The Thermodynamics of Sci-Fi TV

So, last night was a rather momentous one for fans of so-called "genre television." (As if all TV shows weren't part of some genre.) On FOX, we had the final episode of Dollhouse; over on Syfy (perhaps even at the same time, depending on your time zone) we had the first "real" episode of Caprica, following last week's airing of the pilot episode that you could have seen on DVD months ago.

First, Dollhouse. It's been a while since I last mentioned the show, but the bottom line is this: in its second season, it really became something. While I would still put it as the least distinguished of Joss Whedon's four television series to date, that's now no longer a reflection on the lackluster first season of Dollhouse -- it's a testament to the quality of the other three shows.

But really, it kind of had to be this way. FOX had to get out of the way and stop interfering with their desire for a "ho of the week" series before the show could start to display a glimpse of what it would be; further, it took the knowledge that the show was ending for the story to really start unspooling at an exciting pace.

When you really get down to it, the second season was pretty great. The first two or three episodes (sadly, including the episodes to feature Jamie Bamber and Michael Hogan, from Battlestar Galactica) were average at best, but then came the brilliant episode that filled in the audience on the backstory of Sierra. And it was all pretty much fantastic from there.

The finale itself, from last night, was not the best episode of the show, but it was a very good ending. It went beautifully with the DVD-only episode released with Season One (and I can only imagine that watching it if you haven't seen that would have been kind of a mess), brought the characters to appropriate ends of their respective journeys, and was just a generally feel-good experience... for those who appreciate a well-crafted story. (In true Joss Whedon fashion, it is not all rainbows and puppies for the characters in the end.)

So while on the one hand I'm sorry to see I show I'd grown to like go, I know that it would not have been a show I'd grow to like if it hadn't known it was on the way out already. Instead, I'm happy for this sort-of-novel realized on television, and glad for its fitting conclusion.

Speaking of novels on television, that was the definite feeling I got after watching the first regular episode of Caprica. If you go back to the first post-mini-series episode of Battlestar Galactica (the frakkin' great "33"), you'll recall that while it did pick up the story very soon after where it had left off, the episode itself was... well, episodic. There was a clear theme to the hour, a story of its own with a beginning, middle, and end. (Well, maybe just a middle and an end -- that was part of what made the episode so cool, just being thrown right into it.)

Caprica felt much more to me like curling up with a book and reading one more chapter. The episode was by no means boring, but it really wasn't "about" any particular story. We learned a lot more about the characters (particularly Clarice Willow and Sam Adama). Some of the characters even learned more about each other (for example, in the powerful story of Amanda Graystone realizing how little she actually knew her daughter Zoe).

But at the same time, there wasn't really a thematic throughline, no particular dilemma being faced and resolved this week, nothing to make this stand on its own as a single hour of television. Yes, by the end, Battlestar Galactica was like this too, but it did not start this way.

That's fine; I for one was interested. But if this is an accurate reflection of the show to come, then Caprica looks to be a soap opera, perhaps minus the hokey melodrama. That makes it a very different kind of sci-fi show than we've really had before. Even the highly serialized Babylon 5, with some of its very well-rounded characters, was not really a TV show about the characters. Perhaps Firefly comes closest to the apparent Caprica model, where the "story" of any episode was only half about the circumstances, and half about how the nine characters on Serenity reacted to them.

I suppose that's an appropriate connection for this occasion where one sci-fi show comes to an end as another starts up. Caprica at least seems to be on a stronger narrative footing than the show it's "replacing"; hopefully it can build to be as good as Dollhouse became (or better). I'll be tuning in.