| Season 1 | Episode 1
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Before the Articles of Colonization, before the Centurions, back when the Twelve Colonies of Kobol were just warring countries much like our own -- and the Final Five were still fifty light years away on their journey from Planet Cylon to save us all -- there was Caprica. If the Twelve Colonies are like superpowers, Caprica City is like NYC and Caprica herself is the US: Arrogant, rich, pushy, corrupt, secular and hypocritical. Luckily for everybody: Terrorism!
The Soldiers of the One, monotheist fundamentalists, have established a network of crazy-pants children and scary headmistresses to bring the word of the One God to the people. Three of these kids, including the daughter of mad scientist/Captain of Industry Daniel Graystone, detonate a bomb on a skyrail car. Two of them die, one wusses out, and among the victims are the wife and daughter of complicated attorney Joseph Adama.
The fathers of these two dead girls, despite being yards apart in both station and breeding, form a bond. The surviving girl-terrorist, Lacey, accidentally lets slip that Daniel's daughter Zoë is still alive in the Matrix, having inherited her daddy's mad scientist powers. Daniel captures this ghost Zoë and uses her intelligence to improve his designs for a new government-issued Cybernetic Life-Form Node, or Cylon, made to fight inter-Colony wars and hopefully not get genocidally bummed out by that.
Daniel's wife is having an affair and Joseph is all mixed up with Tauran mobsters. Meanwhile, Zoë is very much her own agent, and we learn that a ghost of dead terrorist-boyfriend Ben is also extant. So now she's got one friend on the outside, one friend in the Matrix, a powerful new robot body, and a terrorist network that's still very much alive thanks to their mentor, Athena Academy headmistress and secret terrorist Clarice Willow. There's a cop on the tail of the bombers, and a formal investigation into the Soldiers of the One -- but if Gossip Girl has taught us anything it's that you should never bet against one pissed-off teenage girl, much less two. Especially if they are in a terrorist cult.
Speaking personally, I never wanted anything more than Battlestar Galactica without the spaceships and gunfights, so I'm good. Toss in some genius teenage terrorists, a hearty helping of internet paranoia, the recapitulation of Midrashic feminine divinity into sexy jailbait manqué, mythic cyberpagans, analogues of both Fox News and The Daily Show With Patton Oswalt -- plus wardrobe, hair and sets straight out of the Gaius Baltar Collection? -- I'd say we're good to go.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Please note that this recap refers to the DVD edition of the Caprica pilot.
As far back as I can remember I've had this dream. Not much anymore, but for a while I had it all the time. There's people on a rollercoaster and they're having the time of their lives, and it's loud and crashing, and there's the booming of the ocean and the acoustics of the wind, and they're screaming with their hands in the air, and the thing that they don't know is that the tracks stop, somewhere at a crest, just gap into nothing, and they're hurtling toward it. They think that they're safe but they're not safe.
And usually the dream gets bogged down in bureaucratic detail, trying to mobilize a team to somehow solve this problem, all the futile possible ways we could save them. Dream logic; leadership dreams. Maybe if they all raised their arms at the same counter-intuitive time, at the bottom of the hill maybe, it would provide some kind of drag. Maybe if they all unlatched their harnesses at the same moment, if they somehow all knew to do it at the same time, like in a football wave, if they could do this as they were launching into space, and off the tracks altogether, they would take flight, and we could... catch them, somehow. Everyone would be safe.
JG Ballard died this morning. He will be missed. He said "a widespread taste for pornography means that nature is alerting us to some threat of extinction."
Karen Armstrong wrote one of my favorite books of all time, the elegant and accessible A History Of God. It's brilliant, I've read it lots of times, have bought and given away more copies than I can account for. In 2000, she wrote a sort of follow-up called The Battle For God, about fundamentalism in the new millennium.
The idea, the rationale as such, is pretty simple. We find ourselves in a complex, degenerate post-God secular world; there are no rules, the center doesn't hold, nobody's watching you or judging you. Some thrive; I thrive. But it's nervous: you're looking into an existential abyss, or you're standing in the middle of Sodom trying to avoid eye contact, or you're getting turned on and about to do something really stupid. Those are the main things. Fundamentalism is sort of like all of those things at once. Gin a body kiss a body, need a body cry?
What's most amazing about the millennial fundamentalisms, which every single religion has, is their basic intent on going "back to basics" in some fashion, while completely ignoring the fact that there aren't actually any "basics" to go back to. The stuff they want to accomplish, for all of us, the walls they want where a body meets a body, the rules be which we must abide, never actually existed. They're syncretistic fantasies about control, mental lockdown, revisions to decisions that no moment can erase. Every single fundamentalism is synthetic, reaching backwards for an imaginary grace.
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Fundamentalism reaches past all that nonsense and chaos and into a primordial world where men were men and women weren't, where no decisions ever had to be made, where every single option was laid out ahead of time by a firm but loving God, where families meant a certain thing and sex meant a certain thing, and everything was easy except temptation. But that's obviously a crock. You can't honestly tell me there was ever a time when human beings were less complex, less passionate or afraid or unpredictable, less wonderful than they are now.
For me, all this was a revelation on the level of learning, as a kid, that Allah and JHVH and God were the same thing: that all Big Three monotheisms worship the God of Abraham and don't even bother hiding that fact. The idea that "fundamentalism" was a logically tortured appeal to a beautiful pure world that never existed, and that Al Qaeda and Juniper Creek are essentially parallel movements with the same agenda and arising from the same confusion and fear... Revelatory.
Things are confusing, lots of stuff coming at your face all the time. Sex keeps getting less and less kind, and we keep blaming more and more shit on our parents and our kids, and technology is overwhelming and even the hippest among us can sometimes feel like the world is changing so fast and flying by so carelessly without giving us more than a glimpse of itself, much less a place to grab hold. I can't say they don't have a point. But then, terrorists usually do. If they didn't have something to say, they wouldn't feel silenced, and they wouldn't pull the shit they pull. They wouldn't feel the need to scream so loudly that the whole world must listen.
For a lot of us, it's enough to have self-control and to make good choices, and not get out of hand, or take part in what's going on all around you. For others, the projected disarray is way too much to handle, and you start feeling like a rat in a cage as big as the world. Everywhere around you, the world is on fire, and everyone around you goes on like the world hasn't ended. You're on a roller coaster with everybody alive, headed for a gap, and nobody knows it but you: we're all heading merrily toward our destruction, and we don't even know it. We think that we're safe but we're not safe.
