RP - This idea has been around since Razor aired - or almost since. It’s almost too perfect (perhaps so perfect the writers walk away from it as trite - hope not). If you blur your vision the resemblence is there. And then there’s the 64,000 cubits question from Shaw - “Are you a god?” And the response (paraphrase here) from OGG “My children believe I am”. Not to mention OGG’s exquisite knowledge of the cycle.
I have to wonder whether we ever will find out - or whether the series will go the way of many of those with plots that move along at a statelyl fashion - non renewal.
I don’t know if this counts as spoiler (mostly speculation) but I’ll be cautious just in case…
[Spoiler]Has there been any discussion here, as I’ve seen elsewhere, that in the BSG episode Hero it was mentioned that Adama’s mother was named Evelyn? While the woman that died in the monorail was Shannon, Joseph Adama’s assistant (the one posing as Emmanuelle in NewCap) is named Evelyn? A goof plus a coincidence or is there greater meaning here?[/spoiler]
I don’t think my partner will watch Caprica with me without Amanda Graystone in it. We like introspective, haunted adult characters who sit at home and look glumly out of panoramic windows. We’re not so much into doe-eyed gynoid Zoe:(
What would be nice is to see in the second part of the season. The compelling reason why the cylons are needed. I get that they are robots and such and the saving of human casualties. What I want is who are they fighting against that this would fly?
For me though, I really liked the notion of the races being intertwined in the BSG finale, but I hated how they handled it - with the really hammy epilogue sequence which wasn’t necessary and just looked really cheesy and way too on the nose, and that they had the whole ‘technology is kinda evil’ bit when they flew all their stuff into the sun (which kind of make sense, but also goes against the idea of the cylons and humans being intertwined together.) But anyway, on with Caprica!
Amanda Graystone and a mother’s grief
I actually really liked her as a character (especially when she’s with Daniel, because the two make a very compelling couple) until they made her actually crazy and the whole dead brother thing. (I would have preferred her to be not clinically nuts because she has crazy dead brother flashbacks but just as a mother who’s lost a child (who also turns out to be someone she clearly didn’t understand too well) and is having a hard time dealing with it. I didn’t even mind her scenes with Clarice (well, not TOO much), because it made sense she’d be branching out to someone who appears to understand her grief and distancing herself from Daniel just a bit (as all parents generally have trouble staying together if they lost a child together), but once they introduced the brother, I was just all MEH. Now I don’t really know if it’s the grief of losing Zoe that is making her off, or if being a ex-crazy person who sees dead people is making her nuts (and Zoe is just a trigger). And since the introduction of dead brother, we didn’t really get a lot of Daniel/Amanda coping with or supporting each other (and perhaps Amanda would notice Daniel trying burn up the robot!) Given that the birth of Zoebot comes from grief and grief seems to be the underlying theme of the show, I would have liked Amanda to be ‘the face of grief’ and not ‘the face of crazy’. So, in conclusion, I have no idea if I want her to live or not. I just wished the dead brother never came into the show.
Clarice, Spike, and the STO
I’m one of the few people who finds Clarice to be an all right character (though her story plot through the season leaves much to be desired), but as with Spike, I think the problem is that we never really found out enough about the hierarchy of STO and even just how STO operates - and we even had a perfect person to lead us into the cult - Lacey, who kind of just joined and is one of the more likeable characters on the show! I just think if we saw more of Lacey and her going into STO (and her conflicts with Zoe because of that, etc) we’d actually care more about the STO and how that story came to its head in the episode. And we’d know more about Spike (and other STO-ers) than whave we’ve seen of him so far. (Especially given the importance of a monotheistic religion for the Cylon race to come - I’d think that the STO and what it stands for would matter more in the overall story of Caprica). It’s a shame that the time we did spend on the STO was too centered around Clarice and her polygamous family (and with Amanda, who as mentioned earlier - got suckered into the crap dead brother story) and not into introducing us to what the cult actually is, or how the power struggles between factions are like.
