Caprica
Apparently, there's a reason why none of my friends have recommended Caprica. If you can bring yourself to care, there are spoilers behind the LJ-cut.
- Gratuitous nudity. Way too much of it. One or two quick flashes would have been enough to get the point across. Pander much? By the way, before you think, "Well, I figured you'd raise that as an issue," my husband was the one who mentioned it. We're both right.
- Eye color on young Adama. A nitpick, I know, but I was wearing contact lenses at that age, so if they really liked the actor, there's an easy fix.
- On a technical note, granted, it was a Netflix DVD, but the audio levels for the actors seemed tremendously inconsistent -- Zoe was really loud; Lacey was very soft, etc.
- Timeline. I suck at math, but not as badly as the BSG/Caprica writers do, apparently. Despite all the "old man" comments, I don't buy that Bill Adama was in his seventies at the end of the show. I also don't buy that the young Adama we saw in the Razor flashbacks was thirtysomething. I know that I should just give up on them giving a frak about the timeline after what they did with Tigh, but it still irks me.
- I've seen the movie A.I. Apparently, so did Ron Moore, and it seems he liked it way more than I did. We've seen a pivotal chunk of this plot before. Unoriginal plot line is unoriginal.
- This was the killer for me: I do not buy for one second that Daniel Graystone did not have a backup. There's suspension of disbelief, and then there's implausibility so extreme that it insults the viewer's intelligence. I consider this part of the plot to be the latter.
- Good grief, heavy-handed much with the infinity symbol? Yes, yes, all this has happened before, and all of it will happen again. Been there. Done that.
- I usually like Jane Espenson's writing, but I thought the Clarice Willow/Cyrus Xander thing was a bit much. Or maybe it was Ron Moore paying homage and being friendly to Joss, given that he's been a very supportive fan of BSG. Either way, doing one or the other would have been a bit more subtle ... heck, even introducing them in separate episodes would've been an improvement.
What did I like? Hmmm.
- I liked the additional cultural information for Taurons, Capricans, and so on. I'd like to see more of that.
- I think it's reasonable to speculate that there's going to be a link between Daniel Graystone and Cylon #7, Daniel. We know from BSG that Ellen created #7. Is Ellen somehow a grown-up version of Zoe? Is she Lacey? Timeline funkiness, or something different?
- Sister Clarice's comment about "How valuable Zoe was to us ..." was somewhat interesting. I'll admit that I'd like to know a little more about the Soldiers of the One.
- I thought the special effects looked good.
I guess my real problem is that I just can't decide whether or not I care anymore. I'll probably watch a few episodes (the series debuts on January 22nd, 2010), but I was left with decided feelings of meh. The backup thing was just beyond sloppy. Seriously, that bit of writing was like, "I'm on a deadline and need this paycheck" sloppy. Make the computer overload and explode. Have the centurion step on the FutureUSB drive and crush it. At least give it a hand wave.
Meh. Did I mention meh?