If you have that kind of information, if you know that the tracks run out and people are going to die, it's not only your duty to use it, but your purpose on this earth. To be in the world, but not of it. To help, and to heal, and to save the world, and in so doing, save yourself. Or, as a lovely harsh woman will say years from now, to fulfill your destiny: to love them, and take care of them, show them the glory of peace. To see your infinite mercy matched only by your power, and complete control. Isn't that the definition of the righteous man? The saint? The martyr? Kara Thrace, Laura Roslin, Tory Foster, Natalie Six, D'Anna Three; Ellen Tigh, in her resurrection. Gaius, Zarek, Felix. Terrorists, if Antigone's a terrorist: to give up the right to walk in this world, for a duty that must be obeyed for our souls to stay intact, unbending.
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If you saw the roller coaster heading toward the gap, if you were in the middle of that nightmare, wouldn't you do anything to stop it?
It's fifty-eight years before the Fall. The Colonies don't really exist; they're just planets. Humanity settled them millennia ago, after the Galleon and the blaze that pursued it. Right now we're like Europe, little nation-states that hate each other; that see the differences more than the similarities. We think this is all there is. We've forgotten that every age is made of Pluribus and Unum, that every many is made of ones and every one is part of a many. It's a political truth but a religious one also, and every iteration of us forgets that. There's always a Jealous God, and there's always the quaint and easily secularized Gods. It's a religious truth, but a political one also, and that X marks the spot where terror happens. For you, and for me, and for all of us.
Eventually the Twelve racist children of Kobol will erupt into internecine war: that's when the toasters will get drafted. (Or is it? Does the game invent the toys, or do the toys invent the game? Do the Cylon call the war into being by their existence, by being the best tools for destruction that we're able to create?) They'll freak out and rebel so hard it'll call into being the government we already know: the Articles of Colonization, the Quorum, the President of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol. I always thought it was weird that the symbol of the Colonies was a phoenix, rising from the flames; it makes more sense now. The confederation of the Colonies, the idea of these united states: when it died, it was younger than my parents are now.
And that first Cylon War will last twelve and a half years, until Ellen and the rest arrive from Earth and have a culty meeting of the minds with the rebellion. And then the Armistice will happen, and we'll sit quietly for forty more years. And they'll never tender a meeting at the Armistice Station, until John Cavil's Plan goes into action. And the first words they'll say are, "Are you alive?" And we still won't know, and they still won't know.
But don't worry about John or Six, or Ellen or Laura, or Kara, because this is a different story: This has all happened before, and it'll all happen again. This time, it's about kids and cults, and grief. Caprica is America, the jewel of worlds, and Caprica City is New York City, the only place that matters, tempting the dragon that sleeps in the places that aren't mapped yet. We're pushing the limits of the human mind, and the human soul. We've forgotten the Gods, and we've forgotten fear, and we're strapping into the rollercoaster with beer and sex and smoke in our hair and on our clothes. This defines our society, and it will for the fifty-eight years as the traps close up around us: We're dancing on the edge of a waterfall that goes down forever.
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Rap rock is apparently alive and well in this particular past/future, with a lot of "come on come on come on." We're at a dance party that seems to go on forever, impressive and violent, knives out, ladies kissing in a sex room, a fight club. Everything you can think of that you'd be afraid to do, these people are not afraid to do. Even act like lesbians! Somebody shoots somebody in an apartment hallway, and gives herself a round of applause; it's only part of the larger arena, like those halls in the middle of baseball stadiums.
Zoë Graystone is sixteen, on an upper deck, staring around herself at this hot mess, obviously uncomfortable. She has dark hair and bangs, and haunted eyes, and the weight of the world on her shoulders. She looks down and sees a girl, on the floor near the stage; the girl looks up at her: she's a Zoë too, and she's terrified. Lacy Rand and Ben Stark, her best friend and boyfriend, join her on the balcony and stare down. A guy appears onstage, screaming, with a knife. "It's not their fault" Ben says, taking in Zoë's stress level. "They just... They don't know what they're doing." Lacy wants to bounce, but it's too late. It's happening.
All the people onstage fall to their knees; Lacy's blonde and, so far, a bit wispy. "Don't they ever get tired of this? It's so sick," she shudders. Ben assures her, assures them all, that it's going to change, and Zoë nods proudly. "And she's gonna help change it." Down on the floor, the Zoë begins to shiver as a woman comes onstage, backlit, sticking out her tongue to screaming cheers. Her face shifts as she begins to scream, dancing. She's lit from within: a face like a demon, like a Rainbow Goblin, animals. She's a wolf, with a knife. The crowd shoves a girl past Zoë onto the stage, as she screeches and tries to pull back. The man with the knife kills her, right there, as the crowd goes wild.
Caprica's at a crossroads and they can't even see it; at the crossroads is where you meet Hecate. She has many faces, and none. One of the signs of a culture in decline is a fascination with the underworld, séances and ghosts and table-rapping, zombies and vampires; the breath of death on your face long before you realize you died miles back. This is only one of the faces of Hecate, but it's the one these kids understand, even if they don't know it: they're only expressing what the grownups are too old and cold and hard to say, to feel, to do. They were sacrificed long ago, sold out like the children of every generation that fell so in love with its own reflection that they forgot the point of children: not for your glory, but for the further glory of the world. Forget that and we're all just walking dead. They're Hers now.
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They are caught in a thing, a powerful ritual thing. She's innocent. She redeems them with her blood, and the dancing goes on. (It's not really dying, they think to themselves. They're not really killing her, any more than Thorne will rape Sharon Agathon sixty years hence.) Zoë on the floor gives up, horrified, shoving herself backwards, and eventually disappears altogether. She vanishes back, to a silent place. "She derezzed," Zoë grunts, staring down. "She flipped out or something. She must've defaulted back to the last copy." They stand just above a slaughter. "I guess she's not as strong as you yet," Ben smiles at her. "I have faith in you. She'll be perfect," he says, "Because you're perfect." Just as she is. Lacy watches them kiss, on the balcony. On the outside, and not for the last time.
