Bear Necessities

It's been a few years since the TV series Caprica went off the air, the short-lived prequel spin-off of Battlestar Galactica. The series showed occasional hints of greatness amid a sea of flaws, but one element that was always consistent was the musical score by composer Bear McCreary. Continuing his work on Battlestar Galactica, he evolved a new soundscape that clearly felt part of the same universe while still staking out new ground of its own.

A soundtrack album of the pilot episode was released during the series' original run. Now, La-La Land Records has released a 2-CD set of music taken from all throughout the show's 20-episodes. And I'm far too big a fan of Bear McCreary's work to pass it up.

The overall tone of Caprica's music is much less flashy than that of Battlestar Galactica. While the pulsing percussion that was the parent show's signature sound does show up on occasion, Caprica is dominated by mournful wind instruments, quiet strings, and minor melodies. Listening to the soundtrack in isolation (and reading the CD set's well-researched liner notes) also made me realize just how clever the work was.

The themes Bear McCreary established for the Greystone family and the Adama family are readily apparent in the compositions, but what was less apparent was how they transformed over the life of the show. As you make your way through both discs, the two melodies slowly change and intertwine. Ultimately, as each family influences the other (one growing more corrupt and the other digging in on principles), the two melodies swap instrumentation, each theme being presented on the instruments usually reserved for the other. It's surprisingly subtle in the context of the show, but screams loud when listening to the music in isolation. And it's damn smart writing, a true symphonic representation of the storyline that played out over a season.

Accenting the work are great crossover moments with Battlestar Galactica's music. The Cylons are depicted with the same loud eastern percussion of the parent show. The relationship between Joseph Adama and his son is often scored with phrases from the melody used to represent William Adama and his son Lee on Galactica. So not only does Caprica's music stand well on its own, it works within the greater fabric of the Galactica universe.

But this new soundtrack isn't one I expect I'll be listening to straight through again. That's because scattered throughout, and amounting to nearly a entire half disc's worth of material, are a number of "source music" cues. And very few of them are enjoyable. I have little interest in hearing a warbling tenor sing the planetary anthem "Caprica Abides." Even less do I want to hear the "V club" scream-o rap "Voices of the Dead." Back to back source cues from the episode "Gravedancing" leave me cold. It's a lot of music that really doesn't play well except in the context of the given episode, and I wish it wasn't crowding out other score from the discs.

So overall, the collection isn't perfect. Still, if you're a fan of Bear McCreary's work as I am, it's a must-have. I give it a B.

Apotheosis

So here it is: the end of the road, the final episode of the Battlestar Galactica spin-off series Caprica. The show basically goes out on the same note it held throughout its run: just good enough to keep me watching, never approaching the greatness of its parent series.

The final act of the final episode was the most noteworthy thing about it, but I'll get to that shortly. First, a quick rundown of everything leading up to that.

If you were trying to rationalize a non-death out of William Adama's fate in the prior episode, no such luck. He's dead, and this episode sees Joseph on a quest for vengeance against the mob boss. His rather flighty daughter, after loving Joseph, then getting him in trouble, now decides that the death of a child is too much for her, so she agrees to help set her own father up. Joseph executes the man for his act, and his daughter ends up taking over the mob. The somewhat illogical behavior here overshadows what really should be packing a punch, Joseph having to deal with the loss of another child, after losing his daughter and wife only months before.

The dirty agent in the GDD decides to frame Daniel and Amanda as terrorists (in the wake of Clarice's failed assassination attempt). If you ask me, it's completely murky why, if this is so easily accomplished, he didn't do so earlier. In any case, it puts Daniel and Amanda on the run from the law. Their first stop, the place where Amanda met Jordan on the day he was shot, and they locate Clarice's holoband -- simply misplaced and not stolen, in a rather anticlimactic bit of circumstance. They learn "the plan," to blow up the Pyramid stadium during a C-Bucs game, and rush off to save the day.

In command of a troop of Cylons (from where? don't ask such questions.), Daniel is able to kill all the would-be bombers in the crowd before they detonate their explosives. Meanwhile, as those executed "martyrs" materialize in Clarice's manufactured "heaven," Zoe shows up (how? don't ask such questions.) and uses her increasingly God-like (though decreasingly explained) powers to reform the entire place as a fiery hellscape. Foiled again, Clarice.

Throughout all this, Tamara, Lacy, and Jordan are completely MIA.

Then Caprica shamelessly steals a page from Galactica's playbook, deciding to end its season (and series, as it would turn out) by jumping over a period of time in its final act. The exact amount of time is unspecified, but evidence within the act suggests it's about five years.

That evidence? Joseph now has another young son of about four or five (presumably with Evelyn?), and we see him being christened "Bill," to honor the sacrifice of his lost brother William. So, fooled you, viewer! This is the boy who would grow up to command the Battlestar Galactica.

Other events in this future? Cylons have become fully integrated into society. After saving the day at that Pyramid game, people quickly embraced them. Clarice now preaches monotheism at a church whose congregation is made up entirely of Cylons.

A brand-new flesh and blood (looking) Zoe wakes up in a Cylon-esque "goo bath," her work with her father finally successful in producing a "skin job" body.

Lacy is revealed to be the new "reverend mother"-esque figure running the STO training camp.

Unexplained -- and apparently never to be explained -- who shot Jordan two episodes ago? What happened to Tamara? Would a time jump have helped Caprica find itself to more interesting plots? Was a more direct connection to the events of Battlestar Galactica really what the show needed to be good, or was it just missing the right dramatic charge regardless of the number of Cylons on screen?

