Caprica

[Ellen]

Is anyone watching? Can anyone tell me anything that would get me excited about watching? I have two episodes DVR'd but can't seem to hit the play button...

[Katy]

Is anyone watching? Can anyone tell me anything that would get me excited about watching? I have two episodes DVR'd but can't seem to hit the play button...

I watched the pilot, or two-hour intro, or whatever you want to call it, and I was intrigued. I haven't watched the second and third episodes yet, but that's more because I promised my sister I wouldn't watch until she was around.

I'm less enamored of the ending of BSG than I was initially--I think I was so relieved that it didn't end apocalyptically that I got giddy--and I think on reason it failed for me (to the degree it failed) is that Ron Moore had an ending scene in mind from the beginning (which was WAY too on the nose), and he shoe-horned the ending to fit that final scene. I think he should have slaughtered that darling long before we got to it.

One thing I've read in interviews is that the producers of Caprica aren't married to a particular ending or even direction, so if the series develops in a different direction than anticipated, they can follow that organic development, rather than force the series to go in a particular direction.

One thing I'm curious about is how Joe Adama, mob lawyer, becomes Joseph Adama, brilliant jurist. And I'm curious to see how Zoe develops.

So I'm giving it a whirl. I should watch last Friday's and this Friday's episodes on Saturday; when I do, I'll report back.

[Katy]

So... I've seen the 2nd and 3rd episodes, the ones from 1/29 and 2/5, and I think I'm hooked on the series. I know I have to find out happens next--if this were a book I was reading, I'd have been up into the wee hours, until my eyes stopped working together--trying to find out.

One of the things I really loved about BSG was that none of the main characters fit neatly into Good-Guy/Bad-Guy bins. It made them unpredictable, to a certain degree, and when you had that many not-entirely-predictable people bouncing off one another, things could go in unpredictable directions. I see the same thing at work here. The characters are flawed and complex, and they do things for noble and ignoble reasons.

It's definitely different than BSG. I was thinking about the two series earlier in the week, and I was thinking that Caprica was weaker because it doesn't have the big question--will these people survive?--hanging over it. So what will keep me coming back? Now that I've seen eps. 2 & 3, I know what will keep me coming back: The characters and the questions the series will ask.

I read an interview with the producers over at Techland, and in it they talked about wanting to write something that was a serial, not something with a defined beginning, middle and end (because there are constraints built into a B-M-E, or at least that's how I read it...). So Caprica will be different that way.

Which is, I think, a good thing: you can follow your ideas where they lead. I can do that as a novelist working within a B-M-E framework because I don't reveal anything until I reveal everything. If I get a better, stronger, deeper idea midway through the writing process, I can go back and fix the earlier parts of the story so they line up with the new idea, and no one will know that I did it. With TV, you're releasing things as you finish them, so if you get that better, stronger, deeper idea midway and you're working with a B-M-E framework, you may have a major problem on your hands.

Anyway, so far this is working for me. (In the interests of full disclosure, my sister is "having problems warming up to Zoe". She's not a particularly likable character, but where she is, is interesting, and I'm very curious to see how that all plays out...

[Katy]

I haven't posted anything in a while about the series, because I hadn't seen episodes 4-6. I have a commitment to watch them with my sister, and she hasn't been around.

It still feels as if they're laying groundwork, and from what I've read, that's a fair interpretation. Apparently, all hell breaks loose in the second half of the season: the first half is just setting it up. I'm starting to seriously love Sam Adama, even though he's a mob enforcer (seriously), and I'm curious to see where everything goes. There's so much going on that it's really hard to predict what will happen.

I will also say that the "3 hours" we watched (more like just over 2) absolutely flew by. It felt like 45 minutes.

Someone in the blogosphere said that Lee is a lot like his grandfather, Joe, in his wishy-washiness. I buy that. I also think Bill Adama (Willie here) learned a lot from his uncle Sam. Which might be why I like Sam so much: they have the same toughness and clarity; when they bend or break the rules, they don't pretend to themselves that they're not doing it. Lee and Joe tend to look away a bit more.

At first I thought the visual representation of the Cylon Zoe was hokey, flashing between the giant metal thing and the actress playing Zoe, but now I think it's absolutely necessary, because it expresses the duality, and keeps you from forgetting about the other half of who/what she is. If they were always with the metal version, you'd forget the "human" element, and if they were always with the human version, you'd forget that this is the first Cylon.

The other thing I like is I'm starting to understand, in an emotional, gut-level sort of way, why the Cylons decided to kick humans to the curb. If you're treating as a thing when you're not a thing, but a person, you don't have a lot of use for the people treating you as a thing. And if you have the power to change things, well, why not use it?

I like that Daniel Graystone is kind of repellent. As one critic said, it's interesting to sort of root against one of the heroes of a TV show.

