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Rebirth
Firt off, I must say that I enjoyed "Rebirth" much more than I expected to.
I liked the pilot but I was a bit worried about the series. I was wrong. Caprica is nothing but a show with a lot of ambition and talent. Besides the title sequence is frakking cool!
"Stop feminizing it!" one of the minor characters said to another one.
The two people in question were Daniel's lab technicians, arguing about the first Cylon, U 87.
I took this as an in-joke about the BSGverse...because what was BSG if not an improved and feminized version of old-school Battlestar Galactica? We still had the patriarch Adama, but we got President Laura Roslin who gave him a run for his money. Both Starbuck and Boomer were turned into female characters, and Number Six was a haunting presence behind Baltar's actions. Something that a certain Dirk Benedic, who played Starbuck in the 70'st, loathed. So I have decided to consider the tech guy who argued against the feminization as a representation of Dirk Benedict! One scene later, as he was trying to fix the robot with a drill, he got one of his appendices cut. A metaphorical castration maybe?
This first episode was especially feminized since it mostly prominently portrayed female characters (Amanda, Cylon!Zoe Lacey and Clarice)
while the pilot focused more on the leading male characters (Daniel and Joseph).
Apart from this feminizing side, I enjoyed the bits of lightness that went throughout the episode, like Amanda looking at the robot and mentioning that she saw "this guy in a movie once" or cylon!Zoe breaking Zoe's bed or Daniel telling his wife that he promised Serge some time alone with the U87 (what a sweet scene between the Graystones btw)or Daniel again as he pretends to be playing pyramid and Serge ends the game by saying "and the crowd goes frakking wild". By the way, Serge that I already loved in the pilot, just rocks! I find that little robot even more intersting than the Cylon. Serge actually reminds me of Asimov's short stories and I love the way he calls both Daniel and Amanda by their first name.
Caprica city and its inhabitants are mourning, people are still grieving, the general atmosphere is sad and heavy and grim, but at the same time life goes on and humour is a way to show it.
This episode shows us how the characters deal with what happened in the pilot, hence the ending scene during the memorial at Apollo Park, but it was mostly about creating the Caprican culture, providing glimpses of the society, fleshing out that world that is based on BSG but isn't quite the same world since BSGverse was a post-apocalypse universe. BSG was about people on the run, trapped in a fleet, trying to survive first and foremost, hanging on an old mythology, on beliefs and values that existed prior the fall, and then trying to re-build a world, politically, spiritually and culturally.
We knew very little of the life on the twelve colonies before the fall, we learned stuff from the ruins and the characters' memories but that's all. Little details still connect both shows, like the religion of the Lords of Kobol of course, the" frak this frak that"talk, the octogonal photographs(hee!) or the music.
Thank to "Rebirth" we slowly discover that culture and the everyday life of the Capricans. I found it very interesting, and the name of the episode sums it up, it isn't only the rebirth of Zoe in a Cylon's body it's the rebirth of the colonies just under our eyes. Bear McReary got it and contributed to that resurrection with his music. By the way I love the fact he wrote a whole anthem for Caprica even though only a few seconds of it can be heard at the beginning of the Pyramid game. It was interesting to follow Sam and Willie in the streets, to learn about Lacey's background (to see the way she dressed when going to the lunch at Clarice's house, to find out about sister Clarice being in a marriage group and having multiple husbands and wives, to follow her into the dive bar...
I really enjoyed the slow pace. Caprica takes its time and it's good, it suits the fact that there's no hurry for these characters unlike the BSG ones. Sci-fi doesn't necessarily means action-packed stuff. I don't want to talk about Dollhouse now (I need to rewatch the finale first) but I think that "Rebirth" was smarter and better written and more gripping than "Epitath Two" yet it had little action in it.
The special effects were good and the way they shift back and forth between the robot and Zoe's avatar does work. I think it's amazing how expressive they make the Centurions look. Sometimes I find the robot more expressive than Alessandra Torresani!
Having said that the cast was really good. The actresses who play Amanda and Lacey were already excellent in the pilot, but I think that the acting of both A T and Polly Walker improved.
As for the males, they were good too. Joseph's storyline didn't progress much but there will be more episodes for that; we're learning to know the dangerous Sam Adama; I liked that Willie found Tauron school boring and didn't like Tauron meal, how he took a gangster-lecture from Sam, and how he played his father's feelings later. Future admiral Adama is still a kid, behaving like a kid.
I wonder about agent Duram. Should we trust him? Methinks this is another grey character. Not sure I like the way he plays Amanda's feelings, visiting her as she is alone and vulnerable, planting the seeds that led to her confession at the memorial . I even see a parallel between Duram and Nestor but let's wait and see...