Syfy seems to believe that what people want to see is Cylons. To that end, they've already commissioned the next attempt to continue Battlestar Galactica, a prequel movie (with a backdoor option for a new series) that follows Bill Adama during the Cylon war -- titled Blood and Chrome. For my money, what Caprica lacked was the gritty realism, and sympathetic characters trying to cope with it, that Galactica had. No matter how many shoot-'em-up Cylon fights this new movie has, I don't expect I'll like it any more if it doesn't address that more crucial issue.

As for Caprica, I think it'll go down as Crusade did after Babylon 5 -- as a never-fully-baked attempt to extend the original, with a few good elements here and there, but never enough to make it a winner.

Here Be Dragons

Tonight's the night when the final five Caprica episodes run in a marathon on Syfy. But I'm already up to the next to last episode thanks to DVD. Basically, "now we're talking." This was a fairly packed episode that delivered on a lot of things that had only been tiptoed around in previous episodes.

As the episode unfolds, the "cunning accountant" woman who had been dogging Joseph in the previous episode goes to report to the mob boss. It turns out, she's his daughter. So naturally, it doesn't take too much convincing him that the Adamas are dirty, and he orders the hit on them. Soon, the whole family is on the run, young Willie too.

But Sam is not with them at first; instead, he's in V-World with Amanda and Daniel, looking for Zoe (who, for her part, is using her revisionist powers to make it incredibly difficult to get to her). But Amanda doesn't trust Sam, and ends up shooting him to permanently remove him from the New Cap City environment. The Graystones then forge ahead alone. (A good moment for Amanda, but all the more reason now to hate the previous episode that stalled the "chasing Zoe" plot solely to recruit Sam to come along; he wound up being basically useless.)

Daniel and Amanda are unaware that a vengeful Clarice, along with her two husbands, have broken into their house in the real world, intent on killing them. Automated security kicks in to protect the clueless V-World-surfers, but it's only a matter of time before the invaders break through. (And poor Serge gets "killed" trying to protect the family.)

At the STO training camp, the higher-ups decide the Lacy and her Cylon-controlling ability are a threat, and order her death. But she has enough friends to get the drop on the would-be assassins, then storms into the Cylon holding area and wakes them all up to do her bidding. I still remain utterly unconvinced that mousy little Lacy is actually the ruthless leader the show would have us believe, though I'll look forward to a small army of butt-kicking Cylons for sure.

Meanwhile, in V-World, Amanda and Daniel change tactics, finally entice Zoe to come to them, and Amanda has the heart to heart with her daughter's avatar that she's needed since the very first episode. And it actually works. Zoe agrees to relocate to a virtual version of the Graystone house, where together she and Daniel can work on creating a new, more human-like body (a "skin job," she calls it) to come back into the real world.

Successful, Amanda and Daniel leave V-World just in time to be caught by Clarice, and nearly executed... until Zoe comes to the rescue. There's a U-87 chassis still in Daniel's lab. (I'm thoroughly confused on this point. The one he was working on with Zoe inside it was boxed up, right? Did he have it brought back and I forgot? Is this just some other random U-87, and we're just meant to know that any U-87 could be Zoe, after the events of the previous episode?) Anyway, Zoe comes to life in the Cylon and throws the beatdown, killing one of the husbands and chasing Clarice and the other one off.

But the big changer comes in the episode's final moments. The forged travel documents the Adamas need to escape the mob are, unfortunately, at Sam's club. So they have to risk going to a place where they'll surely be found. They do, and they are. Joseph and Sam are held at gunpoint inside. Outside in the car, a nervous Willie wonders what is taking so long and goes rushing in rashly. He creates a diversion that is enough for Our Heroes to overcome their captors, but...

He gets shot -- fatally -- in the process. The final moments of the episode show the Adamas crying over the lifeless body of young Willie. Which, of course, makes all us Galactica fans go "WHAAAAAAA----????!!!!" over the death of William Adama.

A matter for the last episode to resolve, one would hope. Unless the cancellation of Caprica nipped that answer in the bud. In which case, I might just be sorry I kept watching this show.

The Heavens Will Rise

The antepenultimate episode of Caprica was a rather frustrating exercise in going nowhere. Okay, some of the subplots in the episode did move forward. But as you may recall, the last episode ended with Daniel and Amanda resolving to go into V-world together in pursuit of Zoe.

So imagine my frustration when that plot utterly failed to progress in this hour. Oh, it's not like Daniel and Amanda were off screen. The teaser even shows Daniel using a backdoor to hack into New Cap City in violation of its rules, only to be caught by Zoe, forcefully ejected, and then having his backdoor access erased. He then decides he needs a little muscle on the mission, and recruits Sam Adama to accompany them into V-World.

The problem is, all this takes the full episode, and the hour concludes right back where the last episode ended -- with Daniel and Amanda planning to go into V-World after Zoe. (This time also to meet Sam on the inside.) With only two hours to spare after this one, I was disappointed to not get anywhere.

My frustration was further amplified by the most prominent plot of the episode involving Lacy in her STO training camp. One of the recruits is about to be executed by a superior, who orders a Cylon to shoot him for no real provocation. Lacy is spurred into "action," ordering the Cylon to stop. To everyone's shock, the robot obeys. It takes until the final act of the episode to resolve all of this, but she ultimately learns that some piece/copy/remnant/whatever of the Zoe avatar that was in that original U-87 model is present in all the Cylons being manufactured, and so they all respond to her orders. Possibly an interesting development... but one to be explored next episode, it seems.

