Caprica - Galactica Prequel Is A Go(ner)!

My take on the 'God did it' issue:

I'm an atheist. I think it's ridiculus that there are seemingly intelligent people in our world who believe in an imaginary sky bully with no facts to back it up. But when it comes to fiction, I have absolutely no issue with it. Because to me, the idea of a god is already fiction. I also don't have to agree with the themes or message of a piece in order to enjoy it.

(Even if there is 'a god', that still doesn't necessarily mean 'everything happens for a reason'. There's still free will.)

But the real thing is that I never got how anyone could get to that last season of BSG not prepared for the reveal that some entity, potentially labeled 'God', had been working behind the scenes and manipulating certain events. The series had always dealt with religion/faith (like Roslin's visions) and even started setting up Head Six as a possible agent of God as early as the first season. Personally, I loved the BSG finale and it's a legitimate contestant for bet series finale ever for me.

Now, back to Caprica I guess:

Zoe is hot.

 

Just watched the DVR. My thoughts: I to enjoyed the dance/bonding scene. The talk show I didnt mind but I could'ev done without. Now about Sam, he is easily my fav. characther on the show now, and I love the opening scene at the graveyard where the infansize his dagger.

 

I think the series has been pretty good so far, but it?s in a serious need of direction. So far it reminds me of the last 5-6 episodes of Galactica (much higher quality though), no clue what they should do with the thing, and seemingly no ambition to try. It just wanders aimlessly, and it is a serious danger that this might sink the entire thing (IMHO).

Hopefully this will change soon, but it doesn?t seam that way.

 

Exactly. The red line is totally missing. Usuall< whenever a story passes a plotpoint, that is meant to lead more or less dircet ot the next, leading to some greater picture developing. here I think they have a plotpoint and take out the speed, so they don´t have to come up with a next one, too soon. It got excellent production value and all, but where does it lead? Cylon war? I know it somewhere, but hell . . . I don´t feel it!

Hope they get an idea of what they want to tell soon. I get the "making it up while we´re going and still not learned how exactly to do that" vibe from the way they do it.

 

Sam reminds me of Vincent Corleone in Godfather Part III. I think the actor playing Sam is doing a great job. I like all the actors in general.

I'm very interested in how Graystone confronts the practical matter of meeting his contractual obligation - generating 100,000 cylons. Is he gonna virtually raise Caprica's dead and generate the cylon race that way?

 

"I get the "making it up while we´re going and still not learned how exactly to do that" vibe from the way they do it."

Yea, it?s nothing wrong with making it up as you go, as long as it is never obvious to the viewer that you did. To me the last season of "Galactica" and "Caprica", feels almost like the first draft of the story, with a lot of "mumbling" and half thought out ideas, but not close to what the finished product could and should have been.

Its good, but it could bee so much more if they weren?t too lazy to really think through their ideas. Sacrificing your entire culture and the wellbeing of your citizens, because the human race needs to become more compassionate, is a really nice idea on the surface, but if RDM had thought on it for more than 10 seconds the flaws would have become obvious.

 

I gotta feeling it will have to do something either with his brother Sam (protecting Tauron rights against Capricans) or his dead daughter, e.g. if she emerges as a cylon, he's demonstrated he'll go to great lengths in protecting her.

I'm just not sure if that's the way to characterize this group of writers? I think a lot of factors affect storyline development, e.g. budget, character development, plot timelines, other continuity issues that we're just not aware of as an audience.

 

"I'm just not sure if that's the way to characterize this group of writers?"

I can agree that was a bit harsh of me, but concerning the finale of BSG it?s the only explanation I can find for the flaws in the story. It?s just too many people involved for such shallow (IMHO) solutions to get the green light (to many yes men?). I wish I didn?t think so, but that?s my opinion.

I just want to add that BSG as a whole is my second all time favorite Sci-Fi show (after B5), so don?t misunderstand me.

 

I love Science Fiction...

Three huge grins on my face in the latest episode:

First few scenes in New Cap City.
Cylon Zoe in the board room.
Getting to hear my favorite BSG/Caprica theme again: the Adama family theme.

