Caprica - Page 7

Ugh. I know "Zoe" is a teenager, but I am starting to believe that she actually does hate her parents, and it's beginning in affect my enjoyment of the series. 

Yeah teens do stupid things but in the face of the big things like life and death grief, everything else tends to become petty, at least for a while. Most teenagers, even those who think they hate their parents, would break out of their self-absorption if they could see them the way Zoe sees hers (grieving her loss) unless they were sociopaths. But this one is more concerned about what her lab rat boyfriend thinks of her. I am just not buying it at this point.

Very frustrating episode.

--
H

I guess the question becomes is Zoe Avatar acting the same as Zoe Human would have in the same situation.  

How much did the translation to Virtual World and then the messed up transfer to Cylon CPU change her from her original AI personality.   

Of course after watching her screwed up parents for a few shows, how much of the disdain is actually deserved.

You have to keep in mind that the Zoe Avatar is not Zoe. She is a copy of Zoe frozen shortly before Zoe's death. The real Zoe, when faced with the enormity of her decision to flee, did break out of her self-absorption and used her final moments to express her love and forgiveness for her mother. The Zoe Avatar is operating from a flawed assumption of what the real Zoe wanted from her. She is functionally the same being as the real Zoe, but the real Zoe is also her Creator, so she gives the real Zoe's wishes more deference than the real Zoe would have and is therefore less willing to change than the real Zoe probably would have been. The Tamara Avatar is an even more imperfect copy of the real Tamara, which tells me that Joseph Adama is likely in for a surprise when he finally tracks her down.

Another solid episode. Really digging it.

Was it the statement that if the gun had been loaded, she's not sure she wouldn't have pointed at her father? Yeah, that was different from the normal, "My parents won't let me stay out past 11 with everyone else. Gawd, they ruin all my fun. I hate them."

There are a few times I've had thoughts about the fact that she's a teenager, but I've also reminded myself she's not the normal teenager for any number of reasons. Being an avatar is one, but being a genius is another. For instance, during the psychological battle, I thought surely this genius of a man (Daniel/dad) can outwit some young girl (Zoe/daughter). Surely one who is so young would make all kinds of proclamations about being able to bury emotions ("herself"), but would fail when the rubber meets the road. Daniel even talked about it when he talked about having a subconscious "tell". So for a second, I didn't buy that she won that tug of war, but then I remembered this isn't a normal girl we're dealing with. Maybe it's a bit easier to disconnect from Zoe given what she is.
 

Heh, that whole business with the gun loaded only with blanks reminded me of one of the Tom Clancy books, where a suspected infiltrator into the Secret Service was neutralised as a threat by surreptitiously replacing the bullets/cartridges in his service weapon with equivalents containing no gunpowder, and which therefore could not be fired but still weighed (roughly) the same, since taking out the bullets and replacing them with blanks would immediately signal something was wrong to an experienced agent.  He was then allowed to make his move, thereby exposing himself, but with less risk to the protectee.

Anyway, I cringed when "Zoe" fired at the dog, thinking that she was so bloody ruthless in preserving her 'cover' that she would willingly kill the poor dog (and a cute dog it was too).  Oh well, the producers sure know how to press the buttons.

I'm still wondering where the Tamara storyline is going.  We've already seen that she's practically Neo-like.

I just wonder why if Zoe can hop online wirelessly and go into Cyberspace why not just hang out there with Tamara?

Can she? But even so, she has a mission, remember? She believes that her creator intended to get her to one of the other worlds (I forget which.)

I suppose instead of trying to get the U87 there, downloading there directly from V-World (assuming it is available on the destination planet) might be an alternative. It would require her real life friends to get to that world and set up a computer there capable of downloading her. Not an easy task, but easier than stealing and smuggling a military contractor's prototype across worlds, I would imagine.

--
H

Gemenon

Which should make things at least slightly easier (re: Gemenon) when it comes time to go there, versus any of the other colonies, since Gemenon is Caprica's sister-world.

She doesn't want to live just in the V world IMO.  It seems as though she's bonded with some parts of the U87, including Virgis' processor and doesn't want to leave them behind.  She believes she has some destiny in the real world.  

My understand is that isn't the end of the season per se, but rather they are pulling that whole "half-season" BS from BSG/Sopranos/et cetera.  So this was really 1.0, with 1.5 to air into the fall of the year.

Exactly. The only difference is the way Syfy is marketing it versus the way SciFi marketed the second season of BSG. It will return in the fall like the start of a new season on a network show, but all twenty episodes of the first season have already been filmed.

I could have sworn that I had not seen a couple of the "previously" scenes.  Maybe they just weren't memorable before - such as the bike flier scene, but did anyone else think so as well? 