A Mean Girl of the Athenian Academy slams open a wooden bathroom stall door; Zoë's there with her goggles, jacked into the world. She's anxious to pull rank, to tattle. Zoë looks up at her with utter disdain, and tells her to frak herself. They confiscate the holoband from her, so she can't check on the other girl, the girl that vanished.
She rejoins her crew on the grounds of the school, outside, and Ben tells her it was just more of the same after she logged off: "Some more blood and guts." She'll have to wait until she gets home to check on the other Zoë; Ben worries but she tells him the plan is still set: they're splitting for Gemenon tomorrow, and she'll have plenty of time to tweak the double before then. No room for argument, she says, "For the One True God knows all," she says, and looks at Lacy: "And directs us all. So say we all." They gesture to their foreheads in a sign of assent: "So say we all." They're just children, playing. That's faith.
Zoë's parents are playing a Colonial form of tennis. Her father is Daniel Graystone, her mother Amanda. They are fair, healthy, wealthy. He's a software developer, she's a doctor. They argue over their game; Daniel calls her "cheater-girl." He doesn't know how right he is, yet. It's all very futuristic and science-fictiony, with laser boundaries on the edge of their gorgeous hillside home, all glass walls and robot servant Serge. He watches their game, playing umpire, until a message arrives from the Academy. Amanda has had it with Zoë's rebellions, but Daniel loves his daughter. He is soft.
In the kitchen, Amanda's aghast: "Holobands at school? Cutting class? Defiance!" She has no idea. She's trying to hold her family together, that's all she knows. Daniel tries to get everybody to calm down, and Zoë snarks unrelentingly at them both. Amanda takes away her phone, driving and holoband privileges, and Daniel tries to distract them both with a reminder about a new computer science wing they're building at Apollo University, named after Zoë. She complains that she doesn't want to be "associated" with her father, or his "filthy science," but she's just talking shit. She takes after her father more than he knows.
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"You have no idea what it means to build something or to work hard for anything," Amanda shouts, and Zoë's nasty tone is unbearably proud of itself: "I guess I'll have to learn how to marry into money!" Amanda loses control, and slaps her daughter across the face. It's absolutely the worst thing her daughter could have called her, for reasons we don't know yet. Suffice to say all three of them are horrified, but Zoë less so: "You are gonna regret that for the rest of your life." And she will, but not for the reasons Zoë thinks. We put so much power into the hands of our children. Amanda watches her daughter run off, shocked at herself, and Daniel tries to reassure her.
Zoë's got a holoband again, in the bedroom. She logs in, describing an infinity symbol on her laptop, which is awesomely a piece of paper, and then inputs a series of coded symbols; her feet and fingers wiggle as she crosses over. Past the sex room, where those ladies are still macking, and then to a door she's built in the wall, an infinity symbol in the door. "You say I'm freaky but I know I'm not," the music says; she walks with purpose past the revelers and enters a foggy room.
It's silent, lit by stained glass. The other Zoë sits on a couch, apologizing as she enters. "No worries," Zoë assures her, and she shudders again. "I just couldn't. When he pulled out that knife and started to..." She knows, what it's like. She's had sixteen years to learn this world, how to live in it, and it's driven her crazy. This sister, daughter, copy, she's not been alive nearly that long. "Why do they think watching something like that is fun?" Because they're asleep, Zoë assures the copy, but she's proud when the other Zoë blows this off. "No, that's too easy an answer. I saw their faces. They definitely knew what they were doing. And they loved it." Zoë sits with her, grinning. "You sound just like me."
"Now, we have to make sure that you don't derez on us again. I thought I'd solved that in the fail-safe protocol, but clearly not." The other Zoë begs her not to send her back to the slaughters, and it won't matter. Zoë is fascinated: "It really got to you, didn't it?" Um, yeah. "I knew that wasn't real; nothing in here is real. It was the way that people were ... watching. The way they drew strength from what was happening." Zoë touches her arm, sympathetic, and promises not to send her back. "People are really like that? I mean, on the outside?" Some of them, always. "But that's all gonna change. And you're gonna help bring that change." The copy is so innocent, so sorrowful; Zoë herself is much wiser, now.
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Zoë gets into the car with her mother Amanda; they are both stone-faced. She gets out of the car at the Academy, and only Zoë knows it's for the last time. She meets Lacy in front of the school; with a look, they begin to run, meeting Ben behind a tree. He makes fun of Zoë for overpacking, and they head to the train station. It's their last day on Caprica. Zoë and Ben fuss with their passports and paperwork, while above them on the escalator another story happens.
William Adams is eleven years old, the son of Tauron immigrants to the city. He lives with his mother Shannon and father Joseph, his maternal grandmother Ruth, and his sister Tamara. Shannon is beautiful and scattered, shepherding her daughter toward home as they call to remind Joseph about Willie's birthday party, which starts tonight at 7:30. "Do you want to put Willie in therapy for the rest of his life?" asks Tamara, hounding her father adorably. He swears he'll be done at court no later than seven, and she wrinkles her nose, telling him that's "unacceptable." Shannon and Joseph smile at this, in separate locations. She's as definite about this as the young terrorists on the escalator beside her; the dark-eyed youngsters ignoring their family discussion, worrying at their cuffs and backpacks. Tamara hands the phone back to her mom, but they're too close to the lev; he doesn't get to say goodbye.
They push their way through the crowd, the three of them. Ben is made of stone; they're separated from Lacy, who catches up with them at the door to the train and is suddenly paralyzed by fear. She's too afraid to move, too afraid of leaving the world behind and going to Gemenon. Given what we know about Gemenon, their radically fundamentalist approach to the Scrolls, it's no surprise they have OTG sympathizers there: they're halfway there already. Zoë tries desperately to get her revved up again, to make it all okay -- "They're gonna welcome us on Gemenon! It's not like it is here on Caprica, we'll have a whole new family" -- but Lacy shakes her head, apologizing as the doors close and the train heads away, out into the city.
Zoë's disappointed, but reassures Ben that at least Lacy won't spill the beans. Ben's vibrating, stressed out and keyed up. She touches his arm sweetly, with a comforting look. She has no idea what's coming. Nearby, Tamara Adams tells her mother some story of anti-Tauron discrimination, being called a dirt-eater, and when her mother says she hopes she just walked away, Tamara smirks. "I did. After I kicked him in the balls." Shannon's shocked by her daughter, but secretly impressed. Zoë sends her mother a conciliatory note (Don't live in regret, Mom. I love you) that will look different later, when she goes from being a runaway to being a casualty and worse.
