When Caprica echoes BSG
Oct. 20th, 2010 03:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chaniI really enjoyed "Things We Lock Away" even though some parts of it felt telegraphed.
Polly Walker's Clarice finally looks real, fleshed-out, thanks to the writing and the acting performance.
I really liked the way she interacted with Amanda and Lacey. Lacey's storyline seems to echo (or rather foreshadow) Kara Thrace's more and more. Her being captive reminded me of "The Farm" and of the beginning of season 3 on New Caprica. And there's the matter of her mother...
It happened before and it will happen again!
Speaking of...so we have a Head!Zoe now. The Head!characters have been an important part of the BSG mythos and played a key role in the finale, especially in the final scene, a scene I wasn't very happy with but made my peace with. Maybe Caprica will fix it up by providinng a better "explanation", or at least a better background for the head!characters.
It's quite interesting and intriguing that Head!Zoe is showing up just now. As for young Zoe seeing head!Zoe and suggesting that her old drawings might have inspired Daniel's work for the Cylon's chassis, was it a flashback allowing us to see the past or a mere memory? It looked like a memory to me, a memory triggered by the pain and fear that Zoe-A felt in the virtual arena as they were beating her to a pulp. Could Zoe-A's memory be corrupted after the crash her U-87 self went through?
I also liked how young Zoe's drawings echoed Hera's drawings from BSG. Hera was born half-human, half-cylon, and Zoe has become something similar given that she still has human memories and feelings but is basically an artificial person.
The Daniel/Vergis was powerful, especially when Vergis said he had chosen his moment for the kill to happen. It was very Samourai-like (btw we saw again the ancient armour Daniel keeps in his lab during the flashbacks with Zoe) The way he forced the kill on Daniel eventually was quite predictable though. We have seen similar scenes on screen before. But maybe the point wasn't the trick itself but having Daniel fall for it because it showed that he really didn't understand Vergis at all, that Vergis was not like him.
The biggest twist in my opinion was Daniel suggesting that they could team up to destroy the Ha'la'tha ! Oh Daniel, how could you after that the Adamas helped you to get your company back?!
It's subtle because obviously Daniel thought that such move and partnership would be a way to avoid Vergis' death--and therefore stop more blood to flow out which echoed something Clarice told Lacey! -- and to get rid of a criminal gang that does bad things like murders and blackmail, so basically it would be good for his conscience, but of course he also wanted to give HIMSELF a way out of a partnership that is a trap and makes him ill at ease, and thus, find his "virginity" back and have a clean start. Anyway, betraying the Adamas and the Guatrau is morally wrong no matter how morally wrong the means the Ha'La'tha uses are too !
Vergis respected the Tauron code, the old ways, which is something that our "sensitive" yet cunning and ruthless Caprican can't understand. Daniel thinks he is better than Taurons who behave like "animals", he is civilized, but he's just lowered himself to do exactly what he blamed his board directors for last week: disloyalty !
At the same time, it's complicated, and I think that Daniel is also genuine when dealing with Joseph. The Caprican inside of himself despises the Tauron ways and what the Adama brothers represent, what they made him do, but he is connected to Joseph, there's a sort of weird intimacy between them (oh the way Joseph touched his arm !!!!!) so it isn't surprising that he asks him for help after Tomas' seppuku by proxy. And I don't think that Daniel lied when he corrected Joseph earlier by saying "like him". Deep down Daniel wanted to be better than Vergis, he wanted to be magnanimous. He is arrogant and disapproves of the Ha'la'tha's ways but Joseph is more to him than just a Ha'la'tha lackey (he probably sees Sam as a mere thug though), and his interactions with him usually show how Daniel really feels as well. He lets the guard down then, something he never does with the others.
It's quite ironical because, on the paper Vergis and Graystone should have had more in common than Daniel and Joseph, but the facts say and show otherwise.
Another good scene was the game of cat and mouse, Amanda and Clarice were playing with each other. It's more interesting than just having Clarice manipulate Amanda.
As for the V-scene in New Cap City, they weren't my favourite, but they sorta echoed the Gemenon murder scene, especially when everybody rushed to get a piece of Zoe. BTW pretty line from Head!Zoe about Zoe-A walking in Zoe's footprints...
And, in the end, the two deadwalkers teamed up (Zoe succeeded in convincing Tamara while Daniel failed with Vergis) to destroy the bad things that New Cap City embodies.
