6.23.2009

CRAPRICA - TEEN ANGST BEHIND CYLON GOD

I finally saw Ron Moore's DVD-before-TV Caprica. Glad I didn't rush to see it. Egads, I can hardly watch the original Battlestar mini without thinking of what came later (Season 4 and the finale and now Caprica) to pollute such a great show. All the mystery, all the depth and complexity to the story and the characters of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica reduced to god did it and angels walk among us ... and now, it's all a teenage girl's virtual world. Blechhh

Caprica w
as pretty to look at - not to the level of Baltar's house in Battlestar - and there was some of the moodiness and alien-ness of Battlestar's Caprica representation but it was told to us more than shown and shown poorly (lame tattoos and ganster patois don't count for much).

So the Cylons were created by man: a sleazy defense contractor/computer genius downloads his dead daughter's self-coded avatar into his prototype combat robot so he
won't lose the contract, and this snooty, priveleged little smartypants is associated with a private school that thas faculty and students that have secret monotheistic beliefs.

Moore should rename the show All My Robots and put it on the Soap Opera Channel


3 comments:

Potiphar Breen said...

Gods, makes me want to run out and buy it the DVD stat, Radii! (not)

Any sexy scenes or #Six-ish eyecandy on display to make it otherwise worthwhile?

radii said...

on the DVD lots of gratuitous breasts flopping about in the "club" scene (which is used over and over) and the schoolmarm looks like an older, thicker Charlize Theron but no Six sexiness unless schoolgirls in uniform or arrogant fey schoolboys in uniform are your thing

Potiphar Breen said...

PUBLISHED UP ABOVE; REBOOTED HERE

"Hey radii...

I saw part 2 of the Caprica pilot via Comcast On Demand last night and boy was I surprised.

The thing kept my interest up as it had BSG production values and continuity while also provided more of a backstory and links to the future (past) BSG series.

Having hi-quality familiar actors (Brits/Canuks/Aussies) along with damn good US artists make for a higher class presentation of what could be merely soap opera themes.

Part One was not available so I was thrown into the second part cold, yet my mind filled in the blanks and the story was sold - strongly. The strong cut-the-fat editing helps as well as the time allotted (which made the new Prisoner a chore for me to watch.)

The thing that was so well done IMHO was when Adama's daughter was brought back and had her innate sense of flesh-and-blood humanity, feeling that she shouldn't be here, that something was so very wrong with her mind capture and electronic reconstitution.

Well done it was.

Even the original series funky CYLON centurion had a detectable personality (remarkable!) presented ever so effectively when first activated with the new chip and fresh daughter database (the very first CYLON download).

Now, if the One God religion subplot doesn’t go off the deep end, and we have no miracles, vanishings, or pigeon allegories, I will find myself hooked into the new series…but I won’t keep my hopes up too much lest I be disappointed…"