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"Are you going to be like this all the way to Gemenon, or what?" he doesn't even hear her, he's so far inside. She yells his name, and he looks at her sadly before apologizing softly. "It's God's will," he says, opening his jacket, showing her the bomb there. She tells him to wait, but it's too late. "The One True God shall drive out the many," he says, louder, but still afraid. The train car explodes around them. Ben and Zoë, Tamara and Shannon, hundreds of other innocents. A few blocks away, Joseph's walking the streets with a feather in his hat; he hears the crash and sees the black, acrid smoke billowing out. It doesn't make sense. It's not going to.
Two weeks later. Daniel sits at home, looking sadly out at a cloudy evening. Maybe it's the morning. Maybe it doesn't matter. He stares at the water; Amanda joins him, looking out, caressing his hair. They share the silence, and a beautifully haunting music cue; she takes her husband's hand.
At a lectern, the Mayor introduces Agent Durham, who's investigating the incident on behalf of the Prime Minister. "This is what we know: a group known as Soldiers of the One is responsible for the bombing," he says, showing the assembled mourners and reporters the infinity symbol. "Now, while this organization has been dormant for the past ten years and we still have a lot of evidence to sift through, everything points to their involvement." Joseph stands, and leaves. "Now, as I'm sure you all know, the STO espouses a monotheistic religious philosophy, advocating the worship of a single, all-knowing, all-powerful God..."
Outside the press conference, Joseph pops a cigarette into his mouth, because all they do on Caprica fifty-eight years before the Fall is smoke, smoke, smoke. He can't find a light, bustling past Daniel, lost in his thoughts; they smoke together. Joseph recognizes him -- he's like the Bill Gates of the twelve worlds -- and laughs that he's never seen Graystone smoke on TV or anything. Daniel admits it's mostly PR, but that he hasn't smoked for a few years. "Started up again last week." Joseph nods darkly, and really looks at him for the first time. He's just a man.
They introduce themselves, and Daniel reaches for his hand; he jerks back at the black glove on Joseph's hand, afraid of giving offense. Joseph apologizes: "No, the gloves are symbolic. They're to keep us away from the world during mourning, or something like that. I don't even know why they do it. It's an old custom." They do it because they have to. Daniel agrees that the old ways probably do help, somehow, in times like these. They've lost daughters. "And my wife," Joseph says. Daniel, uncomfortable, decides they will have coffee. They are both alone; they will be alone, together.
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At the school, Sister Clarice Willow -- who looks like she invented the concept of the MILF, with overtones of Naughty Headmistress -- tries to comfort Lacy. The words are as empty for her as they are for her charge. "Zoë walks with our mother Goddess Athena now, Lacy. She will be cared for and loved and cherished for all eternity." Sister Willow sits down on a couch with Lacy, in a sumptuous room. "It's not very comforting, is it? Truth is, it doesn't do much for me, either." Lacy's surprised, somewhere through the darkness. "Zoë's gone. And all the scriptures, all the prayers, all the sacrifices offered in the temples... None of these are going to bring her back to us. Are they?" She's holding out a hand without a glove on it, but Lacy can't see it yet.
"I am angry," Lacy says, shocked into honesty. "At the Gods?" asks Sister Willow. Not exactly. "At whoever did this," Lacy says. "It's not right." She thinks she's lying, she thinks she's spinning a web about terrorists, about the STO; she thinks she's covering her tracks. The truth is that she's telling the truth. Sister Willow nods. "To be cut down, when her life was full of so much promise..." Clarice is a name like Stark: the light that burns through everything, like the end of the world, revealing the truth. Lacy can't see it yet.
"I should've been on that train," Lacy begins, and Sister Willow misunderstands, whispering protest. She means it, not as survivor guilt exactly, but a larger guilt that takes survival into account: "I should be with Zoë. I should be dead." And again, Clarice responds to her words, to the words behind the words, and the words she's leaving out, all at once: "No. It wasn't your time. The Gods weren't ready to call your spirit. They have another purpose for you here."
Lacy's so used to lying, so used to staring at the grownups in the web of their own horror, their secular blindness, that Clarice could be parading around the room with a t-shirt reading TOTAL CULT MEMBER and she wouldn't see it. In the end, she'll practically have to. "Me?" Lacy scoffs. The God(s)' plans for her were nothing: "Zoë was somebody special, a genius. The things she could do with a computer..." Sister Willow agrees: Zoë was gifted.
Zoë is a name like Eve. Precisely, particularly, just like Eve: it means Life. In the New Testament it's used to mean specifically Eternal Life, like you might signify with an infinity symbol. (I mean, if you really want to get into it, one of the systems of organization for the Gnostic Aeons -- emanations of the mind of God, like Qabala's sephiroth -- says that the marriage of Nous (Mind) and Aletheia (Truth) creates the binary of Logos (the Word) and Zoë (Life), or the topic of this movie, which in their union creates the binary of Anthropos (Mankind) and Ekklésia (Church), which is where all of this is heading.) But for now, we've met two faces of Eve, and lost one already.
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And see how desperate, and how subtle, is Sister Clarice Willow to get at the girl who is left: "If you knew of any ... particular work that Zoë was doing, any work that you could find, then perhaps that would be a way for you to reconnect with her, to find comfort in discovering her in a different way." Lacy perks up at this, as Zoë's father will too, soon enough. Lacy thinks, and reaches the point toward which Sister Willow has been pushing her, with this transgressive talk against the Gods and the unfairness of it all, and the desperation for Lacy to get back to Zoë. Back to a Zoë that won't judge her for living past that terrible moment weeks ago.
Because Zoë has magic powers; because Daniel is her father, and because she is a new kind of life never seen before; because she's a little bit scary and a little bit rebellious, we could be tempted to look at Zoë -- any of her, all of herselves -- as the main (or only) character. And while she's interesting, I think slightly more interesting is Lacy, who doesn't have a father in this mess yet, who didn't die, who wasn't reborn in the Matrix. Who must navigate all these awful adults and who is still, don't forget, an agent of the One True God. As far as she knows, the only one still living. She's all alone in this world, her ties to Zoë are just as passionate and just as fundamental as Daniel's. Watching her strength bloom, her back go straight, her eyes get steelier with every lie, is to me the most exciting part of the movie.