Daniel's fall goes on, foreshadowing the fall of his world, of a whole civilization. And now he has blood on his hands literally. O the symbol of his white living room being stained by Vergis' death and cleaned up back to its spotless state after he called Joseph. But all the bleach in the world can't make disappear what the eyes have seen, what the memory has recorded. There are things that can't be locked away, hence the last shots on Eric Stoltz's big blue eye. One-eyed like a Cylon!
One last thing: Daniel has lost the big beard! Yay !
ETA: I really wonder if Caprica will change the way we see the head!characters after the BSG finale and if it will be connected to what I've heard about the comics, but I doubt it. The head!characters will probably remain mysterious until we get the Kobol spin-off, if it ever happens.
That said I sort of toy with the idea of the head!characters being pure data, avatars coming from another world and projecting themselves onto someone's mind in the "real world", using the better guise to do so, so it's interesting to have Zoe-A's storyline revealing a new head!character. In other words, what if the supposed "real world" was actually the v-world of the head!characters' world? Our head!characters could be just people playing a game hence their "malevolent" and cruel sides sometimes, like the people who play in New Cap City, and the god they refered to on BSG would be the creator of that v-world.
Polly Walker's Clarice finally looks real, fleshed-out, thanks to the writing and the acting performance.
I really liked the way she interacted with Amanda and Lacey. Lacey's storyline seems to echo (or rather foreshadow) Kara Thrace's more and more. Her being captive reminded me of "The Farm" and of the beginning of season 3 on New Caprica. And there's the matter of her mother...
It happened before and it will happen again!
Speaking of...so we have a Head!Zoe now. The Head!characters have been an important part of the BSG mythos and played a key role in the finale, especially in the final scene, a scene I wasn't very happy with but made my peace with. Maybe Caprica will fix it up by providinng a better "explanation", or at least a better background for the head!characters.
It's quite interesting and intriguing that Head!Zoe is showing up just now. As for young Zoe seeing head!Zoe and suggesting that her old drawings might have inspired Daniel's work for the Cylon's chassis, was it a flashback allowing us to see the past or a mere memory? It looked like a memory to me, a memory triggered by the pain and fear that Zoe-A felt in the virtual arena as they were beating her to a pulp. Could Zoe-A's memory be corrupted after the crash her U-87 self went through?
I also liked how young Zoe's drawings echoed Hera's drawings from BSG. Hera was born half-human, half-cylon, and Zoe has become something similar given that she still has human memories and feelings but is basically an artificial person.
The Daniel/Vergis was powerful, especially when Vergis said he had chosen his moment for the kill to happen. It was very Samourai-like (btw we saw again the ancient armour Daniel keeps in his lab during the flashbacks with Zoe) The way he forced the kill on Daniel eventually was quite predictable though. We have seen similar scenes on screen before. But maybe the point wasn't the trick itself but having Daniel fall for it because it showed that he really didn't understand Vergis at all, that Vergis was not like him.
The biggest twist in my opinion was Daniel suggesting that they could team up to destroy the Ha'la'tha ! Oh Daniel, how could you after that the Adamas helped you to get your company back?!
It's subtle because obviously Daniel thought that such move and partnership would be a way to avoid Vergis' death--and therefore stop more blood to flow out which echoed something Clarice told Lacey! -- and to get rid of a criminal gang that does bad things like murders and blackmail, so basically it would be good for his conscience, but of course he also wanted to give HIMSELF a way out of a partnership that is a trap and makes him ill at ease, and thus, find his "virginity" back and have a clean start. Anyway, betraying the Adamas and the Guatrau is morally wrong no matter how morally wrong the means the Ha'La'tha uses are too !
Vergis respected the Tauron code, the old ways, which is something that our "sensitive" yet cunning and ruthless Caprican can't understand. Daniel thinks he is better than Taurons who behave like "animals", he is civilized, but he's just lowered himself to do exactly what he blamed his board directors for last week: disloyalty !
At the same time, it's complicated, and I think that Daniel is also genuine when dealing with Joseph. The Caprican inside of himself despises the Tauron ways and what the Adama brothers represent, what they made him do, but he is connected to Joseph, there's a sort of weird intimacy between them (oh the way Joseph touched his arm !!!!!) so it isn't surprising that he asks him for help after Tomas' seppuku by proxy. And I don't think that Daniel lied when he corrected Joseph earlier by saying "like him". Deep down Daniel wanted to be better than Vergis, he wanted to be magnanimous. He is arrogant and disapproves of the Ha'la'tha's ways but Joseph is more to him than just a Ha'la'tha lackey (he probably sees Sam as a mere thug though), and his interactions with him usually show how Daniel really feels as well. He lets the guard down then, something he never does with the others.