I presume that Daniel ordered the wiping of Zoey only to get a reaction.  Vergis told him that his MCP chip actually didn't work.  He needs to duplicate the avatar again or get the Tamara avatar or something in order to make more.  For that matter, Vergis doesn't know how Daniel got it working.

Did Jason Street get out of the car along with Sister Clarice?  I didn't notice.

Eh... the narrative is so uninvolving, it's painful to watch this show at times.

I agree. For me the story arc just moves too slow. They are spending a lot of time developing each character to the fullest and given us a lot of characters to do this with. With all the time being spent on so many characters the story itself is slow to develop. And at the same time, even though you are getting more information about each character, you can't get invested in any one of them. It's like being told to watch this painted wall for a while, and now go to this other wall for awhile and watch it to be return to the earlier wall (which is now a different color) and you aren't told why.

The show never declared its intentions. With Battlestar Galactica, the entire premise and objective of the show are stated in a five second blurb before the start of the episode. It was always clear what the protagonists were striving for and what the stakes were.

"Caprica" has presumed our interest, which in my opinion was a mistake. The pilot did a good job of establishing the world and providing a frame of reference, but the show has not used its first season to declare its intentions. If we don't know where the characters want to go, how can we know if they've succeeded? Lacy's storyline with the Zoe Avatar worked because we knew the objective -- to get the Cylon robot off to Gemenon and into the hands of the STO leadership. Daniel's storyline worked because we knew his objective -- to mass produce the Cylons before the military's deadline. Everything else was a muddled mess. Only in the last few episodes has the Tamara Avatar provided something tangible for Joseph Adama to strive for. Astoundingly, the show has foisted his son off on Joseph's brother. Considering that exploring the relationship between Joseph Adama and his son is perhaps the most important reason for making this show, that's pretty unforgivable. An interesting storyline for Amanda would have been tracking down her daughter's ties to the STO and trying to clear her name. Unfortunately, everything with her character since her declaration at the memorial ceremony has been a complete mess. We're never given a sense of what Sister Clarice's motivations and objectives are, thus why I didn't have any investment in whether she lived or died.

And yet, for all of that the world is intriguing enough to have kept me coming back week after week. I don't expect that to change come the fall.

I don't mind a slow buildup but this show is really taking a long time to get moving and now it's off the air for 5 or 6 months. There's plenty of really good things about the show (I like the cast and the look) but it needs to move towards something. At first, I thought they were taking their time and building up steam but half the season is over and I'm still not that involved. Hopefully when I rewatch the season in full, it'll play better when I've seen all the episodes and can better appreciate what they did in the first half of the year to set up the second half.

Parker Clack, I have to agree with you. After forcing myself to sit through the pilot episode, the writer's just don't seem to get it. I've watched soap operas that were less engaging but managed to engage the viewer. Even shows like Dallas and Melrose Place were much more interesting to watch than Caprica.

The writer's seem to be having a very big problem. Caprica is rooted into the science fiction universe of Battlestar Galactica. Now, while the producers may have wanted to take the series into a different direction and develop it into a more character driven drama, they seem to be failing that. Many fans of Battlestar Galactica were hoping that the Caprica (prequel series) would give fans of Battlestar Galactica a look into how the Cylons were created, as it was established in the Ron Moore series.

Unfortunately, the producers aren't doing that. Now, while they may be trying to create a real drama series that isn't dependent on the science fiction element, that is what the fans want. Until they realize this important fact and start directing the series in that direction, the fans are going to start dropping the series very soon.

Personally, I think SyFy has really screwed up (forgive my remarks) with Caprica and Stargate Universe. The fans want some action with these two shows. Since both shows are rotted in the sci-fi genre, the writers, directors and producers need to start paying attention to what the fans want. It's evident that the 'powers that be' have failed with the current direction of these two shows and they to change gears. If Capica changes gears and switches to a more action oriented direction, I might be compelled to purchase the first season, if it gets released to DVD, but, the producers need to do something because the show isn't even entertaining to watch anymore. If this were a movie, I would have walked out of the theater 10 minutes into the movie.

I'm a big, big fan of the re-imaged BSG (one of the biggest on the forum, I would wager), and I personally like how Caprica is done--a show, as you say, that isn't completely driven/dependant on the sci-fi element.  I'm sure I'm not along in this regard, so you can understand the dilemma Moore et al. are in.  Do they continue to press the drama, or scale it back in favour of more "hardcore" sci-fi?

This might sound odd in a Caprica thread but I'm not that big of a fan of sci-fi. I watched and loved BSG much more for its drama and war elements than the sci-fi stuff. And while I'm waiting for Caprica to get better, I think the drama/human story is easily the most interesting thing in the show over robots and a futuristic internet.

