) never gets drowned out and is always clean and clear. The music, from the highly powerful, loud and boastful to the light motifs and soft enveloping tones, is always well balanced. The low end isn’t used as much as Battlestar Galactica, but when it is, you know it. Gun shots, explosions and even some of the music makes good use of the low end of the sound spectrum. Short of a lossless audio track, I’m not sure you’re going to find anything better. Subtitles are provided in French, Spanish and English SDH.

Video is presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen and looks about as good as DVD can. If you upconvert the picture, it is almost Blu-ray quality. Colours are nicely reproduced with natural skin tones mixed with vivid colours. Blacks are dark and inky yet remain detailed. Missing are the usual problems such as bleeding, artifacting and edge enhancement. I had a hard time finding anything wrong with this release. Short of some of the darker scenes which sometimes contained some grain and lower levels of detail, the transfer was near perfect. All of this is achieved while dealing with the multiple filters, scene changes, colour changes and differences in lighting found throughout the series.

There aren’t a lot of special features included with the release but it does have some that are worthwhile. Disc one opens with “trailers” for the Battlestar Galactica Complete Series on DVD/Blu-ray, the Back to the Future Trilogy 25th Anniversary Blu-ray, Catfish, and a don’t smoke public awareness ad. These are not accessible via the DVD menus but there are previews for The Bionic Woman season 1, Heroes season 4, Death Race 2: Unrated edition, A-Team/Knight Rider/Magnum P.I. series on DVD ad, Eureka season 3.5, Warehouse 13 season 1 and a Blur-ray ad which are. There are deleted scenes for the episodes “unvanquished”, “retribution” and “things we lock away” which must have been cut for length as they seemed pretty substantial. There is a commentary on “unvanquised” by Executive Producer Kevin Murphy which has a good amount of information but I found it lacking in entertainment value. There’s also podcast commentaries (which I hadn’t heard of until now) for “unvanquished” by David Eick, Eric Stoltz, Tom Weaver and Tom’s mom Eileen where David and Eric do most of the talking, and “retribution” by Executive Producer David Eick who is later replaced by Tom Weaver and Magda Apanowicz due to technical difficulties. The second disc doesn’t start with any extras but there is a deleted scene as well as a podcast commentary with Tom Weaver and Magda Apanowicz (David Eick got the flu) for “blowback” and a podcast commentary with Tom Weaver, Magda Apanowicz (for kicks as she’s not in the episode), Esai Morales and Sasha Roiz for “the dirteaters” and finally some video blogs/featurettes. These vlogs contain interviews, behind-the-scenes footage, and footage from some of the episodes. There are 7 vlogs in total, each dealing with a different subject – “global defense” deals with the background behind the Global Defense police force; “next generation” talks about the use of youth and young people and how they affect the show; “one true god?” tackles the use of religion and as a subset, terrorism with regards to Caprica; “caprican evolution” is more a behind-the-scenes piece dealing with how the show was created the ideas, concepts, designs, stories, etc.; “visual effects” is somewhat self explanatory and deals with the special effects from pre-production to finished product and how using the in-house studio benefited the production; “sounds of caprice” is all about the sound design and shows the great big mixing board in the sound studio and even some foley work; finally there’s “the music of caprica” which obviously goes into a bit of depth regarding the music used in the show. Each featurette is quite short and yet still manages to give a decent amount of information. Finally we reach the third disc and find deleted scenes for “here be dragons” and a full length commentary from Executive Producer Kevin Murphy for “apotheosis”. While he spends a good portion of the commentary just watching the episode (he hadn’t seen any of the CG post production work yet) he does give some very important information with regards to what was planned for season 2 (which wasn’t yet cancelled at the time of his recording). The deleted scenes and commentaries can all be accessed either from the episode screen or the extras screen. The podcast commentaries are technically screen specific though they do tend to talk about off screen elements quite a bit. I believe these commentaries (as well as the vlogs) were originally found on the Syfy website for the show. The podcasts were released before the show aired so that you could watch the episode while listening to the podcast at the same time. Interesting concept though a little flawed (unless you recorded the episode).  Since both the podcasts and vlogs are old content which was free to watch online, they aren’t much of an extra but to not include them would have been a mistake.

Caprica didn’t get picked up for a second season and there are a few factors for which I think this is but I’m not going to get into that. Since Caprica was supposed to show how the Cylons were created and rebel against their human creators, having a show about religion, the mafia and a single Cylon robot might not have been what many fans were looking for. Of course, in “season 1.5” much more is revealed and things start to come into place. In fact, there are many elements that are much like BSG in the second half of season one. Unfortunately, it was a little too late as many of the fans had already left. The final episode has a little epilogue ending that would have likely been season 2 and clearly shows how things go wrong for humanity but with the second season cancelled fans can only hope that the new Blood and Chrome series starts off by filling in the remaining gaps. Season 1.5 is a must own for fans of both Caprica and BSG. It’s just too bad it wont get to complete the story it was trying to tell.

Review By Rob Harding