It's quite ironical because, on the paper Vergis and Graystone should have had more in common than Daniel and Joseph, but the facts say and show otherwise.
Another good scene was the game of cat and mouse, Amanda and Clarice were playing with each other. It's more interesting than just having Clarice manipulate Amanda.
As for the V-scene in New Cap City, they weren't my favourite, but they sorta echoed the Gemenon murder scene, especially when everybody rushed to get a piece of Zoe. BTW pretty line from Head!Zoe about Zoe-A walking in Zoe's footprints...
And, in the end, the two deadwalkers teamed up (Zoe succeeded in convincing Tamara while Daniel failed with Vergis) to destroy the bad things that New Cap City embodies.
Daniel's fall goes on, foreshadowing the fall of his world, of a whole civilization. And now he has blood on his hands literally. O the symbol of his white living room being stained by Vergis' death and cleaned up back to its spotless state after he called Joseph. But all the bleach in the world can't make disappear what the eyes have seen, what the memory has recorded. There are things that can't be locked away, hence the last shots on Eric Stoltz's big blue eye. One-eyed like a Cylon!
One last thing: Daniel has lost the big beard! Yay !
ETA: I really wonder if Caprica will change the way we see the head!characters after the BSG finale and if it will be connected to what I've heard about the comics, but I doubt it. The head!characters will probably remain mysterious until we get the Kobol spin-off, if it ever happens.
That said I sort of toy with the idea of the head!characters being pure data, avatars coming from another world and projecting themselves onto someone's mind in the "real world", using the better guise to do so, so it's interesting to have Zoe-A's storyline revealing a new head!character. In other words, what if the supposed "real world" was actually the v-world of the head!characters' world? Our head!characters could be just people playing a game hence their "malevolent" and cruel sides sometimes, like the people who play in New Cap City, and the god they refered to on BSG would be the creator of that v-world.
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no subject
Date: 2010-10-20 07:06 pm (UTC)I think the head characters are angels but God is a dick. Zoe's Head character being herself makes her even more self-absorbed than Baltar. Teenagers huh! I did feel uneasy about A-Zoe bringing A-Tamra round to her side (shades of CapricaSix/Boomer's pact in Downloaded and we know how that ended) so I was glad when Vergis turned the tables on Daniel.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-20 08:41 pm (UTC)Yeah teenagers' narcissism is sorta duplicated here, or squared. Zoe created life after her own image and her avatar now sees a Head!Zoe! And with the name of Zoe meaning life itself it's like we're watching a process of parthenogenesis!
I hadn't thought of the deadwalkers team echoing caprica Six/Boomer pact. Mmmmm...
I don't know if you're familiar with the BSG comics and how canon they are supposed to be but Head!Six turned out to be a Lord of Kobols in it, like Aurora...and both Pythia and Kara were avatars of Aurora who didn't know what they were until they died and returned...an earlier concept of deadwalkers!
no subject
Date: 2010-10-21 01:48 am (UTC)I'll have to watch it on Friday night.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-21 09:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-21 09:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-21 09:54 am (UTC)I hope you didn't read my post and you remained unspoiled!
no subject
Date: 2010-10-21 09:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-23 09:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-23 11:57 am (UTC)I have to agree with you on everything you said about Daniel and Vergis and Joseph Adama. Vergis' use of Daniel was telegraphed from the beginning. Daniel was naive, but at the same time he was being ruthless in thinking he could dislodge himself from the Ha'la'tha's grasp that the Tauron's have on him. They own Daniel. Vergis was his only way out (at least the only way yet seen) and Daniel lost it to a Tauron tradition he cannot grasp. In that way too, he cannot see what is to come from his Ha'la'tha overlords. Joseph will play him like Daniel plays the piano.
I too liked the story as unfolded for Lacey. Of course, I cannot compare it to anything in BSG - NOR the idea of a Head!character, of which I have no experience.
But I do have a feel for what the character represents. I do not think it to be real. Head!Zoe seems to be an Echo in the mind of Zoe-A (I guess your 'A' stands for Avatar). It represents an Echo of herself or what was flesh-and-blood Zoe, since once Zoe-A was created, for Zoe-A she existed side-by-side with the flesh-and-blood Zoe. In a way Head!Zoe represents, in part, the conscience of Zoe-A.