Amanda's fall was well done(her confession was foolish but we could see where she was coming from) but Daniel Graystone is still my favourite. Such an interesting complicated character! So smart and sophisticated and charming, and yet sort of cold and ruthless and also clueless about things he doesn't want to see. I like how he disconnected himself from Joseph(access denied!), from the memories of his daughter (as he tells Amanda he doesn't want to think of her), while the two men did bond in the pilot (hence Joseph calling him Daniel on the phone!) and Daniel was so touching as a grieving father. He didn't seem very connected to his work in this episode either, something that Amanda noticed when she entered hisplayroom lab. And even though the bedroom scene was sweet, Daniel was still quite self-centred––even though he accepted to go with his wife to the memorial–– and he obviously didn't see Amanda's final breakdown coming. He knew her well enough to look worried as he heard the beginning of her speech though. By the way Joseph was also quite self-centred insofar as he didn't think about Willie's feelings when he decided to make his son embrace the Tauron roots or about what his leaving the virtual room meant to Tamara Avatar.
In case you haven't gotten it yet I really really like the family theme, how the relationships unfold (not only the parent/children ones but the married couple one too) and the fact that love doesn't prevent the characters from being flawed and making huge mistakes.
I agree with Bear McRaery that Daniel Graystone is very different from the BSG characters we have seen so far. He may be a genius like Baltar but he's nothing like Gaius (perhaps because Gaius has always been a fraud, all dandy-like but concealing his social background, playing a role all the time). In a way he embodies the old world while being the one who will bring it to its end so a new world can be born.
Eric Stoltz nailed it when he said,in a recent interview, about Caprica:" It's a near future dystopia struggling to find its way -- a society at an interesting breaking point, with two conflicting historical dispensations at their peak, each one kind of canceling out the other -- which will lead to another movement that has to take place so that the culture can move forward..."
Of course I had a big grin on my face when we saw Daniel playing the piano, given that I was sure that Eric was going to play the piano and that he played a part we had heard before on BSG(I love continuity elements!) in "Someone Watch Over Me". I noticed that Daniel had a guitar in his lab too and I wonder if we'll see him play it.
Is it Friday yet?
ETA: I forgot to say that I liked the dog too...Ceasar! And, given the way he seated in front of the cylon, the dog knew that the U87 was his Zoe! It's like they revisited The Odyssey, Ceasar playing the role of old Argos who recognized Odysseus despite his guise...
Oh and there were echoes in the episode: what Nestor told Lacey about Zoe's work being like a "work of art" that would live on, it echoed what the nice Tech guy said at the beginning of the episode about the robot. And finally the cliffhanger after Amanda's public confession we can see that the "crowd goes frakking wild". It was neat!
I liked the pilot but I was a bit worried about the series. I was wrong. Caprica is nothing but a show with a lot of ambition and talent. Besides the title sequence is frakking cool!
"Stop feminizing it!" one of the minor characters said to another one.
The two people in question were Daniel's lab technicians, arguing about the first Cylon, U 87.
I took this as an in-joke about the BSGverse...because what was BSG if not an improved and feminized version of old-school Battlestar Galactica? We still had the patriarch Adama, but we got President Laura Roslin who gave him a run for his money. Both Starbuck and Boomer were turned into female characters, and Number Six was a haunting presence behind Baltar's actions. Something that a certain Dirk Benedic, who played Starbuck in the 70'st, loathed. So I have decided to consider the tech guy who argued against the feminization as a representation of Dirk Benedict! One scene later, as he was trying to fix the robot with a drill, he got one of his appendices cut. A metaphorical castration maybe?
This first episode was especially feminized since it mostly prominently portrayed female characters (Amanda, Cylon!Zoe Lacey and Clarice)
while the pilot focused more on the leading male characters (Daniel and Joseph).
Apart from this feminizing side, I enjoyed the bits of lightness that went throughout the episode, like Amanda looking at the robot and mentioning that she saw "this guy in a movie once" or cylon!Zoe breaking Zoe's bed or Daniel telling his wife that he promised Serge some time alone with the U87 (what a sweet scene between the Graystones btw)or Daniel again as he pretends to be playing pyramid and Serge ends the game by saying "and the crowd goes frakking wild". By the way, Serge that I already loved in the pilot, just rocks! I find that little robot even more intersting than the Cylon. Serge actually reminds me of Asimov's short stories and I love the way he calls both Daniel and Amanda by their first name.
Caprica city and its inhabitants are mourning, people are still grieving, the general atmosphere is sad and heavy and grim, but at the same time life goes on and humour is a way to show it.