After Lacy, the most time is devoted to the plot with Jordan. Having been drummed out of the GDD, his only remaining recourse is to convince Amanda to go back to Clarice's house and steal her holoband, swapping it for a duplicate. With her holoband in his possession, a hacker friend of his may be able to uncover her plan. With some reluctance, Amanda agrees, and actually carries off her mission without a hitch.

The problem comes in making the handoff back to Jordan. An unseen sniper shoots him, and Amanda is barely able to get him to the hospital in time -- losing track of the holoband in the process. (For Galactica continuity fans, she mentions that the man at the hospital who tended to him was a young Doc Cottle.) So a double mystery here -- who shot Jordan, and why didn't s/he shoot Amanda when she came to his rescue?

The Adama boys each get a minor subplot. As mentioned earlier, Sam's has Daniel trying to recruit him for a mission to V-World. At first, Sam wants nothing to do with pursuing the fake version of his niece. But Joseph's sinister mother-in-law Ruth and equally conniving Evelyn both prevail on him to do it, to put an end to Tamara.

Joseph is troubled by a woman affiliated with mob, who just got out of prison. She apparently had an affair with him while his wife was still alive. But the bigger issue is that she's a busybody accountant type, and by the end of the episode, she comes to suspect that the Adama boys are smuggling Cylons to the Tauron resistance.

Finally, there's Clarice, whose perhaps more clever husbands discover that her holoband has been switched. In a flash of insight necessitated by the limited number of episodes remaining, the three of them deduce that Amanda must be the real mole -- and that their wife was executed wrongly by Clarice. They resolve to make the Graystones pay... but again, this is held for next time.

So a lot of marking time this installment, setting up for (hopefully) better things to come. But there's not a lot of time left to do it.

The Dirteaters

My viewing of the final episodes of Caprica continues with The Dirteaters. The title is a reference to Taurons, and it is (at long last) Sam and Joseph Adama that are the focal characters of an episode.

This hour sees Joseph being more formally inducted into the "mafia" of which Sam is a part, at the same time Sam is promoted. But it's not smooth sailing for them; Sam learns early on what Joseph has already known and quietly accepted -- that the boss is using Daniel to provide Cylons as warriors, not to Tauron revolutionaries in need, but to STO operatives. To the very organization that is responsible for the death of Joseph's wife and daughter.

The timing of this turns out to be quite an opportunity for Daniel, who learns early in this episode that the boss means to kill him as soon as he delivers his "resurrection program." Daniel approaches Sam (having boned up on Tauron customs), and strikes a deal to provide Cylons for his purposes in exchange for protection to stay alive when the time comes.

Meanwhile, in New Cap City, we pick up the story of Zoe and Tamara, who are working together and have been dubbed "The Avenging Angels." Seems all the cool kids logging on to this game want to try their hand at killing the unkillable girls, and they themselves are tiring of it. For reasons that aren't made clear and that I can't really explain, the two tap into a power that none of us knew they had, and begin reforming the New Cap City game to better suit their vision.

The Jordan storyline continues, with his dirty boss using tape recordings (incomplete, of course) to make it look like he did something wrong. It's not a straight-up frame job, but rather an effort to make it look like Jordan is indirectly responsible for the death of his own CI in the previous episode. He is suspended until a further investigation can be conducted.

Clarice appears only sparingly, in a tiny runner that shows power going to her head. Her mole in the police office has smuggled out a pin from Zoe's personal effects, which secretly held a backup of the avatar creation program -- or as Clarice thinks of it, the key to "apotheosis." So now she's planning the welcoming area for everyone who enters her version of the afterlife. Two of her husbands don't seem to think much of this power trip.

The major dramatic meat in this episode comes in a series of flashbacks, interspersed much like an episode of Lost, that show us Sam and Joseph as kids. I don't want to reveal too much of the content here, preserving the story for those who'll watch it later. It doesn't drive the plot directly in any case, though it does definitely illuminate these two characters and their relationship. It also toughens up Joseph, demonstrating that it's not necessarily Sam who is the "tough" brother.

The episode concludes with Daniel, who has seen a young man on the streets wearing an "Avenging Angels" t-shirt related to the New Cap City game. Daniel recognizes Zoe, and further, recognizes that her avatar was not destroyed when her Cylon body was; she's now in the game. Daniel also decides to share this information with Amanda, and the two resolve to go into v-world and look for their daughter together.

Lacy does not appear, and isn't missed if you ask me. (And if you're reading this, you basically did.)

The often languid plotting of Caprica does seem to be picking up now, and this episode also did a good job of bringing the character drama in the form of the Sam/Joseph flashbacks. I'd say it's definitely the best episode in the back half of Caprica's run. (At least, that I've seen so far.)

Blowback

The last time I talked about Caprica, I was noting its cancellation by Syfy. I also noted that I was ambivalent about that. The show had never been so great that I looked forward to it the way I had Battlestar Galactica, but neither was it so bad to make me want to give up watching it. Mostly, I stayed with it, hoping it would get better at some point.

Cancellation was only a speed bump on the road to that last destination. From what I've heard, Syfy is planning to burn off the last five remaining episodes in a marathon early in 2011. But no need to wait until then; the last of Caprica was just released on DVD this past week. While my mixed feelings about the show meant I wasn't willing to buy that box set myself, I did toss it into my Netflix queue. So here's the first of my final five Caprica episode reviews.

