The Same But Totally Different
Caprica Season 1 Episode 0 – Pilot
You have to hand it to the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica Ronald D Moore he knows how to get hard core fan boys in a tizzy and then silence them in style. Remember when it was announced that BSG was going to be re-imagined ? those fans boys where up in arms about the new elements Starbuck and Boomer re-cast as women ! Cylons that look human! it was going to be disaster they wailed but then when we actually saw that he had crafted the best Sci-Fi no scrub that the best TV show of recent years they went silent. And now The new BSG has a rabid legion of fan boys and as the curtain drew on BSG Ron Moore announced he was going to give BSG the spin off treatment by going back 50 years and fleshing out the back story of how the Cylons came to be. Then he announced it would be like a family drama , sort of like Dallas so light fuse and ignite the message boards were swamped with the fan boys enraged again and yet again, but one crucial thing they haven’t seen a frame of Caprica and yet again it looks like Ron Moore is on the money.
Like i said the pilot and the series is set some 50 years before the fall on Caprica and focuses on two families the rich Graystones and the brilliant scientist/robotics genius man of the house Dr Daniel Graystone and the civil liberties lawyer Joseph Adams (no prizes for what his real surname is). The two fathers are brought together when an act of religious fanaticism on a train takes their daughters away from them. Dr Graystone then finds out that unknown to him his daughter had been a genius at Artificial Intelligence and had created a digital copy of herself inside a sort of virtual reality chat room. Now obsessed with the idea of having his daughter back he enlists the help of Joseph Adams to commit industrial espionage and steal from a rival robotics firm an AI circuit to allow him to download his daughters personality into a robot. You see where this is all leading to, but like BSG you knew where it was going but they packed in enough subplots and story arcs to keep you glued to the set.
Here a good deal of plot threads are introduced : the genesis of AI, the religious element (polytheism v monotheism), The family tensions between Joseph and William Adams, How far would you to have a departed loved one back?, Anti-immigration attitudes of Capricans (The Taurans are looked down upon and hence why the Adams use the adopted surname). And in that way they similarities to BSG are evident. The main difference will be the focus on the family feud that is to ensue and also making this planet-bound (no shaky camera POVs of hyper-kinetic space dogfights here folks!).
The acting and casting is likewise on the mark with leading man Eric Stoltz playing Dr Graystone to perfection as a brilliant man wounded by the tragic death of his daughter and now pushed to do anything no matter what to bring her back from the dead. Likewise we see with Joseph Adams a hard working man also struggling after the death of his wife and daughter who oversteps the mark in a bid to get them back only to regret his decision and then decide to re-connect with his estranged son. And so far those are the major players introduced in this feature length pilot the first series will air next year. Also there is something for BSG fans as we get to see the very first Cylon in action and here the immortal line “by your command” which will send a tingle up your spine. Overall this is a great pilot and does what a pilot should do introduce the protagonists, open up the plot threads and leaving you just chomping at the bit for more. This will be the series to watch next year and also you don’t have to be BSG mad to understand it ohhhh and do not not worry the young Bill Adama is handled much better than young Anakin Skywalker in Phantom Menace!.
In short if your a BSG fan and even if your not this is well worth checking out – bring it on!.
Rating 8/10 – A great pilot for what looks to be a very promising show
Frakkin great SO SAY WE ALL !