She's sort of the straight man to the whole universe here -- it's kind of like watching The Anastasia Dualla Show at this point -- but I think it's instructive at least to give this idea a spin. She's the only person in the story who navigates this many narrative worlds: she's part of the Matrix kids, she's associated with Zoë's family, she's presumably got her own family, she's responsible to and for the new Zoë, and she's the only person left at the Academy, where clearly some fucked up things are afoot.
Amanda wanders the lake house, staring out over the water, moving though its halls like a ghost, and finally stands at the doorway of Zoë's room: art, a cello, things a girl has. They haven't moved. She stares at every object and wishes it made sense, but when it does she won't feel better. She jumps, guilty, when Serge calls her downstairs.
"Hi, Dr. Graystone." Amanda's first question to Lacy is whether she's okay, just like a mother would. (Amanda gets shit-nothing to do in this movie, but I think she also is going to be a very fascinating person on the show. Because of the amount of necessary plot to get to the money shots at the end, we sort of have to focus on Daniel and Joseph's relationship for the most part, but, just like BSG, the men are already outnumbered!) Lacy asks if she can sit in Zoë's room for awhile, and even though she thinks it's weird, Amanda nods. Of course she understands; that's just what she was doing. She tells Serge to let Lacy in, like officially, like you do with vampires, and tells the girl to stay as long as she likes. She's already headed downstairs.
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They've been at the coffee shop forever. Daniel's fine fingers smoke, and stir coffee; Joseph's gloved hands as the butts stack up, twelve for every hour. Finally, Joseph realizes it's a funeral for nobody, and thanks Daniel for the coffee. He puts on his coat to leave, and smiles. "Are you okay?" That's all we can ask each other. Daniel's lost, for a moment, and apologizes for phasing out. He stands, and Joseph tries to comfort him. "Hey, listen. I understand. In about five seconds, I'm jumping off a bridge myself." (Men. How many other ways are there to say, "Thank you for sitting with me; FYI we are friends now"?) Daniel thanks him, for sitting and smoking, and Joseph smiles nonsense phrases meant to comfort: "Easiest job I've had all day." Waking up alone in a bed meant for two; standing up, walking across the city; looking into the eyes of his son.
Daniel offers him a ride home, but Joseph thanks him: "I live in the city." Desperate to give him something, to buy something back, for anything that means they won't have to be alone again, he offers courtside seats to Joseph, who's a C-Bucs fan ("Much to my misfortune"). Joseph wants to accept, anything to keep from saying goodbye right now; he mentions Willie. Of course, Daniel would love to bring him along. He gives Joseph his number, and asks him to call; he smiles from his car, and they wave goodbye. The only thing worse than a father crying is a father not crying.
Lacy finds Zoë's holoband and goes inside: past the dancing people, walking with purpose like Zoë. In that dress, with that hair, she could be Zoë too. It's raining there, in the Temple; it is dark.
"Lacy? Is that you?" Zoë appears, covered in blood, grateful for company. "I'm glad you're here. Something terrible has happened, hasn't it?" Lacy screams as Zoë stares at her; in the lakehouse, she sits down, terrified. "So I'm dead?" Lacy weeps. "She's dead. Yes." She pulls it together enough to ask where all the blood came from -- Zoë's wound-free -- and Zoë assumes it was the bombing. Where she was not, safe in her paper temple. "I know, but still I felt it. Zoë was working on a biofeedback protocol, she wanted me to feel what she felt in real time." This dirty science. "She never got it working exactly, but something happened." She felt her die, her sister-mother. "What happens to me?"
Never let it be said this movie lacked in totally awesome concepts. How's that one for a doozy? "She had some kind of plan for you once we got to Gemenon, but I don't even know what that was." But we're not going to Gemenon anymore. We're stuck. Zoë starts to shake. "What am I without her? She's me. I'm her. I'm all that's left of her." She grabs at Lacy, so much like Zoë; she's nothing like Zoë, all fear and innocence for a moment. Nothing like that fearful brightness, that righteous truth. Just a girl. "Help me, Lace. Make me understand. What am I supposed to do ?" Lacy shoves her away, shocking a new understanding in her eyes. "I don't have the answers you want, okay? I didn't even know for sure if you were gonna still be here once Zoë died." She's scared. Why? Zoë's standing right here, with only one friend in the universe, and Lacy's scared.
| Season 1 | Episode 1
"I don't know you. I grew up with Zoë Graystone, and you're not her, okay?" Zoë Graystone stands in the temple with rain falling, blood all over her face, while her only friend in the universe tells her she is nothing. Nothing real: "You're something she created. You're just a thing." But Zoë remembers all that, growing up alongside her, and she remembers something else: "Zoë promised me I'd see the real world one day." That day, they knew the world would tremble. And it will.
"I've never been to your house, never played in your room, never puked in your bathroom or put on your make-up, or tried on your clothes." Lacy shakes her head, begging her to stop, but she's not stopping: "I'm not a person," she says, sad. "I know that." She cries, just like Zoë. "But I feel like one..." The pain in her eyes is too real, too much like life; Lacy holds her tight. Daniel comes home from coffee and smoking, and sees the light on in Zoë's room. It's a violation.
Lacy wraps her arms around her friend, and promises her it's going to be okay. Daniel can hear her voice, muffled through the door, promising someone it'll be all right. "Somehow. I promise." Is this what Sister Willow meant? Is this what it means to reconnect? Is this the end of grieving? The light bathes them. Zoë is reborn, clean and fresh. Healed by Lacy's love, her sympathy and her pity. It's what brings us back. It's smoking, with gloves on, to keep the worst at bay.
"Lacy?" Lacy jerks the holoband off, looking up at the other Dr. Graystone. He demands to know what she's doing there, in the Matrix in his dead daughter's room, talking to nobody. She has no answers for him; she runs away. Again. On his daughter's desk he sees the paper, the infinity symbol; he sees the code sigils, and they way they hide the secret.