The next episode is titled Blowback. In typical Caprica fashion, it pushes a few different plot lines incrementally forward. The featured story -- arguably -- is about Lacy, whom we last left in Clarice's attic. Clarice has decided that Lacy needs some "training" at an STO camp, and this episode finds her traveling off world for that purpose.

In her story, her transport is captured by a group of polytheistic warriors fighting against the monotheistic STO. They terrorize the would-be terrorists, executing the people on their way to the training camp one by one unless some vaguely defined person on the other end of a phone agrees to some vaguely defined demands.

Why all so vague? Because it's a ruse. Really, this is just step one of the recruits' indoctrination, seeing how they'll respond to a stressful situation. I've never bought Lacy as a kick-butt action hero, and here again you have to just go with it when she (with the help up a young man she met in transit) takes charge and gets the best of the "hostage takers," passing the test. It's all a pretty rote bait and switch, and the weakest element of the episode. (Though if you're a fan of the show Sanctuary, you might enjoy the presence of not one but two people from that show in guest starring roles.)

A more interesting storyline -- as per usual -- follows Daniel, who is given a two week deadline by the Tauron "mob boss" to make the resurrection program work. He tries in vain to make more progress with the simulacrum he constructed of his wife Amanda. Though the story doesn't progress far, the emotional and dramatic content of the scenes are strong.

The ongoing story advances most with Jordan, the police officer who has been pursuing the STO in general, and Clarice in particular. We last left him having convinced Amanda to be an undercover spy in Clarice's family. But now, his supervisor is pressuring him to reveal the identity of this "confidential informant," which he's quite reluctant to do.

This reluctance, it turns out, is for good reason, as his boss is revealed in this episode as an STO agent himself, trying to get information to tip off Clarice. Jordan smells something fishy though, and decides to test his boss by revealing that his informant is not Amanda Greystone, but one of Clarice's wives. Sure enough, this information is leaked to Clarice...

Who reacts by killing her by her own hand. So while Clarice is far from the focus of the episode, she gets what I think is the single most powerful moment. I don't think they've built up the wife in the past quite strongly enough for the death to pack a major punch, but you still get a chilling sense of Clarice's ruthlessness that she stoops to this act with no real hesitation.

Anyway, Jordan at last becomes a principle character in the narrative, now with problems of his own in the form of a dirty boss he must find a way to bring down.

Zoe, Tamara, and V-World go unseen this episode, and I can't say I really missed them.

I'd say in all that this episode represented one more small step in the right direction for Caprica. I still don't think it's going to reach the point where it would have been appointment TV, but I do think that it may be building to a decent climax to the season.

Better Use the Last Two Wishes More Wisely...

It was following last week's episode of Caprica that I remarked on its likely cancellation. It turns out it was an imminent cancellation; the very next day, Syfy pulled the plug.

Five episodes remain, but they were pulled immediately. Syfy thinks they can get better ratings from Nielsen in the critical November weeks by airing reruns of Star Trek: The Next Generation than they can with new episodes of Caprica. Yikes. And I can't really say they're wrong. Double yikes.

They say they'll air the other episodes in early 2011. (Obviously not during February, another Nielsen Sweeps month.) But I can't say I'll be on pins and needles until then.

My first wish was for Caprica to actually show significant signs of improvement. But failing that, my wish was to just have it canceled and over with sooner rather than later. Well... wish granted, I suppose.

False Labor

Another week of Caprica; another week of it staying in place quality-wise, neither improving or slipping.

I get the impression that someone, maybe the writers, or maybe Syfy Channel execs, think that what people want to see on the show are more Cylons, perhaps leading to the Sam storyline tonight, which culminated in a Cylon going in and shooting up the joint for an extended action beat. And I won't deny, it looked cool and delivered some visceral thrills.

And yet, this whole Tauron storyline just really isn't packing the emotional punch I wish it would. Sam talked of his marriage; we learned (apparently) that the mob figurehead he's been reporting to is his father. And yet somehow the most potent Tauron moment in the hour (I thought) was the brief moment of ickiness I felt watching "Mom Adama" pimp out her son to his assistant.

The Daniel storyline, as per usual, was the much better component of the episode, and the measuring stick I wish the rest of it all would reach. I enjoyed his growing frustration with his fake-Amanda, at his own ability to make it work. It says something very interesting about Daniel that he chose to make a fake-Amanda rather than another Zoe, given that a Zoe was one of the cases of the old program actually working. He rather torture himself by being spurned by his wife again... except that the program can't be made to do that.

Clarice was sort of a non-entity in her own storyline this week. The driving force was one of her wives, and how she interacted with the real Amanda. I like the ambiguity of the story Amanda told her to gain acceptance, and the apparently genuine emotion to it -- all contrasted with the final moment in which she disavowed all she'd said as a lie. Should we say "nice performance" or "nice try?" I don't think I believe that it was really all a lie; I think Amanda only wishes she were that ruthless.

I suppose this episode provided a little more to talk about and consider than usual, so maybe Caprica actually was improving a bit this week. But with its ratings sliding ever farther each week, and with the recent news that the Syfy Channel has decided to try dipping into the Galactica prequel well for a second time, perhaps I should stop wishing for the show to get better. That only sets me up for disappointment at what seems its inevitable cancellation.

Things We Lock Away

This week, Caprica continued its frustrating blend of good and bad, satisfying and just plain confusing.

In the plus column was that fantastic final confrontation between Daniel and Vergis. Vergis' speech about choosing death was chilling, and him forcing Daniel to wield the knife was a great cap to the episode.