This episode shows us how the characters deal with what happened in the pilot, hence the ending scene during the memorial at Apollo Park, but it was mostly about creating the Caprican culture, providing glimpses of the society, fleshing out that world that is based on BSG but isn't quite the same world since BSGverse was a post-apocalypse universe. BSG was about people on the run, trapped in a fleet, trying to survive first and foremost, hanging on an old mythology, on beliefs and values that existed prior the fall, and then trying to re-build a world, politically, spiritually and culturally.
We knew very little of the life on the twelve colonies before the fall, we learned stuff from the ruins and the characters' memories but that's all. Little details still connect both shows, like the religion of the Lords of Kobol of course, the" frak this frak that"talk, the octogonal photographs(hee!) or the music.
Thank to "Rebirth" we slowly discover that culture and the everyday life of the Capricans. I found it very interesting, and the name of the episode sums it up, it isn't only the rebirth of Zoe in a Cylon's body it's the rebirth of the colonies just under our eyes. Bear McReary got it and contributed to that resurrection with his music. By the way I love the fact he wrote a whole anthem for Caprica even though only a few seconds of it can be heard at the beginning of the Pyramid game. It was interesting to follow Sam and Willie in the streets, to learn about Lacey's background (to see the way she dressed when going to the lunch at Clarice's house, to find out about sister Clarice being in a marriage group and having multiple husbands and wives, to follow her into the dive bar...
I really enjoyed the slow pace. Caprica takes its time and it's good, it suits the fact that there's no hurry for these characters unlike the BSG ones. Sci-fi doesn't necessarily means action-packed stuff. I don't want to talk about Dollhouse now (I need to rewatch the finale first) but I think that "Rebirth" was smarter and better written and more gripping than "Epitath Two" yet it had little action in it.
The special effects were good and the way they shift back and forth between the robot and Zoe's avatar does work. I think it's amazing how expressive they make the Centurions look. Sometimes I find the robot more expressive than Alessandra Torresani!
Having said that the cast was really good. The actresses who play Amanda and Lacey were already excellent in the pilot, but I think that the acting of both A T and Polly Walker improved.
As for the males, they were good too. Joseph's storyline didn't progress much but there will be more episodes for that; we're learning to know the dangerous Sam Adama; I liked that Willie found Tauron school boring and didn't like Tauron meal, how he took a gangster-lecture from Sam, and how he played his father's feelings later. Future admiral Adama is still a kid, behaving like a kid.
I wonder about agent Duram. Should we trust him? Methinks this is another grey character. Not sure I like the way he plays Amanda's feelings, visiting her as she is alone and vulnerable, planting the seeds that led to her confession at the memorial . I even see a parallel between Duram and Nestor but let's wait and see...
Amanda's fall was well done(her confession was foolish but we could see where she was coming from) but Daniel Graystone is still my favourite. Such an interesting complicated character! So smart and sophisticated and charming, and yet sort of cold and ruthless and also clueless about things he doesn't want to see. I like how he disconnected himself from Joseph(access denied!), from the memories of his daughter (as he tells Amanda he doesn't want to think of her), while the two men did bond in the pilot (hence Joseph calling him Daniel on the phone!) and Daniel was so touching as a grieving father. He didn't seem very connected to his work in this episode either, something that Amanda noticed when she entered his
In case you haven't gotten it yet I really really like the family theme, how the relationships unfold (not only the parent/children ones but the married couple one too) and the fact that love doesn't prevent the characters from being flawed and making huge mistakes.
I agree with Bear McRaery that Daniel Graystone is very different from the BSG characters we have seen so far. He may be a genius like Baltar but he's nothing like Gaius (perhaps because Gaius has always been a fraud, all dandy-like but concealing his social background, playing a role all the time). In a way he embodies the old world while being the one who will bring it to its end so a new world can be born.
Eric Stoltz nailed it when he said,in a recent interview, about Caprica:" It's a near future dystopia struggling to find its way -- a society at an interesting breaking point, with two conflicting historical dispensations at their peak, each one kind of canceling out the other -- which will lead to another movement that has to take place so that the culture can move forward..."
Of course I had a big grin on my face when we saw Daniel playing the piano, given that I was sure that Eric was going to play the piano and that he played a part we had heard before on BSG(I love continuity elements!) in "Someone Watch Over Me". I noticed that Daniel had a guitar in his lab too and I wonder if we'll see him play it.
Is it Friday yet?
ETA: I forgot to say that I liked the dog too...Ceasar! And, given the way he seated in front of the cylon, the dog knew that the U87 was his Zoe! It's like they revisited The Odyssey, Ceasar playing the role of old Argos who recognized Odysseus despite his guise...
Oh and there were echoes in the episode: what Nestor told Lacey about Zoe's work being like a "work of art" that would live on, it echoed what the nice Tech guy said at the beginning of the episode about the robot. And finally the cliffhanger after Amanda's public confession we can see that the "crowd goes frakking wild". It was neat!