Joseph pleads not guilty on behalf of the defendant, a known member of the Tauron Ha'la'tha crime syndicate, and bail is set at ten thousand cubits. (How can you tell he's Ha'la'tha, you might ask. Well, the tattoos all over his face are a clue. Maybe Taurons really are as dumb as people say.) The prosecution protests, saying there's a flight risk, and the judge blows this off. Outside, on the steps, the defendant thanks Joseph. For the bail, and double that amount for the judge's bribe: "The Guatrau is very grateful for the work you've done for him. He has pledged to help us find the nothos that killed Shannon and Tamara." Joseph thanks him, but begs off. He wants to keep his hands clean, so badly; the world doesn't work that way. It's an Adams thing.
| Season 1 | Episode 1
"Blood for blood," the guy says in Tauran, "It's the Tauron way." Joseph points out that they're on Caprica now, and the guy laughs. "What has this frakking planet ever done for us?" Joseph tries to get away. The man, the defendant, is his brother Sam. It's his blood too.
"We cannot let this pass, Yusif. We need to find them." Joseph begs Sam to let him grieve in his own way, and Sam smiles bitterly. "Whatever you say, my brother. But I will pray to Mars and all the Gods for a swift and terrible vengeance to come to those who have torn your wife and daughter from this world." Joseph shakes his head: there are no Gods. "Then all the more necessary to make our own justice," Sam says, and his brother leaves him on the street, staring after.
Daniel's assistant Cyrus Xander reads out the protocol for the latest test. "Evaluation Protocol 42: Independent identification, acquisition, resolution and execution of conflict." The Minister of Defense told him this morning that the Prime Minister's getting "a lot of heat." Apparently Greystone's five years behind schedule and half a billion cubits over budget in this particular arms race. The PM's getting pressure to take the Cyber Combat Unit contract offworld: "They're talking about going to Vergis." (That would be Tomas Vergis, another Tauron and possibly Amanda's lover or past lover, but we don't know that yet either. Oh, and the Minister of Defense Cyrus mentions here is Val Chambers, played by the Cigarette Smoking Man, who looks exactly the same as he's always looked.)
They look down on the field of war: a laser-tag amount of floor with random obstacles strewn about it, a bunch of bobble-butted Serge-type robots taunting a Centurion-looking toaster whose eye, going back and forth, is a comforting yellow. The Centurion looks at the Serges and twitches a little as the demo counts down. Once the trial begins, the Centurion proceeds to massive fail, shooting at the gleeful Serges as they bounce around all over the place, spinning wildly as Cyrus looks worriedly at Daniel. It doesn't make a single shot. (You know what would probably help with that? The aggregate simulated consciousness of a cult-susceptible, smartmouth teenage girl. Apparently.) Daniel's sad about this latest failure -- his competitive nature is the only thing keeping him alive by this point, I think -- and once the Centurion goes abruptly butt-crazy, shooting at everything, whirling at random, spraying paint across the glass they're standing behind, he checks out for the rest of the day. It's just too depressing.
| Season 1 | Episode 1
Joseph picks Willie up at his inner-city public school, speaking of depressing, and Willie's his usual taciturn self. Joseph plies him with afternoon attention, shaved ice, whatever. Willie's not having it. They make their way through the city and Joseph mentions Daniel, and his offer to attend a Buccaneers game. Willie's too withdrawn to really jump up and down about it, but he at least takes some notice of the world for a bit. It's only a few seconds before he asks the question, which is whether Tzaida Ruth can come. (Because if one thing is going to be true about Willie for his entire life, it's that he feels more comfortable with a little lady backup.) Joseph tries to introduce Willie to the concept of the Guys' Night Out, but Willie's doubtful about this. They keep walking, and he finally asks if they're still feeling pain. "You know, Mom and Tamara, where they are. Do you still think they hurt?" No answer. What he's saying is, "I still feel pain." There's no answer for that either.
Daniel, of course, has spent this hour decrypting the sigils on his daughter's piece of paper laptop, and then -- awesomely -- takes out the First Ever Prototype Holoband Ever that he invented from its lucite box, and puts it on. Boom, he's in the sex room, and those ladies are still going at it. I mean, I realize that Chicks Kissing is shorthand for the apocalypse and really just a Hayes Code update for the totally fucked up shit that we're meant to imagine are really going on, but every single time? It just makes them seem annoying, and annoying isn't sexy. Unless you're Daniel Graystone, who stares at the ladies kissing and listens to the entire Dolby studio of moaning everywhere, then this tranny hands him a joint and he's like what but before he can process this fabulous new world he indirectly created, the phone rings IRL.
It's Cyrus calling with more news about rival developer Tomas Vergis and Minister of Defense Val Chambers, whom we still have yet to meet, and how the whole deal with the U-87 Cyber Combat contract is going down like right now, but seriously. Can you imagine taking Bill Gates and Woz by the hand and going, "These are furries over here, and this is incest slash fic about real life human beings, and then over here you have videos of people masturbating onto masks of anime characters, and this is a message board where German guys sign up to have other German guys cook their penises for dinner, then sodomize and murder them. And while that last one seems so very German that we'll give you a bye on it, all in all thanks for inventing computers, bro."
| Season 1 | Episode 1
Daniel has no time for the gloom and doom of Cyrus Xander, because Vergis is years behind Graystone, except then Cyrus tells him that Vergis has possibly created a Meta-Cognitive Processor, which Daniel's been trying to invent for a decade. "If they really have a viable, independent artificial brain," Cyrus says, "Then the only thing they need is a robotic body to put it in." Daniel's not convinced that any of this is true, and tells Cyrus to confirm it. But also, has Cyrus ever heard of "these virtual nightclubs for kids? Teenagers?" Where they can, Daniel says urpily, "Do... Things." Cyrus laughs at him because that shit has been going on for five years, not to mention forever and ever before the internet, because what kids do is "things," and Daniel's like, UGH.
You may know that an area of my personal expertise is the Fucked Up things that kids are into at any given time. Like, they had this sound that only young people could hear, with their young-people eardrums, this irritating mole-repelling kind of sound that old people could play to keep kids off their lawns. So some awesome teenager turned that into a ringtone that only kids could hear, and the texting continued in class with no stupid grownups the wiser. My second favorite is the photoreactive nail polish the English schoolgirls discovered that only showed up in sunlight, so that they could conform to the dresscode in class and still look good everywhere else.