Another great scene came only a bit earlier as Amanda and Clarice had their conversation at the Graystone house. It was fun to see and hear both of them cloaking their hidden agendas -- Amanda to try and get an invitation to Clarice's house, Clarice to try and get Zoe's missing pendant. Isn't subtext fun?

I also liked the thwarted expectations over the long-anticipated reunion of Zoe and Tamara. Not a happy moment at all; why wouldn't Tamara be enraged at Zoe for her current hellish predicament? And speaking of hellish, it was powerful to see the brutal beating of Zoe in the arena. The inability to die was hardly a blessing in that situation.

But then there were moments of confusion which detracted from the whole. Wasn't Clarice's husband Nestor killed in that car bomb in the mid-season finale? Okay, I'll give you the bait-and-switch with Amanda being alive when it seemed she was dead, but to do it again with this other character? Particularly when that character's death might have served to explain a little of why Clarice has gone so ballistic lately? Or am I completely misremembering things from that mid-season finale? (It has been nearly eight months, after all.)

Then there was the flashback showing the real Zoe working on her program to create the Avatar Zoe. That might have been a fun moment, except that I found it rather hopelessly muddled by the decision to have her inspiration come from the previously unseen "Imaginary Friend Zoe." I mean, I get that there were three separate incarnations of Zoe in these scenes. But was there no better narrative technique to more deftly tell the story besides piling doppelgangers on top of doppelgangers? Who literally talks to themselves when they talk to themselves?

And still, when is Joseph Adama going to become a meaningful presence on this show again?

I don't find myself liking Caprica any less from week to week, but neither am I pulling any closer to it. It remains steadfastly shy of being great, but just interesting enough to keep me watching. I wish it were otherwise.

Retribution

At some point during tonight's episode of Caprica, it struck me that the show has reached a strange dichotomy.

On the one hand, the series is now delivering quite a wealth of visceral thrills in every episode. This installment opened with the botched train bombing, and proceeded through Clarice's crazed revenge killings before culminating in her execution of her rival Barnabas.

There were also powerful moments of a much quieter nature too. We watched Daniel's callous blackmailing of his former co-workers, and his being forced to face the consequences of that. And there was the ice cold confrontation between him and Amanda, over the still-open wound of Zoe.

The emotion on Caprica is as high as it has ever been. But the "connective tissue" has never felt more lacking to me.

At what point did Clarice suddenly become such a homicidal maniac? She seemed rather sweet just a half dozen episodes ago as the series was unfolding. She was honey, not vinegar. Less a delicious villain, but rather a more compelling character. And why was she in such a feud with Barnabas anyway? Was there some past between them that I missed somewhere?

And what about the Clarice-Amanda relationship? I know that the last few episodes in the first half of the season showed Clarice trying to worm her way close to Amanda to learn information about the Zoe-avatar. But I sensed only the very beginnings of a friendship there. I'm not quite seeing the path from there, over just two or three episodes, that gets us to the closeness they have now.

When did Lacy transform into such a crazy soldier for the cause? Wasn't it just three episodes ago that she was figuratively holding her nose over all these dark deeds, but sucking it all up because her friend Zoe asked her to? Did Barnabas brainwash her into the cult or something? Couldn't we have seen that happen?

And why is Joseph Adama barely a supporting player all of a sudden?

There are some powerful moments being presented on the show right now. But since it feels so disconnected to me from what the show was just a few episodes ago, I wouldn't call it powerful storytelling. I'm rather reminded of an improv game where one player is forced to stop making up a story mid-sentence, and another player suddenly jumps in to continue it in his own completely different style. Was the long break meant to make us forget about where we just came from in the story?

Or perhaps this "new story" will pick up enough in the next episode or two that I won't mind the jarring lack of transition so much? If I'm enjoying the new story more, does it matter if it doesn't quite cohere with the old one?

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.

End of Line

Last night was the last new Caprica episode for several months, and was mostly a strong one. But the main thing that didn't work about it -- other than the "can we please retire the XX Hours Earlier cliché from television writing for a while?" plot structure -- was that it was overstuffed. You see that a lot on television too; Caprica is hardly alone in it. They want to leave as many open threads for their cliffhanger as possible, so the writers slow down the pacing of the plot for a few episodes leading up to that ultimate episodes, and then find themselves with more than a mere 45 minutes can hold. Most of the weaknesses in the plot lines this week were a consequence of not having enough time to let them breathe.

It's a weird place to start, but since I mentioned "leaving as many open threads as possible," let me begin by saying that I'm honestly surprised they showed Clarice Willow alive and well outside her car after the bomb detonated, as opposed to trying to play the "is she dead?" beat. Even though obviously, she wouldn't be dead, this understanding that the audience is smarter than "that" doesn't always keep TV writers -- even the good ones -- from trying to play such beats.

Actually, I'm interested to see where they pick up this thread with Sister Clarice upon the series' return, because it seems to me the most rich scenario, from a writing perspective, is to say that she stopped and got out of the car, while her husband in the passenger seat did not, and is now dead. I think it would be fascinating to show how people in a group marriage deal with the death of one of the spouses, and particularly interesting to see where it takes the character of Clarice.

