Unvanquished

Caprica returned this week, more than six months after its last new episode. I was in Las Vegas when it aired, so I only just got around to watching it.

The extra few days turned out to be a good thing, I think. That's because I got to hear the overnight ratings for the broadcast. They were damn poor, even by Syfy channel standards. In short, I expect that this batch of episodes, the back half of season one, will be the last Caprica episodes ever. So I think my mindset on this Battlestar Galactica spinoff series has transformed now from "hope it improves into something strong" to "I'm prepared to go down with the sinking ship."

I'm not going to be disappointed if Caprica ends after one season, as I would have been after just one season of its excellent "parent" series. But the show isn't bad either. Actually, I'm reminded a lot of Dollhouse, and wonder if the series could follow a similar course -- not great at the outset, but finishing out as something strong.

This week's episode, though, seemed about in the same place as the show was last spring: one step up, one step back.

For example, the opening sequence about a terrorist bombing to destroy a sports stadium packed with fans was pretty incredible. It was tense, it had emotional weight to it, and it was capped with a powerful visual of the building imploding with tens of thousands of people in it. Gutsy of the show to go there in the walking-on-eggshells-about-September-11th environment.

And yet, it didn't go there. Not really. The entire sequence turned out to be a fiction played out on holobands. And it led into a run of the mill storyline about Clarice Willow making a power grab within the STO. It didn't feel like it illuminated the character, and didn't really feel like it advanced the plot.

Then there was the suicide of Amanda Graystone. When we saw it last spring, I thought to myself that it wasn't likely they'd actually kill off a main character on a show that just got started. But then this episode rolled out and it appeared they had. They even took Paula Malcomson's name out of the opening credits. So then I started to think that maybe they were going to Zoe-ize her to keep her in the story, though I was a little unsure as to whether the show needed two people-avatars-in-Cylons.

Then, ahha! -- bait and switch. Amanda was revealed to be alive at the end of the episode. And now I'm not sure what to feel about it. What's the purpose behind the charade? Does this turn of events undermine the emotional heft for Daniel's character?

Does Joseph Adama suddenly seem too much more "in the family" this week than he did in prior episodes?

These shifts could signal moving on to something better, which would be great for the show. But I'm also a little skeptical about it all... at least, after just this one episode. I suppose I'll see what's in store next week.