But the absolute stupidest thing has happened of late, which is a total freakout of grownups about the Plague of Hugging, whereby teenagers are known to get together and occasionally give each other hugs. At the slightest provocation! I'm not sure who looks worse in that scenario: the adults trying desperately to have a problem with it, and figure out whether the internet is to blame, or the kids. Because in my day, you'd all put on lipstick and do a filthy thing we don't need to talk about, or else wear a billion hanky-coded bracelets and hand out blowjobs for free. I mean, nobody except the seriously uncreative ever really did those things either, but whatever rumor mill is cranking this shit out has seriously blown a gasket when casual hugging is the new Rainbow Party. Gin a body meet a body comin thro' the glen, Gin a body kiss a body, need the warld ken?
Not so on Caprica, where dancing at the edge of the waterfall involves pot-smoking trannies and, you know, ritual sacrifice to nameless pagan divas with faces like goblins and wolves and all get out. So anyway, Daniel hangs up on Cyrus and goes back to the dancing tweens, wandering around and trying to figure out just how much of a pervo his daughter was. He spots Zoë through a window, and she runs away; he gives chase, but ends up outside the Temple and can't get in. When he touches the infinity symbol, the Matrix pops him back out, with a headache full of mysteries.
| Season 1 | Episode 1
Grandma Ruth -- is that Lilly? -- pours coffee for herself and son-in-law Joseph, informing him that Willie was up all night again. She advises taking him home to Tauron, letting him experience his roots, and feels like it's appropriate to tell Joseph that's what Shannon would have wanted. I think it's what Ruth wants, but who knows? "Will was born on Caprica. This is his home." Joseph welcomes Willie into the room, and he goes straight to Ruth with some more one-word answers. She offers him cherry cake for breakfast, and his momentary excitement makes her laugh; Joseph offers to take him to school on the way to work, and he's none too excited when he accepts. I think that Willie might be the most boring child in the universe, and I say this even in the context of the fact that A) his mother and sister just totally exploded a few weeks ago, and B) the only other kids in this show are dangerous cult members. Even with that wrecked curve, he could still stand to lighten the hell up.
It looks like Amanda is listening to an iPod but really she's doing remote surgery on somebody in another room, using modified holoband tech. The wonderful Agent Jordan Duram, of the Global Defense Department, enters her office, shaking her from her reverie. In a show full of truly amazing sets, I think I love her office the most: there's a much light as in every other building on the show, and the whole wall behind her desk is just shelves, all the way up, with not a lot of things on them. Objects, and the placement of objects. Keep your eye on Amanda. So Agent Duram is looking into the MLMT train explosion, specifically the part having to do with Zoë. "Was there anything in her behavior before the incident that seemed unusual to you?" Amanda finally focuses her eyes on his face: "She was angry, defiant, rude, vulgar, obnoxious, unreasonable." Beat. "Just your typical sixteen-year-old girl."
He asks if there was anything weird about her circle of friends, and she asks him to cut to the chase. "We have evidence that we believe positively links your daughter to the bombers." Um, what? "You think that Zoë knew one of the terrorists?" To his credit, he doesn't drag it out: "Dr. Graystone, we think that Zoë might have been one of the terrorists." Amanda shakes her head, crumpling her scrubs swishily: "My daughter didn't have a political bone in her body. Her biggest concerns in life were partying with her friends and finding new and creative ways to piss off her parents." He gives her a print of the screen, the last thing she wrote. "The message was transmitted just before the explosion, but never had a chance to uplink to the server."
| Season 1 | Episode 1
Amanda starts freaking out before she even sees it: last rites. Alive a moment, and then more dead than ever. "It took a fair amount of digital forensics to reconstruct it." She reads them, over and over again. Don't live in regret, Mom. I love you. It was just the letter of a runaway, a girl who yearned to cross the stars to a simpler time, a simpler world; just the words of a girl who, like Ruth decades her senior, wanted to leave Caprica behind for the ease of Tauron. But now it's something much worse. It's proof. "It sounds like a last message to me, like someone who knows the end is near and wants to make amends." Amanda is quiet, and coiled, as she throws him out. He leaves his card as he goes, with the tears running down her face.
Serge lets Lacy in again, per Amanda's instructions. She has some crazy calves, this Lacy Rand. She drops her bag immediately and starts going through Zoë's shit, looking for the holoband and computer paper so she can get back in to check on Zoë's daughter. Daniel appears out of nowhere holding them, looking like he crawled out of a nightmare a sewer had one time. The past several hours have not been kind to him.
"You'll pardon the way I look, but I've been up all night trying to crack one of the better security codes I've ever run up against." The dirty science, his daughter's ease with it; he never even really knew her, all the things they had in common that she kept hidden from him, for all the satisfaction it would give him. "I've been to the V-Club," he says as Lacy stares. "I've seen her. I saw her go into a room with an infinity symbol on the door." Lacy is now shitting it. "Now, I don't have any idea what this means or how it's even possible, but I have the feeling that you do." She starts edging toward the door, and Daniel looms to twice his normal size. Bigger, but smaller too; grief-stricken in a way no amount of coffee and cigarettes can fix, scary like a Greek tragedy. "I want to see her, Lacy. Whatever she is, I need to know." He sighs at her, begging as she stares.
Joseph walks through the park with the Guatrau, the head of the Ha'la'tha, as kindly and scary as these Godfathers always are; like Sam he bears the Tauron face tattoos. He's summoned Joseph for a mission he can't really refuse, of course. "There is a man, an important man, who has conveniently forgotten how he got to be so important. Regrettably, he is embarking on an enterprise that will cause a great deal of distress not only to my personal interest, but to many of my colleagues. This I cannot sanction. So action must be taken." So, threats. "I'd like this matter to be resolved in a civilized manner, and I can think of no other Tauron as civilized as you, Tse'Yusif." And the mark? Minister of Defense Val Chambers, of course. And if it doesn't go well -- and is there any doubt it won't? -- Sam's going to kill his ass dead, not that we need to speak of such things right now. Joseph asks for time to "think" about it, but they both know it's a formality; the Guatrau even laughs as he grants it.
| Season 1 | Episode 1
Walking through the club with Daniel, Lacy finally shows a bit of that awesomeness she's going to need to survive this show. "No limits, that's the motto. Down there is the kill zone: Get a gun -- get five guns -- walk in, and start shooting. Shoot your friends, shoot the Prime Minister, shoot yourself, whatever. Back that way are the group sex and drug dens. Keep going past that and you'll find the really gross stuff..." Some random boob girl is like what up but he doesn't have time for that. "This is a fight room," Lacy continues, "You can frak and beat anyone you want." And then comes the human sacrifice. "Virgins. They offer them to Hecate, Goddess of the Underworld."