So when Zoe enters her father's lab and finds him designing robots, it is not flesh-and-blood Zoe, but Zoe-A. Alongside her is her Echo always speaking about happened for 'the two Zoes.' When Zoe-A remembers the creation of the program creating Zoe-A, it isn't being created by flesh-and-blood Zoe, but Zoe-A herself!! Zoe-A said it herself when she said that she was forgetting that what should have been flesh-and-blood Zoe created her. Thus Zoe-A is an uncaused cause. Zoe-A must then necessarily be a god.
Or would that be Head!Zoe, since she is an Echo of both Zoes? No, I'll go with Zoe-A as a god. It might have something to do with her ability to control someone in the real world through their holobands.
So did I go off the deep end with my Echo idea. How strong and idea are the Heads! in BSG lore?
...
no subject
Date: 2010-10-23 05:25 pm (UTC)I like the way your mind works, trésor. It's difficult to discuss the Head!Characters without spoiling you for BSG though, and spoiling you would be a shame. I wish there was a way for you to see the mini series and the 4 seasons very soon!
Let's just say that the Head!Characters were a tricky matter, rather ambiguous until the finale, but even then the writers sort of left an open door, so Caprica might change the deal...or not!
As for your Echo idea, it's nice and a bit of what I meant when I said that we weren't seeing flashbacks from an omniscient point of view but Zoe-A's memories. What you called an echo, I called a corrupted data (after all an error did occur when Daniel downloaded the code he had captured).
Also in the lab scene Head!Zoe accused Daniel of stealing his daughter's idea while young Zoe was in Daddy's girl-mode (which echoed the memory of the fire as she called daddy for help, not mommy)and defended Daniel. Head!Zoe seems to me an Echo of Cylon-Zoe more than an Echo of the real Zoe. She's the Zoe who remembers that Daniel stole his daughter's work indeed when he captured the code, she's the Zoe who resented him for what he did when she was in the U-87. An Echo of the machine, not an Echo of the flesh.
But I agree with this:
So when Zoe enters her father's lab and finds him designing robots, it is not flesh-and-blood Zoe, but Zoe-A. Alongside her is her Echo always speaking about happened for 'the two Zoes.' When Zoe-A remembers the creation of the program creating Zoe-A, it isn't being created by flesh-and-blood Zoe, but Zoe-A herself!!
I just love the paradox here. However I don't think that Zoe-A said she "was forgetting what would have been Zoe creating her", I think she said that she didn't remember it which isn't the same, and Zoe responded that it was normal because she couldn't remember what happened after the last self-scan, or something like that. This must have been a scene that actually happened in the past, and Zoe-A remembered it correctly.
Of course if it is a flashback it makes sense for us to see Zoe creating the program before Zoe-A appears in her purple dress, but if it is only Zoe-A's memory it contradicts the logical explanation Zoe gave about post-scan events being "inaccessible" for her avatar and you're right to see Zoe-A as a god-like figure. I hope for the latter.
I really like the idea of God being a virtual entity, the ghost in the machine, a program created by human beings (o the delicious twist of having God created after one girl's image!) and yet definitely truly divine in terms of attributes.
BTW here is what I wrote in March 2009 --hardly spoilersih, actually it's more about ideas and theories than about facts, and with Caprica being so "religious" I guess you probably expect BSG to have a religious facet anyway -- when I argued against those who hated the religious side of the BSG finale (I didn't like it much at first but love to play the Devil's advocate and I sometimes end up convincing myself!):
The show has always been very Greek so a final "deus ex-machina" trick suits its ways and doesn't screw up its soul. Besides deus ex-machina literally means "God out of the machine" and it could support the idea of a God thought and therefore created by the machines, the Centurions, and also the theory of the head!characters being only projections...
On a more shallow note, Daniel heard us, he lost the beard!
no subject
Date: 2010-10-23 09:38 pm (UTC)I just sort of like the idea of calling Head!Zoe an Echo. There has to be another Zoe around to mediate between the Zoes, I think.... eh, I've slept since then. So I'll accept your hand-holding on this, you have the cred when it comes to BSG!
no subject
Date: 2010-10-23 09:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-24 09:40 am (UTC)Caprica is a show with great ambitions, and there aren't many like that.
*sigh*