But then, perhaps the writers chose not to leave us in doubt about Clarice's fate because they'd rung that narrative bell plenty when it came to Amanda and Zoe. In regards to Amanda, I know I said just a few weeks earlier that it felt natural to learn she'd had mental problems. Paradoxically, it felt to me that learning this week that she'd been suicidal was just a writing convenience to get us to the final moment. The quick flashes of her former suicide attempt were a nice bit of visual poetry, but I feel they would have been more effective and "earned" if they'd been peppered in an episode or two in advance of now, when they were needed. I can accept pushing Amanda to attempt another suicide for narrative reasons, and I think I accept it as part of the character too; I just feel like maybe that knowledge that this was where the character was heading could have better informed what we saw of Amanda over the whole season thus far. It could have made the impact here stronger.

It sucks being Zoe. She finally comes clean with Philomon about her true identity, but (understandably) he doesn't live up to his pledge that "what she looks like doesn't matter." And then? She accidentally kills him! I'd even go so far as to say it was her only real connection, because while Lacy knows her secrets too, the two aren't really sailing smoothly themselves at the moment. Zoe wasn't enjoying any relaxing moments on a floating virtual bed with Lacy -- and I don't even mean anything romantic or sexual about that. Philomon was the one person with which Zoe came closest to relaxing and enjoying herself, despite her predicament, and she killed him. Rough times for her.

Plus the whole exploding van thing at the end.

The Lacy plot was a bit of a mixed bag. That final conundrum where she was forced to commit an assassination or watch her friend be executed before being murdered herself -- that was pretty good (though I feel the real trauma of that situation might have been a bit beyond the actress' skills to fully portray). But with only one past episode featuring the Barnabas character, I don't think the feud between him and Clarice was really earned. I have no idea why they hate each other so much, or what they're truly fighting over. In fact, my memory may be failing me, because I don't even remember seeing that weird flier with the infinity bike chain in a previous episode. I think it was a cut scene, wedged into the re-cap when the creators realized, "hey, we actually shouldn't have cut this after all; we kind of need it now." This plot line will grow stronger if they round out Barnabas as they've rounded out Clarice. Until then, it's just generic mustache twirling.

Daniel honestly didn't get much to do this week. His timetable got pushed up on him, but this wasn't really done to play any new character moments with him; it was simply to give the "why all this must happen NOW" to this week's escape attempt by the Zoe robot. Still, Daniel had very strong material in the last couple episodes, and as I said -- this hour was overstuffed. Somebody had to sit out, I suppose.

That leaves Joseph Adama. He only really had one scene, but it was a big one. He found his daughter, only to lose her all over again. And in a pretty horrible way, too -- she "killed herself" right in front of him. Worse, even if he should have some reason to doubt her death, he's now dead himself in the "New Cap City" game; he can't go back in to look for her again. We didn't get to see the really meaty stuff -- the fallout of all this. Still, it will be a good place to pick up Adama's story when the show returns.

So there we leave it. I have to say that Caprica isn't amazing me at this point as Battlestar Galactica was by halfway through its first season, but perhaps that's an unreasonably high standard. I am enjoying it overall, and certainly don't think Stargate Universe (even though it is stronger than Atlantis, which it replaced) is going to be a good substitution while Caprica is on break.

Maybe I'll (gasp) read a book instead.

Ghost in the Machine

This week's episode of Caprica tracked three storylines: Daniel trying to prove the Zoe avatar was hiding inside the robot; Adama searching the V-world for Tamara; and Amanda's continued descent, pushed further than ever by her confrontation with Vergis.

For me, the Daniel plot was by far the most interesting of the three. The battle of wills between Daniel and Zoe was really something to watch, with so much psychology playing into it. There's was plenty of mental torture in store for Zoe, but even more fascinating was just how ruthless a customer Daniel was presented to be. On the one hand, he claimed the need to connect with Zoe, the only remaining vestige of his daughter. And that grief seemed genuine, particularly in the episode's final moments as he collapsed on his sofa to watch old home movies of his daughter.

And yet... paradoxically, he spent the hour torturing the daughter he loved, making her endure the sensation of being burned alive, reliving a childhood trauma, and more. Wow... not cool, Dad.

The Adama plotline wasn't nearly as compelling to watch. It was the sort of "scavenger hunt" you've seen in many other "searching for a missing loved one" stories before. Just another series of go here, talk to this person, avoid this trap, sort of shoe leather than didn't really add up to much. But there was one interesting thread woven into it, about the mind-enhancing drug that Adama felt compelled to take twice during his journey. If his decisions now leave him with a drug addiction as a result, that could be the springboard for some more compelling drama down the road. Meanwhile, though, we're just marking time until the likely revelation in this story coming for next week's mid-season cliffhanger.

The Amanda storyline fell somewhere between the two for me. Clearly, she is aware of some of the darkness we saw in her husband this week. She may have dismissed Vergis' allegations as an almost involuntary reflex, but when she really thought about it, she clearly believes there might be something to the claim. More of the "might she be crazy" plot didn't quite do it for me, but planting the seeds of a new breakdown between Daniel and Amanda more than made up for it.

Next week, we'll find out where the show intends to leave us hanging for the summer.

The Imperfections of Memory

A pretty good hour of Caprica this week. Part of the appeal for me was that the episode addressed a few dangling threads for me in the story thus far.

For example, the final moment of the episode -- at long last -- got to the question I've been asking since hour one. If Daniel tried to put his daughter's avatar in his robot, and now has ONE robot that actually works, how does it not occur to him that perhaps the avatar was not lost after all? I really don't know why it took him so long to put two and two together on this one, but at least he finally did, and now we can move on with the story.