I align more with TravisR. I'm not one that searches out SciFi material (books, TV, movies). I've seen all of Trek and Star Wars. I did read a few Star Wars books, and some Trek books. I've read all of Dune. I like movies like 2001 (and 2010 for that matter). I definitely appreciate SciFi, but it's the human element of it, not flux capacitors and dilithium crystals, that interests me. BSG had very little focus on technology and I loved it (especially the miniseries and S1).

For me, the problem with Caprica isn't that it doesn't focus enough on technology. The problem isn't that it doesn't have enough action scenes. The problem for me is more that it's not coherently compelling. There are people you watch, and there are people you want to watch. The only thing I'm "curious" about at this point is what's going to happen with Zoe. I don't find anything else compelling about the show. V world is what I'd call interesting, not compelling. That place needs a Merovingian or something. A compelling character we want to see, not someone just reading lines.
 
I can easily see skipping Caprica when it comes back and just catching up on DVD if the general feedback improves. At this point, I basically watched because I like BSG. Otherwise, it's just another ScyFy series/movie I wouldn't watch.

I like epic stories.  I love plodding plotlines.  They don't bore me and I can wait for the show to build to the connection with BSG.  If the show holds on, that might take several seasons and that is fine with me.  I like the way the show looks, I thought most of the arcs started to gain steam.  I didn't realize as I was watching it that this week was the midseason finale, so maybe my expectations were different than those who didn't like it.  I don't need more action or had core sci fi.  I also don't want to have expectations of where the show is going.  I want to watch.  

I just don't think Caprica is engaging enough for the fans. The problem is that, despite all of the elements of the series, Caprica is rooted into sci-fi. Even when you put that genre element aside, the television series just doesn't even appear to be interesting enough on a drama level. The producers, if they wanted to create a non-sci-fi series placed in the BG universe, then why introduce sci-fi elements into the series?

Introducing sci-fi elements like the holo-internet and Cylons into the series, it's the producers who should be ashamed. I think it may have been a good idea to create a drama series but they are trying to keep the series rooted into the sci-fi series of BG. Remove the sci-fi element from the series and maybe the series will succeed.

I just think that the producers are trying too hard with this series as a drama and they seem to be clinging onto the sci-fi element in case the drama aspect fails. The producers need to ask themselves exactly what Caprica is trying to be. It can either be a (soap-operic) drama or it can be a sci-fi series. It cannot be both otherwise they end up confusing the viewers.

When I started watching Caprica, at least where the pilot was concerned, I expected that the series would tell the origin of how the Colonial civilization created the Cylons and how the Cylon War begun. Instead, it seems to be chock full of drivel. If they keep Caprica on the same path, I suspect that fans are going to become disinterested and that it may be canceled either at the end of this season or the end of S2.

While you are certainly welcome to your opinion, you've just read a number of posts in a row that speak to the contrary.  Further, Moore and crew have never stated they wanted to pefectly blend drama and sci-fi, rather, they have explicitly stated they wanted to create just the thing you decribed: a drama series, in the BSG canon, with sci-fi elements.  In fact, there's a quote floating out there about Moore wanting the show to be a "Dallas, with Cylons."

Also, I think it's pretty obvious why the sci-fi elements are there.  Like most good sci-fi, it's a parable for the era in which it is created.  The holobands are analogues for the internet, video games, blackberries, iPhones, et cetera.  What does our constant connection to the internet have on us?  How are the ties between individuals strengthened or weakened?  The Cylon and the notion of copying a digital version of someone raises the philosophical question of what is the self?  What are *you?*  Are you just your mind, caught in your brain like so many bits of data?  Or is there a spirit, too, something inherently impossible to copy, but also something that can spring forth in the body of a robot?

These are just a few of the questions Caprica seeks to raise, and perhaps even offer a few answers to.  All against the backdrop of a conflict between two families, unknowingly both the forbearers of humanities destruction, and its salvation.  You can question the manner in which the story is told (pacing, characters, et cetera), as Patrick does, and as Mikah does (to name a few).  However, I think it's quite obvious what the show is striving for, and moreover, I think it's exactly what most BSG fans want: an adult/mature sci-fi series, where the topics are important, the people and plot seems real, and at no point is the show cheesy fodder for science fiction "haters."

Arguably, the reason for that was that initially Helo wasn't supposed to appear in the series, but the producers liked Tahmoh's performance in the miniseries so much they turned Helo into a regular.  Concrete proof that in many respects Moore et al did not have everything plotted out in full detail.  They've even admitted (in the podcasts) Warning: Spoiler! (Click to show)

Edited by Yee-Ming - 3/31/10 at 11:49pm

You're going to want to spoilerize that one, Yee-Ming. :)

Or, have we finally reached the point in this thread (7 pages) where we're all in agreement that the moratorium on spoilers for a show that began in 2004 and ended over a year ago, is lifted?