Caprica: There Is Another Sky (s1e5)
Posted on 02. Mar, 2010 by Simon in Television
Five episodes in, I can’t help but notice that every episode of Caprica starts with a recap of all the plot points that will be addressed in the upcoming hour. This is important to note, because I think the show realizes without these little summaries, people would quite easily lose track of what’s going on.
Let me reiterate: these recaps are not of what has been going on in the show as a whole. The show has SO MUCH SHIT going on, that it takes nearly 2 minutes just to recap which of the many, many, many plot points we are going to dive into in this particular episode.
Some might hate this, some might love it. Me? I applaud the effort, despite being somewhat skeptical of the result.
More thoughts (with spoilers) after the jump.
Fresh on the heels of last week’s spontaneous bombshell that Greystone Inc. is going to jettison it’s primary resource stream — holobands — in favour of a charitable trust fund, it’s no surprise Daniel’s board members are eager to dump him just as fast.
We finally find out where all this is going this week, as Daniel basically redirects his company from the holoband business headfirst into becoming Cylon Inc., painting the sentient robots as a world changing invention (the viewer knowledge of how prescient he is makes the scenes all the more interesting).
Adding to that emotional tone is the visual of Zoebot jumping between her human self and Cylon body as Daniel asks her to rip her arm off in front of the board. Throughout BSG, although they were clearly intelligent I don’t think viewers were ever led to think of the Toaster-type Cylons as anything remotely approaching human. The idea that they might have all been emoting individuals with personalities frankly puts an interesting spin on BSG canon, but I suppose that remains to be seen.
Most of this episode is spent on the Adama’s though, who have been going through tough times of their own. Joseph is still not over the loss of his wife and daughter, which clearly has affected his role as a father to Bill. As we’ve seen in recent episodes, Willie has been spending more time with Sam as a result, seeking the attention and paternal guidance he’s not getting from home. This comes to a boil this episode as Joseph finally attempts to get his act together only to find out Willie has zero intention of respecting or obeying him anymore — he’s lost his authority as a father, and it’s not going to return easily.
Meanwhile, Avatar-Tamara is running around virtual world trying desperately to get out. She enlists the help of some pseudo-hacker online badasses who vaguely remind me of Will Wheaton’s World of Warcraft clan from The Guild. But less funny.
This is only exacerbated by the fact they then enlist Tamara to help them complete a quest in “New Cap City,” a virtual and lawless replica of Caprica that seems part Grand Theft Auto, part Everquest and part Blade Runner. The deal is, if Tamara helps them steal some gold or something, they will help her “wake up,” and get out of v-world.
This whole storyline seemed kind of silly to me, up to the point where after completing her task Tamara is told nobody can wake her up — her virtual compadres have done some research and, surprise! — they inform Tamara she’s dead, listed among the victims of the maglev train bombing.
Tamara takes the news surprisingly well and basically goes all Neo-in-the-Matrix on their asses. In virtual world, where everyone wakes up when they die (essentially, it’s a game where you only get one life), she is a goddess since she has no physical body to wake up to.
By being a program herself, she clearly has some sort of super powers in coded v-world and basically ends the episode by sending a dude to find her father IRL, informing him she’s going to be waiting for him in New Cap City, all badass in high heels, popping dudes with her semi-automatic handguns and shit. Whaaaat?
Meanwhile, the kid she sends (who reminds me of what Justin Beiber may be in 10 years) happens to relay his message to Joseph…. oooohh, about 30 seconds after he has some Tauran funeral to finally say goodbye to his dead family for closure. He literally has to say “Goodbye Tamara,” as part of the ceremony. Great pacing since you know that Tamara is going to be in touch any. second. now.
I’m not going to lie, I had no idea Caprica was going to delve so deeply into this MMORPG, what-is-a-human type of existential stuff. I suppose part of me assumed that the reason for a BSG prequel spinoff was going to be simply to explain all the backstory for BSG.
What I’m slowly realizing though is that Caprica is really trying to be a completely different show, just using some BSG lore for interesting pillars of storytelling. I mean, despite all this Cylon business, really that was only what? Five whole minutes of this episode. It’s not fully there yet, but once I make that disconnect I think I’m going to appreciate this show even more than I currently do, accepting it as a separate entity.
Some people are calling this one of the better shows on tv. I don’t think it’s quite there yet, but it certainly has the ambition and potential to be. If you’re willing to sit through the build up for what might be a great, great blossoming, then now is certainly the time to hope on this train.
