Why the h+ll was this series cancelled?

Because Caprica was a thrash milker sequel to a brilliant BSG and people and finally the network saw it for what it was.

Don't be illusioned by the final relatively good few episodes....that was as good as it would have ever gotten...the show makers know before us viewers that it was going to be cancelled, so they have to compact the entire story in the remaining episodes to air in the season.....I'm just glad we didn't waste more time watching the same with more stupid fillers in between.

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Because the series premiered to 1.6 million viewers and quickly fell to .8 (this was in March before the timeslot change). For those who don't know, even today that is bad and a certain cancellation.

Sorry, guys, but it is impossible to bounce back from that kind of fall. If we were talking 4 mil to 2 mil, that would be a different story. SGU got axed for the exact same reason.

I agree - such a pity it got cancelled.
I for one disagree with the general discontent on the religion and culture. You have to look at the context of what the show was building up to; the clash of two religious beliefs and cultures.
Cylon belief in the one god vs the human polytheism was a huge influence all the way through the latest Battlestar series, so I just don't see what the problem there was.
Caprica was the birthing of the new one god belief which would develop into the Cylon empire later on, so I thought the religious undertones were highly relevant.

I know it's a year after you first posted this but here's my take on it.

First few episodes or so, things were going good, but then it's like story progression came to a near stand still, so things were still happening but it wasn't of much value. Everything that happened over the course of the entire season could have been condensed down to maybe two thirds of the episodes at most.

Take the story arc involving Lacy and the cult she joined. If the events of the later episodes had happened sooner, then chances are the show would have done better. It got off to a good start but like I said, after the first few episodes, it started to drag. Always wondering when Daniel would realize (with confirmation) that Zoe was in the Cylon body, when the Graystone's reputation (and even Zoe's innocence) would become known, etc. The problem wasn't the fact that those things were being dragged out, it was that we were tossed other things to really distract us in the meantime. For example, after Zoe revealed who she really was to Philo, if they had handled things differently, such as his simply being freaked out but her having gotten him to promise to not tell anyone, with him then asking questions (trying to make sense of it all), that would have provided a distraction. Especially if he ended up still having feelings for her and was even getting her help on developing other Cylons that would work. Could have had a weird romance going for at least a few more episodes, with Daniel thinking that the system had been wiped (thus providing a delay in his realizing she's there). Have some Cylons already developed a few episodes later that respond to Lacy's commands and had those events happen. Had it been done right, they could have had it ended with a cliffhanger leading towards a second season, where Clarice and Lacy are at a bit of a stand-off, with Zoe's 'soul' (program) in some sort of limbo, perhaps on a misplaced drive or something, with Philo trying to recover it. As the series progresses, could have had Clarice somehow gaining control from Lacy over the Cylons and then essentially programming them to have certain twisted views. With the little bit of Zoe's influence so that they end up having 'souls' and the twisted programming, see problems starting to happen and even have things reach a point where you hear references of abandoning the planet for survival (ie, little nods/references to what we know eventually happens).

But alas, they came to a near dead stop and that killed it.

Bear in mind I have seen this before BSG, but here are some thoughts:

1)Too many storylines and extraneous elements:
Some of the storyline were very cool. Tamara's becoming an invincible mob boss/avenging angel was super sweet. I loved the noir feel of her arc, in Cap City and the gangsters and all that. Then we had Zoe's fight for reintegration into real space, then Amanda's mental breakdown then...

2)Unrealistic reactions abound:
It becomes obvious at some point that Daniel just cannot produce deliverables. Philomon kinda gets that Zoe is in there, panics etc. Daniel gets multiple chances to produce his robot army, fails, and is given more chances and a new board vote (they probably should have voted him out and gone to the police) and so on. Amanda should have told off Clarice Willow ages ago and should have alked out on her husband ages ago.

3)Felt more like a drama than a sci-fi, and then the sci-fi stuff took over.
It felt like a really cool interpersonal drama and religious struggle thoughout that first 8-10 episodes. It worked as a criticque of religiosu fundamentalism annd power attribution but the sci-fi elements were kinda on the sides until the Cylons came online and the VR stuff kicked it into gear.

