The 2003 reboot of Battlestar Galactica was a dynamite show, chock full of intense action sequences and hard-hitting drama--a story not just about the survival of humanity, but about whether or not our species even deserves to survive.
So I was initially excited to watch Caprica, the 2010 prequel series set several decades before the events of its parent show. And yet, I didn't watch the series until a couple of years after its original broadcast, and even then I watched only the first 10 (of 19) episodes. My interest waned, though, and I gave up on the show.
But over the last couple of weekends, I re-watched those first 10 episodes and the nine I'd never seen before. I think the world has changed sufficiently to somehow make Caprica a better show than it might have been; its themes of religious fanaticism and the potential threats posed by artificial intelligence seem much more timely now.
The Plan
Caprica is the story of two families: the Graystones, native to the planet Caprica--the dominant culture of the Twelve Colonies that make up the human family--and the Adamas, Tauron immigrants to Caprica. The Graystones are filthy rich, and their patriarch, Daniel Graystone (Eric Stolz) is a roboticist and pioneer of incredibly immersive virtual reality technology. The Adama family is more middle class; Joseph Adama (Esai Morales) is a lawyer with Tauron mob ties.
Trouble unfolds early in the show's pilot; Zoe, the Graystone's only child, has gotten mixed up with religious fanatics who believe in a pseudo-Abrahamic god, whereas the vast majority of Colonial citizens are pantheists. Zoe and her boyfriend get on a monorail; what Zoe doesn't know is that her boyfriend is wearing a bomb. It explodes, killing dozens, including Zoe, but also Joseph Adama's wife and daughter. The Graystones are left childless, and Joseph is left alone with his young son--though he is supported by his brother and mother-in-law.
Daniel Graystone and Joseph Adama strike up an uneasy friendship when they connect at a briefing for families of the victims. But that friendship breaks down when Caprican police suspect, correctly, that Zoe was involved with the train bombing.
How does all this lead to apocalypse to befall the Twelve Colonies some 58 years after the events of this show? Well, it turns out that Zoe is perhaps even smarter than her father; she created a virtual version of herself before her death, and that version of Zoe lives on in the virtual space created by her father. Daniel Graystone discovers this, initially writes her off as just a really good software simulation of his daughter (and he may be right); Joseph Adama finds out, and, moreover, convinces Graystone to create a similar avatar of his dead daughter, Tamara.
Over the course of the show's run, the Graystones and Adamas pursue their own goals--mainly to bring their daughters into the real world by placing their avatars into robots, allowing them to live in the real world rather than a virtual reality. (Or at least that was the original plan--Tamara's story is explored only in fits and starts and is left unresolved by the end of the series.)
Meanwhile, the Caprican police are trying to track down the monotheistic terrorists as Joseph Adama gets pulled deeper and deeper into the underworld he's tried to avoid and the Graystones struggle to hold on to their business in the wake of the scandal created by Zoe. Complicating manners, the monotheists learn of the avatar technology and see it as a means to create a guaranteed afterlife for members of the faith. And they're planning their biggest attack yet--to blow up a sports stadium and kill thousands in the name of their one true god, punishing the pantheists for their blasphemy.
The Graystones manage to thwart the plot by taking control of a bunch of several "Cybernetic Life-Form Nodes," AKA Cylons--the robots Daniel Graystone has been building for the Caprican government. The Cylons save the day, Zoe Graystone turns the monotheists' virtual heaven into a virtual hell, and the people of the Twelve Colonies embrace the Cylons as their new robot servants take over all the menial tasks that no one on the Twelve Worlds wants. Zoe gets reborn into an advanced robot body, one that appears fully human, reuniting the Graystones in the real world.
But the cult of monotheists hasn't given up. As the series closes, they have a new congregation--one made up of not only humans, but Cylons. And thus the stage is set for the Cylon uprising that nearly exterminates the human species during the events of Battlestar Galactica.
The Outcome
I enjoyed Caprica. It's not trying to be a clone of its parent show, and while the plot may meander and lose its way more than once over the course of its 19 episodes, the story raises important questions about faith, being, and the ethical lines we cross in the pursuit of our dreams. Moreover, despite being cancelled, the show ends on a reasonably satisfying note rather than a frustrating cliffhanger. The creators had more stories to tell had they gotten more seasons, but the ending they wound up with dovetails nicely into the Galactica reboot.
So Say Me Earl.
