In 1999, George Lucas changed the nature of Star Wars by making The Phantom Menace into a kind of political intrigue film. When the Caprica finale aired on SyFy, it proved that prequel fatigue had finally become a thing. Which is a microcosm for the entire series: It borrowed the earnestness from Battlestar Galactica, which included all the goofy nomenclature (“frak!”), but now, up close and personal. The series took the same kind of moral grey-area storytelling of Battlestar Galactica, but stripped away the space opera element, leaving almost no narrative tension. Caprica was, through and through, a BSG prequel, and a sci-fi show steeped in that lore.