Over at the blog run by the network formerly known as Sci-Fi, they have a new trailer for the upcoming series Caprica featuring a glimpse, albeit a brief one, of James Marsters in character as terrorist leader Barnabus Greeley. Not sure I’m in love with that name yet, sorry Jane.

Anyway, this is one of those situations where if you blink, look away or sneeze, you will miss Marsters’ appearance. Still, its kinda cool to seem him and know that the premiere of Caprica is only a short two months (or so) away. Plus, his “Someone’s dying today” line is also pretty darn cool. Also, there’s some other stuff in the trailer that’s worth watching so do, please, watch it — after the ever-present jump of course.

Caprica, featuring the cool James Marsters as well as Eric Stolz, Esai Morales, Sasha Roiz, Polly Walker and Paula Malcomson, premieres on the SyFy network on January 22nd of next year.

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According to The Hollywood Reporter, following his recent role in Dollhouse and the feature Big Fan, comedian Patton Oswalt is now joining the cast of Syfy’s upcoming drama series Caprica as a recurring character. According to the article, on the Battlestar Galactica prequel, Oswalt “will play Baxter Sarno, a popular Caprican comedian and talk show host on whose show Daniel Graystone (Eric Stoltz) and Amanda Graystone (Paula Malcomson), ultimately appear.”

As this character was not in the original two hour pilot, obviously as the show is currently filming in Vancouver, the producers felt they needed some sort of recurring character like this to provide some overall context to events unfolding after the first Cylon has taken its first steps. Oswalt is a pretty good choice for this type of role where his humor and somewhat abrasive style can take center stage and provide that context and commentary. Should be interesting to see what he makes of the role.

Oswalt joins a cast which already includes the aforementioned Eric Stoltz and Paula Malcomson and also includes Esai Morales, Sasha Roiz, Polly Walker and the recently announced Luciana Carro. Caprica debuts on SyFy on January 22, 2010.

The network formerly known as the Sci-Fi Channel has now “officially” set the date for the first episode of Caprica to premiere on that network. According to the network that we shall now refer to as Syfy, that date is Jan. 22 and as we are big fans of the show around here, we could not be more enthusiastic.

However, in case you’re not quite as big a fan of the show as we are, here’s a little info by way of backstory. Caprica is a prequel to the award-winning Battlestar Galactica, which just concluded its fourth and final season on March 20. The Caprica storyline predates BSG by 58 years and leads up through the creation of the Cylons, the war and the near annihilation of the human race.

The two hour pilot, which was written by Ronald Moore and Remi Aubuchon and directed by Jeffrey Reiner, was completed last year, already aired on the network and has dropped on DVD. Syfy has ordered an additional 20 hours in addition to the pilot but its not known at the moment if they will split the order into two seasons.

Production on brand new episodes began July 15 in Vancouver. Caprica, which features Esai Morales, Eric Stoltz, Paula Malcomson and Polly Walker and is exec. produced by Ron Moore, David Eick and Jane Espenson, will air at 10/9C on Friday nights.

We open on a group of sixteen year-olds wandering through a marble, sex covered, blood stained club. These three teenagers watch as a girl their age is sacrificed. One locks eyes with another girl close to the sacrificial altar. The girl close to the altar feels the glare and looks up to see an exact copy of herself staring her down. They are Zoe Graystone, one is alive and the other is a virtual representation.

Caprica the pilot is a clean, tight and intriguing episode set fifty-eight years before Battlestar Galactica and follows the Adama and Graystone families.  There is a Philip  K. Dick quality to this pilot with 1930s style, flying cars and monorails. It is a tight noir that explores the question: if you could have a loved one back from the dead, would you do whatever it took to make it happen?

Boiled down, that is what this entire show is about, including the creation of the Cylons by Dr. Graystone (Eric Stoltz). It also explores how Cylons may have become sentient humanoids. “Skin jobs” as they were called in the original series, and it may have something to do with the virtual representation of Zoe Graystone played with Blake Lively-like attitude by Alessandra Torresani. It is with Zoe and her friends that you can tell former Buffy: the Vampire Slayer writer Jane Espenson is really having fun.  Co-written by Ryan Mottesheard*, the writers also pose a possible solution to how the Cylons believe in one God.

I don’t want to give away too much of the plot, but it is quite literally the Graystone’s legacy in both of these aspects, and the possible answer to the question: “how did we get to the first episode of Battlestar Galactica?” That is essentially the premise of the entire show and is literally what the entirety of this 93-minute premiere is beholden to, that you liked BSG enough to find out where it all started. With characters that were at best merely a spectre in BSG (as in Joe Adama played by Esai Morales) and at worst never even mentioned (as in Stoltz’s Graystone).

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