I don't know: I just see a lot of crunchy stuff developing, and I'm really curious to see where this goes.

I will also say that I need to get over trying to tie this to BSG. The series producers have done everything possible to disconnect the two series, given the inherent limitations of setting it on Caprica at the birth of the 12-Colony Cylons, so my issue is mine. That is, aside from the fact there is a Cylon, the two shows are separate in every way. The esthetic is different, the storytelling is different, etc. It has some of the same concerns--religion, politics, power, family--but it's painting them on a different canvas.

Do I love it as much as I loved BSG? Not yet...but I don't think it's impossible that I'll love it as much.

Things just need to start coming together, that's all. That's the only thing that's missing.

[Ellen]

Thanks for the updates, Katy. I have to admit I never did find the motivation to watch the first episode on my DVR, and now it's been shuffled off by subsequent recordings, so I have given up for now. I think I'll try watching it on DVD when I can get the whole first season in a row. I found I liked BSG better that way -- I watched the first two seasons on DVD in huge gulps, then felt really frustrated by waiting for each episode after that. It puts a lot of pressure on individual episodes to wait for them like that -- it sets you up to think -- that's it? at the end of each one. Especially in a series like this, where they're really telling a long, unfolding story.

So. That's my justification for not getting into it now.

[Katy]

I think I'll try watching it on DVD when I can get the whole first season in a row. I found I liked BSG better that way -- I watched the first two seasons on DVD in huge gulps, then felt really frustrated by waiting for each episode after that. It puts a lot of pressure on individual episodes to wait for them like that -- it sets you up to think -- that's it? at the end of each one. Especially in a series like this, where they're really telling a long, unfolding story.

So. That's my justification for not getting into it now.

It sounds like a Most Excellent Plan, actually. I remember saying to my sister (and I might have said it elsewhere) that one of things that I loved about BSG is that it was more like reading a novel than I was accustomed to with television, which is why I think it really lent itself to marathon viewing. Caprica is shaping up to have that same quality. (It's certainly rewarding thought about it the way a good book will.)

The other thing it has going for it is its willingness to tackle big ideas. The whole thing is, on one level, a meditation on what it means to be alive, to be human. At what point is someone a real person? What does it take? Is self-awareness and the ability to act independently enough? And what makes a person? The Zoe and Tamara avatars are made up of millions, if not billions, of pieces of information about their originals. The Zoe avatar has the benefit of having been created by Zoe, but Daniel made the Tamara avatar after the original Tamara was dead.

There's a theory I've read a couple of times that who we are is what we remember. It's the Tauron way to get a tattoo as a memorial of people and events in one's life (so Willy and Joe get them at the memorial for Tamara and Shannon (iirc), Joe's wife/Willy's mother). If we are our memories, then Taurons are their tats. Which somehow vibrates in my mind, but I'm not sure what it means.

And some of the details are just cool: Willy and Joe each give the priest a gold coin at the memorial, to send Tamara and Shannon on their ways, which harkens back to the old practice of putting a coin in the mouth of the dead, as payment to Charon, the ferryman who carries souls across the river Styx to Hades.

Then there's the whole mashup quality of the production design. People have cell phones, but they drive cars from the 40s and 50s. (Sam Adama's car has fins.) The landline at the Adama apartment looks like an Ericofon, which seems very 60s/70s to me. People connect to the web (for want of a better term, since it's not just the holobands) and get/send e-mail using something that folds up like paper, and is thrown away like paper. I really like the mix; it keeps me from getting, I don't know, blasé about the world.

So, I think it's definitely worth watching, and might be better seen as a whole, rather than by single episodes. (I have yet to watch a single episode--I keep watching in 2-3 episode chunks.)

[jensoko]

I was one of the people who thought BSG wandered off the reservation after the first season, so I'm not going into Caprica with anything more than the vague idea of Cylons=bad (and fond but dim memories of having a huge crush on Richard Hatch in grade school). 

I love the differing aesthetics--they're playing around with a visual disconnect that lampshades our assumptions and they are really having a game with some cultural stereotypes and expectations.  I'm a huge fan of tipping over sacred cows like that.

The only thing I don't like is that it's got this tendency to switch back and forth between storylines sometimes too fast.  But I'm one of those people that doesn't care for extended melodrama, so if they stretch out a storyline past its expiration date, I will wander off in favor of something with an end in mind, if not sight.

[Katy]

I was just reading EW.com's "10 Things You Need to Know About Flash Forward" and it made me realize that what Caprica needs is something--a mystery, a compelling problem--that links all the threads together, something like the seasonal Big Bads on Buffy.

My sense, reading critics and cast member interviews, is that something like that does become apparent in the latter half of the season. I say "becomes apparent" because I think the hints are there, the groundwork is laid--it's just a matter of the monster rising from the depths.