So in the end, all this amounts to me wanting this show to never go away.

 

Friday's episode was probably my favorite since the two-hour pilot. I wonder if the Tamara storyline is going to be like the Helo storyline in BSG, in that it takes a character that was originally intended to be written off, and then integrates him/her into the mythology of the show? Sort of a Matrix-y vibe. In other words, it's the first time I've really liked the show on its own merits, as opposed to being a "continuation" of BSG.

What throws me about this whole VR world is...where exactly is it housed? Is there a big corporate mainframe somewhere, and everyone wirelessly jacks into it? And when people jack into it, the rules and environment are provided by the "construct," but the thoughts and actions are provided by the brain of the person jacked in. But if that's the case, there's no ghost-image to remain behind in the mainframe, once the real person's brain is gone. There were just avatars in the VR world, not AI. If the Tamara-avatar was AI, and off on its own, there'd be little benefit to a real person even jacking in.

My understanding is that V-World developed much like the Internet, starting with closed commercial services like CompuServe and AOL, but evolving into an open, loosely-associated network. The holoband, then, is like like a cable modem. The high-traffic areas are probably maintained by big commercial services like Graystone Industries, but the areas we've seen are probably stored on personal servers somewhere, loosely strung together. The Tamara avatar is like a virus, a piece of incredibly intricate code that can travel from server to server.

The show makes a distinction between the computer term "avatar," which is a virtual representation of a living, breathing user, and the Avatars, which are fully encapsulated software recreations of persons. The Zoe and Tamara avatars are not avatars in the traditional computing sense, because they are the users, not merely representations of human users. Only the Zoe Avatar (created by Zoe Graystone before she died in the monorail bombing) and the Tamara Avatar (created by Daniel Graystone, cribbing liberally from his daughter's work on the Zoe Avatar) are truly and independently sentient. The Zoe Avatar was almost certainly a perfect copy of the biological Zoe up to the moment she was created. The Tamara Avatar is much more likely to be a flawed copy of the biological Tamara, since Daniel Graystone didn't have access to the original girl.

It was exciting to see Daniel finally get Zoe going, and I loved the way he introduced her to the board. Such a delicious hint of menace. If I'd been on the Microsoft board and Bill Gates had wheeled in a U-87, I'd have voted for "Windows ME" being a stable-op system if he'd told me to. I'm glad they're finally going forward with the Cylons, and actually giving them a purpose in the show -- what with the whole underlying notion of robotic mass production/worker-slaves.

I'm waiting for Graystone to discover the heartless, crazed partial-Tamara avatar, and use her as the final "fix" to create the heartless Cylon soldiers we know eventually come to exist. They could do that quite convincingly, and have it be the underlying, unspoken conflict that Adama always had in BSG between the "mistakes" of the past, and reconciliation.

According to interviews with both Eick and Espenson, Patton Oswalt's late-night monologue was deliberately written to be as "banal" and groan-inducing as possible, evidently drawing from at least one of those producers' seething, deep-seated Leno-hatred.

 

I had to do a mini-marathon this weekend to catch up on Caprica. I hadn't watched any shows since the first one to air after the premiere. Right now I'm getting the feeling the writer's are still trying to get their footing and setup the overall story arc (aside from the rise of the Cylons).

But I'm excited to see where things go especially with Tamara basically becoming the One/Neo of New Cap City.

Also, I loved the throwback to the classic BSG we got 2 weeks ago right before the Cylon dance scene. Any chance to put little throwbacks like that in the show amuse me. But is anyone else being thrown off by Luciana Carro's appearance in Caprica. I'm having a hard time separating the new character from Kat. BSG actor cameos in Caprica might be a bad idea.

 

I noticed her and a few episodes the guy who played Duck was on, but it doesn't really bother me so far. After watching A LOT of Star Trek over the last 7 months, I've become fairly accustomed to actors playing multiple different parts withing the same franchise.

I will have to judge it on a case by case basis though.

 

Chicago Tribune interview piece with Torresani and Sasha Roiz, by Maureen Ryan (conducted right here in Chi-Town, no less).