Did we always know that Amanda spent time in a mental institution? Somehow, I have this recollection of a little throwaway bit of dialogue in a conversation between her and Daniel... and yet I can't really pinpoint it. Perhaps it's just that this revelation was just so logical, it feels like it must have been part of the story all along. This mentally fragile past certainly explains why Zoe's death pushed her so far over the edge. Certainly, any parent losing a child would go through anguish, maybe even forget herself long enough to out her daughter as a terrorist on national television. But now, I don't feel that moment from the first episode feels strained at all.

At last, Zoe's flirtation with Daniel's lab geek Philomon is going somewhere. I suppose this motive -- to get his help in escaping the lab -- was obvious all along, but it's nice to have her spell it out, to better tether into the plot all these odd scenes between the two of them. The moments when it was between him and the robot were especially awkward, and should now benefit from laying out the stakes more clearly.

I was glad to see the Vergis thread kept alive this week, though disappointed not to have the Barnabas thread progressed. So far, though, Vergis has popped more as a character than Barnabas -- so if I had to pick one of those two to sit out a week, I'd make the same choice the writers did.

Joseph Adama's story just hasn't been as interesting since his brother Sam faded more into the background, though. I was also a little disappointed to see them "trade up" the character of Tad in favor of a new guide through New Cap City. Tad was an interesting character, interacting with Tamara a few weeks back, and was just as interesting this week with Joseph. I particularly liked the moment where Tad just messed with him, preparing him to "fly" in the virtual world. But now that Tad has died in the game, it seems unlikely we'll be seeing him again.

It turns out that we only have two more hours to go here before we reach mid-season, and a months-long break per Syfy's usual operating procedure. I don't like to be left on cliffhangers, really, but I'm actually kind of hoping that Caprica gets to something compelling enough to really make me miss it while it's away. We'll see...

Know Thy Enemy

Unfortunately, I found this week's Caprica to be a bit of a backslide from last week's episode. It wasn't a big step back, but this episode was short some of the more interesting dramatic moments of last week.

The ideas were often there. For example, the meeting between Clarice and Amanda was a very neat concept, having the sister go all "covert agent" to infiltrate the Graystones' home. And yet the emotion of it didn't quite land solidly for me, I think mainly because the ransacking of Zoe's room by the police is no longer a fresh wound -- it occurred two episodes ago. Had this been more recent, I think more could have been made of how devious Clarice was to worm her way in there, and I think Amanda's feelings in the moment would have seemed more natural for the character, and less created by the actress (talented though Paula Malcomson is).

Much like the "robot dancing" of two weeks ago, the Zoe plotline of this episode just felt like a waste of time. It's a shame, because I really like the work that Alessandra Torresani did in the pilot. I just don't think the writers have figured out what to do with her since then.

But, on the up side, it did seem like some new pieces were being laid in place tonight that can pay off in future episodes. The rivalry set up between Daniel and Tomas Vergis has great potential. The last scene was chilling and effective, as Vergis menaced all without ever raising his voice or making any specific threat. The general threat, to "destroy Daniel's dream," whatever that is, was strong enough.

Also showing potential was the introduction of James Marsters of Buffy/Angel notoriety. His character in this first episode has begun unfortunately a little stock, only generally creepy (torturing himself with barbed wire) and generally threatening (his instructions to get closer to Lacy). Yet my thinking is that they wouldn't have bothered to get someone as revered in the sci-fi geek circles as Marsters to play such a conventional character. That must be going somewhere.

So my hope is that down the road, we can look back in retrospect at this episode and say that this is where some important and cool plot lines first began. Hey, if we can start saying that as early as next week, that would be nice.

There Is Another Sky

I said of last week's Caprica episode that I hoped they'd keep still keep improving, taking more steps toward realizing the great potential within the show. Much to my enjoyment, I think they did. Better than any episode so far, I think this episode really put a lot of the characters in some rough situations. No easy answers. In some cases, not even a tough decision to make -- just "here's how it is; deal with it."

Imagine having to rip your own arm off. You know that it won't "hurt," practically speaking, and yet every instinct you have is fighting your will.

Imagine feeling all the pain and suffering of a lethal gunshot wound, and yet not dying. Multiple times. You just have to endure the torture until it ends.

Imagine going through hell to escape a prison, only to find out there is no escape.

Imagine being consumed by grief over your wife and daughter, spending a month trying somehow to get over it... then finally coming to terms with it, only to learn almost at that very moment that your daughter is still alive.

Now we're getting into the good stuff.

I think perhaps Caprica has been trying to push too many plot threads along every week. They were able to focus things better this week and score some of these strong dramatic moments by sitting a few of their plots on the bench. (Clarice and her STO students; the cops investigating the train bombing; Lacy's quest on behalf of Zoe; even Zoe herself and her story, as she only appeared in one minor scene.) And there were even a couple of nice scenes besides, such as Amanda's story of Daniel's first big break, and Sam's verbal jab at Joseph over "losing" his son.

Still, the hour didn't always fly by. For example, while the major dramatic moments within the Tamara storyline were effective, the story itself dragged a bit at times. The "trappings" of the story, of a "rundown virtual Caprica city," a group of thugs from which something has to be stolen, a double-crossing gangster-type who promises something that can't be delivered... we've seen these elements many places before, and this episode of Caprica didn't really offer any new details to spice things up. But such things were indeed just window dressing; the key moments did work.

So in all, I'd say Caprica continues to take strides in the right direction. I'll be looking forward to next week.