4)Taurons seemeed pretty stereotypical:
I loved that Sam was in a gay couple and it seemed totally legit. They really all seemed to be some kind of a Sicilian mafia knockoff, with the family, the bros, the business, etc. I was expecting Yussif to start eating apples in town one day. The Taurons were really cool but the tattoos were underexplored and would have loved a little more development there.

5)The other planets may as well not have existed:
We hear (and see) about Gemenon, Caprica and Tauron. We get vague references to Libra and Pykon and so on. It would have been cool if we'd heard a bit nore of them, but too many plot threads ongoing already.

In the end, I think Caprica should have stuck to being a noir sci-fi with the VR world being exploited a little more, the religious war streamlined a bit and a lot of the extra arcs dumped completely (The sports team, for example).

Same here. Love the dense, slightly melancholic atmosphere - and everything else in this show. Really high quality in every aspect.

Maybe people did not get on board with the "story of a civilization" aspect. What the show is missing compared to Battlestar Galactica are space battles and progressive exploration. That is also, what all the other hugely successful SF-shows had: Star Trek and Stargate SG-1. But Caprica could have been for Battlestar, what Deep Space 9 was for Star Trek.

Probably Stargate Universe failed for a similar reason: The rather pessimistic atmosphere. Although SGU is very much annoying in my opinion, as in every second episode the spaceship falls apart a bit further and they turn every opportunity for exploration into something negative. Caprica is much better in that.
But people probably want to see something hopeful or funny in their free time, not that dense and intelligent as Caprica is.

I also experienced among my friends, that they simply weren't interested to start watching Caprica, even if they were excited about Battlestar. Strange.
It didn't have the traction that Deep Space 9 had in the media in the 90's, maybe
with some more advertising it would have done better.

Many will tell you the show took a long time to get going, or it didn't have enough action, etc. and those things were surely a factor in low ratings. But the fact still remains that SyFy aggressively mishandled this show, to the point where it seemed clear to us fans at the time they were deliberately sabotaging the show to justify cancelling it. For instance, on two or three separate occasions they completely changed the schedule with no announcement. Only the most dedicated fans who checked up on the show everyday knew when the show was airing - most people were thinking it had been pulled off the air at various points.

The show was barely advertised or not at all. There was a hugely unnecessary midseason break with a return date that kept getting postponed, again with very little indication when it would be back. When they actually announced it had been cancelled, they also announced they weren't going to air the rest of the episodes, period. Then a couple weeks later they just started airing them with no announcement and if you happened to have caught it, you caught it. It was insane.

Could the show have survived if SyFy wanted it to? I think so - the show's fanbase was small but very devoted, and it could have been a small, cult phenomenon. Many of the show's detractors might have been won over if they saw the second half of the season.

Agreed. I loved it.

My opinion why it ultimately failed:

If this was the parent show, and BSG was the spinoff, it might still be on the air NOW. As such, since it come out the way it did, people wanted more BSG connections and didn't want to wait till season 2 or 3 to get there.

IMO, we should have gotten Cavil popping up to reveal that Daniel was indeed the last Daniel copy (the never shown on screen Number 7) that had somehow escaped and was perhaps amnesiac. That would have tied it to BSG in a big way, answered a long standing mystery (who was Daniel, what did he look like, what was he like, etc) and given the show a parallel history or mythology to follow that didn't interrupt BSG's already established history but still being CONNECTED to BSG.

Ron Moore might have created the Daniel story simply to provide context into how evil Cavil can be (Cavil is basically Cain and Daniel was Abel), but he wasn't involved with this show, and this revelation would not have negated Moore's original intent one bit. The new mystery would be why Cavil hasn't killed the remaining Daniel copy.

So yes, that and that ALONE would have kept the show on for at LEAST as long as BSG, maybe a year or two longer. Without that, people weren't willing to wait, plus I think interviews at the time had the showrunners vehemently denying Daniel Graystone was the same Number 7 Daniel. So despite how good it was, it needed the BSG fans not new fans altogether and without that particular connection they said what's the point.