Vargis and the stolen chip, power and politics in Caprica
Same goes for Vargis, who might have been introduced too late and I don’t really know anything about him at all to care about his story plot. It also seems a bit strange that it seems kind of like a well known rumour throughout Caprica (or maybe even the 12 colonies) that Daniel did steal that chip thing from Vargis - in which case, it’s strange that none of the shareholders at GI questioned him, or that no one asked him any questions about that in the talk show. The defense people did question him here in the finale, but it all just seems rushed to get to that point in the finale so we could see Zoe escape and Daniel be so ruthless in destroying what he still kind of thinks as the part of the robot that is his daughter. But, yeah, this story felt like it was jammed in the last 3 or 4 episodes and was written in a rush. And we’ve seen how spectacular it could be (in the board meeting) - so on some level I wish they either introduced Vargis earlier in the season, or not have had him at all (until the next season) so they could have more time to develop this.
The Adamas, the seedy hitman business, and the Vworld
For me, Adama (the dad) is the weakest link of the show. I still find Adama to be way too insufferable and annoying (and the reveal of his lady friend who likes him as his guide in the vworld was too meh given we don’t really know anything about the female friend) for me to feel bad for the guy. I much rather have spent time with any of the other Adamas - Sam and Bill or Tamara, heck the grandmother! - rather than with whiny, kind of useless Adama. (Which also makes me feel that Jamie Bamber did an amazing job as Lee, who is very much like his grandfather, but Lee wasn’t as whiny or annoying as Adama is here.) The only time I liked him was when he’s with Daniel (when he’s still a grieving father and husband, but is still smart and professional enough to be a badass to Daniel or in his job) but he’s just too damn whiny and stupid for way too long of a time in the season. And again, the more interesting Adama is Sam (and Bill), who I feel is someone who would actually play a role in the big scheme of things (given he’s a hitman basically, and that could tie into Varis and the stolen chip, and Greystone Industries, and then to be a Tauron hitman whose brother is in law, etc - and yet we haven’t seen Sam in more than a 20 second shot since he drove Amanda around!) rather than Adama. I also don’t understand why the existence of a dead girl in the vworld seems all contained within the vworld - you’d think a juicy piece of news would make it out into the real world, especially after Daniel’s interview when he basically told everything he actually made a avatar of Zoe after she died. Mostly, I’m surprised that Zoe and Lacey,who do hang out sometimes in the vworld, don’t seem to know. So, yep, I wish they focused on that stuff more than having us to watch Adama stumble around the vworld as a noob for several episodes.
Zoebot, the mother of the Cylon Race and Daniel, the accidental creator of the Zoebot
I kinda liked the finale - especially with Zoe and Philo, because I really didn’t expect (but probably should have because as mentioned in another thread, Philo is BILLY!) it, and it places Zoe in a very, very interesting headspace for next season - but Iactually like the slow pacing of the episodes before, because it gave me time to think and ponder on the ramifications of this action or that action, and this episode had way too many things going on to have any kind of breathing space. I mean, it was wonderful last episode to basically have one simple story - Daniel trying to test Zoebot - which lead to something horrific and frakked up and great to watch. Here in this episode, everything came crashing down too conveniently all at the same time, and the finale ends up feeling like a very different show than Caprica has been for the past 8 weeks. It’s weird - by far the strongest story plots are the ones with Zoe and Daniel, so I can’t complain when they focus on just them (and of course I don’t, because their story arc through the season was mostly just wonderful and kickass and fantastic - and basically made the show this season. Sure, there’s still so much we don’t know about Zoe and her motivations pre and post death, but just having the show focus on the relationship between the father and daughter is quite delicious), but because this particular story arc is so well done, the other story arcs of the show (the STO, the Adamas, etc) really pale in comparison, and I can’t but wonder why the other parts aren’t as great as that. I do see the potential in some of the other characters like Sam or Lacey or the STO, who are sadly misused (or underused in some cases) when the show does spare the time to focus on them. I hope they figure out a way to get the other characters to work just as hard so the show would be intriguing as a whole (and not just in Zoebot and Daniel).
So, in conclusion, I still find the show intriguing and would most definitely watch it when it comes back, but I’m hoping they’d be better at pacing the show and getting us to care about characters that isn’t Zoe or Daniel. Looking at what I’ve written and seeing just how broad each story arc could be in and of itself - I kind of agree with 64kCylon - the show needs focus (but not so much that it narrows the show down to basically a showdown, because I do like the ideas of power and corruption and grief to be explored in fuller detail) , but more importantly tighter writing in each of their story arcs (maybe more intertwining of them, because the arcs are almost separate enough to be a different show!), and definitely more than just 9 episodes in a season.
Now, on with the podcasts! (I haven’t listened to any yet, so it should be interesting to see what Eick and co. have to say.)
