I developed into a massive fan of Ron Moore’s updated Battlestar Galactica series, which, despite a few difficult moments along the way, delivered excellent performances and gripping drama parcelled up nicely in a retro futurist style, all chunky phones and projectile weapons. Though its use of fantastical elements, particularly in its conclusion, divided its fans, I loved it. It was epic television and Proper SF.
Caprica is a prequel to all of this, set about 50 or 60 years before the events of Battlestar and purports to tell the story of the creation and rise of the Cylon and the first Cylon-human war. The story is told through the eyes of a few key players, chiefly the wealthy Daniel Graystone, the ostensible creator of Cylon technology and excellently played by Eric Stoltz as part Steve Jobs, part Victor Frankenstein, and the more impoverished Joseph Adama, heart-breakingly played by Esai Morales as a man broken by the loss of his daughter and wife. Also in the mix is a terrorist army that preaches monotheism instead of polytheism and calls themselves “The Soldiers of The One” and a virtual, dystopian version of Caprica City accessed through headbands.
We’re nine episodes in now and it’s not grabbed me as much as Battlestar did but it has piqued my interest. What I find most difficult about it — that it’s essentially a soap opera — is actually one of its strengths. So although I’ll cringe and drift off when the Graystones are guests on a Leno-style chat show for instance, I do recognise that this is the way it has to be. This is human culture and for what it’s worth, I cringe at actual Leno-style shows as well.
I also find the story of Zoe Graystone pretty difficult to swallow. It’s layed out in the first episode that she’s ultimately responsible for Cylon intelligence due to her creation of avatars that appear to be identical in form and thought to humans, basically indistinguishable even to their own parents, one of which eventually merges with a prototype Cylon body. This doesn’t ring true to me; there’s nothing in the show to suggest that Zoe was anything other than a rich man’s daughter, and I’m uncomfortable with the idea of random individuals making isolated breakthroughs in such a complex field, particularly when they’re obviously spoilt brats.
So there are difficulties, partly my own and partly the show’s, but it’s definitely worth a look, at least for this first half-season (the show returns in the autumn). It’s easier to watch when you can forget that it’s a prequel because when that’s in your mind, you start seeking out connections and trying to work out how X led to Y, a practice that becomes distracting. You have to let the show find its own voice, and tell its own story — it’s as much an exploration of pre-genocide human culture as it is an explanation of how the Cylons rebelled.
In that respect, the show is much more of a success. What we’ve seen of the culture of the 12 human colonies has so far been limited to Caprican and Tauran, with Capricans a very WASPish culture and Taurans more Sicilian. So while part of the show’s fun will be to see how the philosophy of the Soldiers of the One ends up morphing into the Cylon’s belief system and how Joseph Adama grows into the notorious civil liberties lawyer referenced in Battlestar, a significant other part will be simple human drama. Moore’s proven time and time again that he can deliver this, not just in Battlestar but in Deep Space Nine and Carnivàle as well, so I don’t see any reason why Caprica won’t evolve into a show equally as deep.
All that said, if they have another scene like this again, it’s really just over between us.