Caprica - recap

I can actually not believe there’s a mid-season break in this Caprica series ... because, honestly, I don’t feel anything has really happened... As I had seen the entire Battlestar Galactica TV series, including the miniseries, movies, and web-episodes, I thought I might as well check out Caprica. The show is about humanity’s Twelve Colonies outside the solar system before the eventual fall: before the Cylons engage in genocidal, nuclear holocaust with the sole intention of annihilating the entire human race. Against this backdrop it could be interesting to see how the original Cylon Centurions were created, what kind of world gave rise to its own destruction. However, it’s not a show I would recommend to anyone.

In Caprica (we have to get this out of the way), there are obvious references to our own contemporary society. First and foremost the act of terrorism that sets off the series: the bombing of the skyline train which killed Zoe, Ben, and Tamara, among many others. Naturally the explosion is meant to remind us of 9/11 and other terrorist attacks worldwide. When the Graystones attend the memorial service for the victims of the attack, the scene practically bleeds “ground-zero.” There’s the memorial wall at the sight of the bombing. All too familiar. We get the same fear-mongering media pundits jabbering on and on with moral indignation twenty-four hours a day about conspiracy theories and other worthless baked air just because they have time to kill ... just as we did after 9/11 ... on and on ... after you’ve been pummeled long enough with the same mind numbing nonsense you’ll believe anything they say... And then we go on with our lives, with only the bitter aftertaste of a distant sadness.

Fortunately the monotheism espoused by the shadowy “Soldiers of the One” is more reminiscent of fundamentalist Christianity than Muslim extremism, so that their actions remain more ambiguous. The audience is seduced to try and understand their actions, rather than condemn them outright. In the science-fiction universe of Carpica, this cult appears alien enough not to be a stand in for al-Qaida theocracy. It helps that headmistress Sister Clarice Willow (Polly Walker) is one of those zealots converting souls, living in polyandrous as well as polygynous polygamy, corrupting young minds with religious dogma. It also helps that her chief rival over the cult’s leadership is some rogue terrorist called Barnabas. The real problem of the show, alas, is that the dialogue is hardly compelling and is moreover delivered by a fairly poor cast. I’m rather unsure if I’ll continue watching the show when it returns later this year.