Gravedancing

When the last episode of Caprica ran two weeks ago, I didn't offer up any thoughts about it. Then -- and now -- I'm still trying to suss out just what I feel about the series. I'm still trying to find narrative footing in this show that doesn't really come in hour-long installments with their own beginnings, middles, and ends.

I was just discussing the first book of A Song of Ice and Fire, A Game of Thrones, with a friend today over lunch, and suddenly I see a similarity to the start of that (still ongoing) epic fantasy series. It took about 250 pages into that book before I really started "liking" it; it took that long to really get a handle on who all the characters were, what the story was really going to be "about," and so forth.

So I'm feeling with Caprica. Every new hour, I feel like I'm getting one more piece of the puzzle, but I still haven't seen the picture it's supposed to be. It's not that I have anything against a highly serialized television show; I watch several right now. But to make a comparison to, say, Lost -- this is a show that's trying to unspool character and story in equal measure right now. Lost, by contrast, opened up with a much more heavy emphasis on character. Before we had any idea about "the hatch" or "the Others," we had a spectacular and powerful episode in which we learned Locke was confined to a wheelchair before the crash. We learned that Kate was a fugitive being escorted back into custody.

Caprica hasn't delivered these kinds of emotional feasts for the characters yet. Nor has it delivered the heightened tension of early Battlestar Galactica episodes like 33. But I think it is improving.

Tonight's episode was peppered with a few moments that touched on something deeper. We had that unsettling argument between Daniel and Amanda early in the episode, punctuated with the sucker punch: "We're parents!" "No, we're not."

We got our first real look at just how dark a character Grandma Adama really is; Sam no longer feels like the most dangerous member of the family. Listening to her express her thirst for murder and vengeance so coldly, or give advice to young William about the value of extorting things you want from your enemies... strong stuff.

Less effective was the appearance of the Greystones on the talk show. I can see what the writers were aiming at... a dramatized version of the "public apology and circuit of shame" that seems par for the course for scandals in real life these days. (Hell, we just went through it today with Tiger Woods.) But I somehow didn't feel like the emotions quite resonated, and by episode's end, I felt like the couple was actually getting off rather lightly for the sort of dark and brooding drama I've come to expect from Ron Moore.

But then, maybe that's part of my uncertainty surrounding Caprica too. I very much feel the absense of Ron Moore as a major writing presence on the show. He ran the writer's room at Battlestar Galactica and took a major role in the day to day operations of the show. He has not continued that role on Caprica. Though still a contributor, "show running" duties were handed off to Jane Espenson (for the episodes we're watching now, anyway; about mid-season, as I understand it, they were -- will be? -- handed off again to Kevin Murphy).

Now, I have liked Jane Espenson's work in the past, particularly on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly. But I'm not sure her voice is a strong enough one to be running a series of her own. (I suppose others, possibly including herself, thought so too. Hence the change of the guard?) Regardless, I'm not really here to see a "Galactica prequel," I'm here for "another Ron Moore sci-fi show." And thus far, I'm only seeing hints of that once or twice an episode. I'm not feeling the punch of a Galactica episode.

Hell, Ron Moore doesn't even do the podcasts for Caprica -- at least so far. He's handed that responsibility off to his partner, David Eick.

So while I still think the show has potential, I'm still waiting to see it gel for a full one-hour episode. I want more scenes with weight to them, like Polly Walker as Clarice expressing her frustration over the school locker searches. I want less scenes of ridiculous robot dancing lessons. (By the way, if the robot really was moving the way we saw the Zoe-Avatar move, I would think it hard not to notice something distinctly "feminine" about it.)

Hopefully, we'll take further strides forward next week.

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.

The New Adventures on Old Caprica

Battlestar Galactica has barely been off the air for a month, but the time has come already to sample the next chapter, spin-off series Caprica. Though it isn't set to debut on television until 2010, the 90-minute pilot episode was released on DVD today. And I wasted no time picking it up and giving it a look.

I'll say right off, this premiere did not leave me thrilled in the way the Battlestar Galactica mini-series did. That original mini-series immediately struck me as one of the best things I'd seen on television in a long time, and it was a long one-year wait for a full season to begin. Caprica can't manage to clear a bar set so high.

That said, it is quite good. Set 58 years "before the fall," Caprica is a very different show in terms of subject matter. It's not about the military, nor about space travel. It's the story of a brilliant computer scientist who, in the wake of a horrible personal tragedy, is driven to a major breakthrough in his field. But to realize his new vision, he must enlist the help of another man who suffered a similar loss, a lawyer with ties to corrupt and criminal elements.

The story and setting has a lot to say about morality, terrorism, and racism. All dark subject matter, as you'd expect from a show in any way associated with the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica. While this premiere didn't pack quite the emotional punch of its predecessor, it did have many strongly dramatic elements, and all the pieces for something great seemed to be there. And it certainly promises to raise a lot of intellectual questions even if when it falls short of Galactica's emotional heights.

The acting is strong, particularly Eric Stoltz's obsessed cyberneticist, and Paula Malcomson as his wife. Visual effects are used perhaps more sparingly than in Battlestar Galactica, but when they appear they are equally impressive. Bear McCreary is back with another outstanding score that actually manages to very briefly reference one of his major Galactica motifs in an appropriate moment. And sets, camera work, and so forth... all fantastic.

I've read that a full season of 20 episodes (two of them being this movie, minus some nudity and particularly graphic violence reserved just for the DVD version) has been committed to, so we will get to chance to see if Caprica can expand on the promise of this beginning. I certainly plan to be there.