Random note: Did anyone notice the fighter ships on the zeppelin in "New Cap City"? Their basic shapes were very reminiscent of Mark I Vipers -- the way their wings were shaped, etc. While I do think that the basic shape was reminiscent of a Viper, it's clear that the aircraft we saw were also inspired by the Spitfires and Mustangs of World War II. The engines, for example, appear to be aft-mounted propeller-driven turbines, while the rear fin has the curvature of that era, as well. Though considering the zeppelin's presence, it's hardly surprising that wartime fighters would be the inspiration, given that, for a time, the U.S. Navy employed airships capable of carrying drop-planes.

(Anyone who's played Crimson Skies on the Xbox -- that whole sequence was practically right out of the "Chicago" level in that game.)

Next week: John Pyper-Ferguson.

 

Syfy reportedly close to announcing Caprica's second season.

 

Sorry about that -- link fixed.

 

Yes. Writers are brilliant in leveraging gaming technology within their story framework. Very appealing. What a hook!

Definitely a turning point in the storyline. Probably one of many to come. I'm diggin' the Matrix-vibe!

VR world I think is a hacker's paradise. The engine resides on Graystone's mainframe, but all the different maps and levels and whatnot are scattered throughout different servers. Who knows, Tamara may not be the only sentient bot running around. She may encounter other anomolies, oracles, or VR deities created by the hackers - all kinds of possibilities and fun stuff.

She's definitely an anomoly, and will be fun to watch; a great character in the making. Can't wait to see the development of Graystone's replication process. Wouldn't be surprised if he resurrects other dead people through avatars.

Like Flynn from the movie Tron. His body, while no longer existing in the human world, becomes an "enhanced" program in the computer world.

Yeah, Zoe is perfect, a progenitor of the cyclons race.

Yeah, that's a plausible direction. Well said.

 

Preview of James Marsters on tonight's Caprica. I'm a fan of Marsters so I'm excited to see him on Caprica. Looks like he gets to play the type of character he excels at too.

 

At this point, although I really enjoyed this episode as a whole, I have to admit that the Sister Clarice storyline just isn't working for me. I don't buy Polly Walker's performance, and I don't (with the exception of Lacy) buy how the other characters react to her. In a strange way, the Tamara Avatar's storyline is the most compelling, because she and her father are the only ones who're reacting on an emotional, visceral level. Everyone one else has schemes insides schemes inside schemes.

What was really odd was that, after conducting a high-stress covert operation (to steal data off Daniel's computers), she goes home and...gets high? OK, that perhaps is somewhat understandable to take the edge off, but surely she should've passed the gadget back first before going off to get stoned. Instead, her multiple husbands find her in bed, high as a kite, and one of them happens to find it, and observes that it's full of data, so she must have succeeded.

OK, I'm just nitpicking that one sequence to death, but generally the whole Sister Clarice/STO storyline has not been as well-developed as the others, and is doing so in an illogical fashion. With Daniel's and Zoe's stories, it's understandable that they get developed the fastest; but even Tamara's, which was benched for a few weeks, just in one episode gets kick-started in a big, big way.

On the plus side, I love the dynamic between Daniel Graystone and Tomas Vergis. Vergis is a man of strong convictions, and a directness that is refreshing. He tells Graystone outright they are enemies, that Graystone stole his chip, that Graystone is responsible for the murder of two people he considered friends, and that he is going to do everything in his power to destroy him. What can Daniel say or do? Because he knows that Vergis is in the right. An interesting perspective shift on the show's lead character. While Daniel's motivations were murky from the start, the reveal that his actions caused the loss of life suddenly shifts him to a much darker level. What will he do? Will he resort to more dark dealings? Vergis does not appear to be a man who can be bought. This is a very intriguing storyline I can't wait to see played out.

Don't get me wrong, I'm hooked. On the whole, this was a very good episode. But I hope the Clarice/STO plotline gets more interesting.

(Also, the scene with Adama "opening" the plastic-clamshell holoband packaging was one of the funniest I've seen on the show in a while. I loved it when the camera slowly panned across the hammer, screwdriver, other tools, et cetera.)