Caprica S01E1-5 but especially #5 “There is Another Sky”
Starting off with some vid recs. First a film noir tribute gakked from 
laurashapiro, which doesn’t stand back and touch its forelock respectfully but throws you right into the path of the source, so much so you can almost feel the headlights bearing down on you.
The song is Angel by Massive Attack and feels so absolutely right for the subject matter, it’s as if all these movies had just been spending the interim decades waiting for it to be written. The official video for the song is also extremely nifty, the ending in particular kills me.
Caprica isn’t noir but visually it comes very close and, the way the storylines are heading, not just in a pastiche or appropriative way (can you appropriate your own cinematic past)? Another vid with the perfect, perfect song:
Brand new You’re Retro by hollywoodgrrl
Distills the show’s premise and look right down to their essentials and makes them glitter like decadent rhinestones on the cusp of an apocalypse.
So I’ve been following Caprica, the BSG prequel, in a rather desultory fashion. Not out of loyalty exactly. I didn’t hate the Battlestar ending with the passion many do (although I understand why they do). With me it induced more apathy, it felt as if the curtain had been ripped away and I wasn’t that keen to see any more of naked Ron Moore. Still haven’t watched The Plan and don’t intend to.
But there isn’t much else on TV right now. I’ve been tempted by Fringe and Olivianess but I fear the bad science will hurt just a little too much and her hair is too distracting, it looks like it's permanently underwater. So Caprica it is, but four episodes in and something wasn’t quite gelling. I was impressed by how solid the world felt, sympathetic towards the Adamas/Lacey and interested, if a little repelled, by the Graystones but it still felt lacking in central coherence. For several reasons this fictional world had a hole at its heart and if it had to be named, a hole named Zoe. As a character she seemed spread too thin, too multifunctional, central to too many plotlines. Feisty schoolgirl, genius computer hacker and terrorist martyr, all in one. The tragically struck down daughter, the inventor of electronic immortality, the mother of all the cylons and the saviour surely meant to bring them to the one true God. All of this and yet it was hard to understand what drove her. In terms of story mechanics, her newfound religion for its own (eventually to be revealed) reasons seems to have set her on the quest to create herself in her own virtual image but why religion? I could have understood it better if she’d been the Caprican equivalent of a neo-trot wannabe and anyway where are all the communists? Or the socialists, a world without Marx may be credilble but to be also without an Engels or an Owen, without Chartists or Levellers? I mean, it’s not as if these worlds haven’t been through their own Industrial Revolutions and even within the series class issues are pretty apparent comparing Lacey or Tamara’s backgrounds to Zoe’s. De nada, Zoe got religion in reaction to the decadence around her but it didn’t look that decadent. A society on the verge of breakdown should produce something more pervasive than a few virtual "Disco from Hell" scenes and a single suicide bomb making the interplanetary news headlines.
The 5th episode had a lot of ground to make up but it worked. I feel like I get Zoe now even though she only featured in one scene. A scene opening with an aerial shot of the Graystone company boardroom, A vast grey atrium graced with a single incongruously redwood executive table, the kind of architecture that looks best in ruins. The board are arguing how best to depose their Ozymandias when he makes a dramatic entrance accompanied by curiously human robot. The Zoe/robot intercutting works for the first time, the environment helps, it’s built to her scale and Daddy’s girl has Daddy to play off against. The likeness, the connection is palpable. Daniel would have done what Zoe did, and that makes it credible that she did it, father and daughter both driven by the need to create the next big thing. Artificial sentience as a business proposition. No more wages to pay, no more healthcare to insure, no more pensions to fund. To have such power over another, to command it to mutilate itself on a whim and be obeyed, no justification required. That’s what Daniel Graystone believes will sell and so it begins. He’s a very scary man, much scarier than Gaius Baltar ever was because it isn’t self-interest or fanaticism that drives him. He’s just keeping the family business going and his world supports him in that endeavor. Scary world.
Scary virtual world. The B plot (Caprica episodes like to plot in threes, ABCs) follows Tamara’s adventures in Wonderland and her response to the casual violence, not to mention the senslessness of the whole thing finally brings home what original Zoe might have been reacting to. Not least when Tamara herself proves desensitized enough to gun down everyone in her way by the time she finds out that she’s not special she’s just dead. The A plot or at least the one with the most screen time follows Tamara’s father working through grief. The Tauron scenes feature glowing earth tones in calculated contrast to the arid greys of the corporate and virtual worlds. I like the colour coding, it was one of the features of the parent series that worked well. But it’s not that simple, particularily given the way we’re shown that on Caprica "dirt-eater" is the standard racist epitaph for a Tauron. Joseph mourns, he lets the dead go and in that very moment Tamara’s messenger comes knocking.
The three thing, three teenage girls at the centre of everything. Lacey in the real world, Tamara the avatar and Zoe the avatar who got away caught between the virtual and the living. Tamara and Zoe both daddy’s girls so I hope Lacey continues to be prominent with Clarice as the adult figure associated with her. The series is more male dominated than I remember BSG being in the beginning, Amanda Graystone is no Laura Roslin. Also very white, interplanetary racism supplies a rather clunky dramatic stand in for the real thing. But with the cylons about to go into mass production the series finally feels like it has a direction, its scene is set. I do wonder quite how they plan to connect with the original. The skin jobs there turned out not to have evolved from the original centurions but to have been generated via a different robot lineage, the children of the final five. There’s something about Eric Stolz’s appearance that recalls the hybrid encountered by Kendra Shaw in Razor. Could that be his fate? Or Zoe’s who has the colouring of the female hybrids. That their striving for transcendence/to return to human form should end in such a place would be rather horrible but could be dramatically satisfying.
laurashapiro, which doesn’t stand back and touch its forelock respectfully but throws you right into the path of the source, so much so you can almost feel the headlights bearing down on you.
Click to viewThe song is Angel by Massive Attack and feels so absolutely right for the subject matter, it’s as if all these movies had just been spending the interim decades waiting for it to be written. The official video for the song is also extremely nifty, the ending in particular kills me.
Caprica isn’t noir but visually it comes very close and, the way the storylines are heading, not just in a pastiche or appropriative way (can you appropriate your own cinematic past)? Another vid with the perfect, perfect song:
Brand new You’re Retro by hollywoodgrrl
Distills the show’s premise and look right down to their essentials and makes them glitter like decadent rhinestones on the cusp of an apocalypse.
So I’ve been following Caprica, the BSG prequel, in a rather desultory fashion. Not out of loyalty exactly. I didn’t hate the Battlestar ending with the passion many do (although I understand why they do). With me it induced more apathy, it felt as if the curtain had been ripped away and I wasn’t that keen to see any more of naked Ron Moore. Still haven’t watched The Plan and don’t intend to.
But there isn’t much else on TV right now. I’ve been tempted by Fringe and Olivianess but I fear the bad science will hurt just a little too much and her hair is too distracting, it looks like it's permanently underwater. So Caprica it is, but four episodes in and something wasn’t quite gelling. I was impressed by how solid the world felt, sympathetic towards the Adamas/Lacey and interested, if a little repelled, by the Graystones but it still felt lacking in central coherence. For several reasons this fictional world had a hole at its heart and if it had to be named, a hole named Zoe. As a character she seemed spread too thin, too multifunctional, central to too many plotlines. Feisty schoolgirl, genius computer hacker and terrorist martyr, all in one. The tragically struck down daughter, the inventor of electronic immortality, the mother of all the cylons and the saviour surely meant to bring them to the one true God. All of this and yet it was hard to understand what drove her. In terms of story mechanics, her newfound religion for its own (eventually to be revealed) reasons seems to have set her on the quest to create herself in her own virtual image but why religion? I could have understood it better if she’d been the Caprican equivalent of a neo-trot wannabe and anyway where are all the communists? Or the socialists, a world without Marx may be credilble but to be also without an Engels or an Owen, without Chartists or Levellers? I mean, it’s not as if these worlds haven’t been through their own Industrial Revolutions and even within the series class issues are pretty apparent comparing Lacey or Tamara’s backgrounds to Zoe’s. De nada, Zoe got religion in reaction to the decadence around her but it didn’t look that decadent. A society on the verge of breakdown should produce something more pervasive than a few virtual "Disco from Hell" scenes and a single suicide bomb making the interplanetary news headlines.
The 5th episode had a lot of ground to make up but it worked. I feel like I get Zoe now even though she only featured in one scene. A scene opening with an aerial shot of the Graystone company boardroom, A vast grey atrium graced with a single incongruously redwood executive table, the kind of architecture that looks best in ruins. The board are arguing how best to depose their Ozymandias when he makes a dramatic entrance accompanied by curiously human robot. The Zoe/robot intercutting works for the first time, the environment helps, it’s built to her scale and Daddy’s girl has Daddy to play off against. The likeness, the connection is palpable. Daniel would have done what Zoe did, and that makes it credible that she did it, father and daughter both driven by the need to create the next big thing. Artificial sentience as a business proposition. No more wages to pay, no more healthcare to insure, no more pensions to fund. To have such power over another, to command it to mutilate itself on a whim and be obeyed, no justification required. That’s what Daniel Graystone believes will sell and so it begins. He’s a very scary man, much scarier than Gaius Baltar ever was because it isn’t self-interest or fanaticism that drives him. He’s just keeping the family business going and his world supports him in that endeavor. Scary world.
Scary virtual world. The B plot (Caprica episodes like to plot in threes, ABCs) follows Tamara’s adventures in Wonderland and her response to the casual violence, not to mention the senslessness of the whole thing finally brings home what original Zoe might have been reacting to. Not least when Tamara herself proves desensitized enough to gun down everyone in her way by the time she finds out that she’s not special she’s just dead. The A plot or at least the one with the most screen time follows Tamara’s father working through grief. The Tauron scenes feature glowing earth tones in calculated contrast to the arid greys of the corporate and virtual worlds. I like the colour coding, it was one of the features of the parent series that worked well. But it’s not that simple, particularily given the way we’re shown that on Caprica "dirt-eater" is the standard racist epitaph for a Tauron. Joseph mourns, he lets the dead go and in that very moment Tamara’s messenger comes knocking.
The three thing, three teenage girls at the centre of everything. Lacey in the real world, Tamara the avatar and Zoe the avatar who got away caught between the virtual and the living. Tamara and Zoe both daddy’s girls so I hope Lacey continues to be prominent with Clarice as the adult figure associated with her. The series is more male dominated than I remember BSG being in the beginning, Amanda Graystone is no Laura Roslin. Also very white, interplanetary racism supplies a rather clunky dramatic stand in for the real thing. But with the cylons about to go into mass production the series finally feels like it has a direction, its scene is set. I do wonder quite how they plan to connect with the original. The skin jobs there turned out not to have evolved from the original centurions but to have been generated via a different robot lineage, the children of the final five. There’s something about Eric Stolz’s appearance that recalls the hybrid encountered by Kendra Shaw in Razor. Could that be his fate? Or Zoe’s who has the colouring of the female hybrids. That their striving for transcendence/to return to human form should end in such a place would be rather horrible but could be dramatically satisfying.