Daniel sputters -- this isn't what holoband technology was for -- and Lacy snorts in a particularly adorable post-cyberpunk way. The street finds its own uses for things: "Yeah, right. The porn sites were the first ones to license that technology. Everyone knows that." He says it's different, but it's not. Zoë always said Daniel could rationalize anything. (There's even going to be a TV show about it!) "So, what? You and Zoë came here for sex?" At first, yeah. "We used the group sex rooms like everyone else. But then after Ben showed us the way -- The Way -- we saw this place for what it was. Trash." She says it so matter-of-factly; it's chilling. Daniel asks, outside the Temple.
"There is good, and there is evil in this world." Sure. "There is a right, and there is a wrong." Check. I mean, I'm with you. Daniel, he has totally checked out already. He's in the Matrix too, made up of the world and all the things in it. Grownup responsibilities, secular numbness. He hears this and it just leads back to catechism. No matter how capital the capital letters are -- The One True God, The Way -- he's not going to hear it. "But only through the one true God can we know the difference." That's the rollercoaster. Everybody is on it, and nobody even knows it.
"And Zoë knew. Because Zoë knew God, and God touched her heart, and gave her the ability to create." Now he's listening. "Life itself."
They enter the Temple; Zoë's sitting just beyond the light of a million candles. She stands, and he cries out. "Why did you bring him here?" Zoë asks, terrified, and Lacy gives a very sensible answer: "He needs you, Zo." He stares at her. It's just true.
"Hi, Daddy," she says. "I thought that was you at the club yesterday. Thought I got away before you saw me. Guess I wouldn't make a very good spy." It's already abomination. He waves his hand at her. "You're an avatar, a virtual representation of Zoë. Nothing more." She straightens her backbone and looks him in the eye: "I'm a little more than that." Even Zoë is amazed by Zoë. "A lot more, actually. I'm sort of her... I'm Zoë Graystone."
| Season 1 | Episode 1
Daniel is nearly too sad, now, to move. To speak. "Zoë is dead." Zoë nods. "I'm so sorry about that. More than you can know." These three people, in this room here. For starters. She steps toward him as he backs away. "She was like... Like my twin sister." It's beginning to rain, mirroring her again. "No, that's not right either... She was more than that. We were like echoes of one another." He turns his back on her, stares wildly at Lacy. "So what is this, really? Did Zoë hack some kind of rudimentary emulation software or something?" Zoë tries to explain it to him, the science of it, how she got there, and he tells her to STFU. "Okay, that's enough. What was the purpose of this thing?" he asks Lacy again. "I'm not a thing," she stresses. Here, in her realm. Where he is a guest. "I'm not going to argue with a digital image," he spits. She speaks now to the back of his head, impossible speech growing stronger and more real, more concrete and firm, as she says it aloud.
"The human brain contains roughly three hundred megabytes of information. Not much, when you get right down to it. The question isn't how to store it, it's how to access it." He walks away, but she keeps talking. She knows him, as well as he can't admit he knows her. "You can't download a personality, there's no way to translate the data, but the information being held in our heads is available in other databases." Something in his back tells her he's giving in; she presses her advantage. "People leave more than footprints as they travel through life."
He nods, as Lacy watches; Zoë keeps going. "Medical scans, DNA profiles, psych evaluations, school records, e-mails, recording, video, audio, CAT scans, genetic typing, synaptic records, security cameras, test results, shopping records, talent shows, ball games, traffic tickets, restaurant bills, phone records, music lists, movie tickets, TV shows." Just behind him now, speaking quietly, respectfully. Of the dead and of the living: "Even prescriptions for birth control." She returns to her couch, like the Faerie Queen, as Lacy watches him take it all in.
"You do not tell the Guatrau you need time to think about anything!" Sam's shouting. "You say Yessir Thank You Sir May I Have Another!" Joseph shakes his head: he's not Ha'la'tha, he didn't swear any allegiance. "You have no problem taking his cubits," says Sam, who did. "I don't care if he put me through law school or not!" (That is some classic Adama shit right there, dude.) "I'm tired of doing his dirty work for him. You just fire me if you don't like it!" Sam's like, "If by fire you mean concrete shoes and a dirt nap, then yes."
| Season 1 | Episode 1
Daniel, once again, has used a boring-ass Adama scene to his advantage, and has now made a small amount of peace with the whole Zoë situation. They're sweetly remembering a parade they once attended; he put her on his shoulders, smacked her head against a lamppost. "So hard I saw stars," she says, remembering a dead girl's injury. But that's how she got here, isn't it? We're all riding on the shoulders of giants, scientists and artists most of all, and she was both: she climbed onto her father's shoulders, and saw stars.
"The lights and the doctors and that smell," she laughs, about the ER. "But I remember you holding my hand the whole time. You said you wouldn't let go." Daniel gets dark again, reminding himself and the girls that she could have just given him those memories. On the other hand, though, it's a lot of detail for such a minor event. "It's possible she could've found a way to translate synaptic records into usable data," he says, and Zoë assures him that she did. "But a person is much more than just a bunch of usable data! You might be a good imitation -- you might be a very good imitation -- but you're still just an imitation." She shakes her head. "A copy."
Not that either. It's nothing we have a word for, which is the case any time something new is born. Call it Zoë, call it Life, if nothing else. There's no Zoë now to confuse her with. She is a new form of life, something we can barely imagine. Rip a page out of a book and fold it into a crane: it's not a copy of the book, or even of the page. It's something new, and beautiful. It's precious, and it's fragile. Her voice cracks. "I don't feel like a copy. Daddy...?" He coughs. She's made it easier. "May I hold you, Zoë?" It's all she ever wanted. Lacy breathes, finally, as Zoë steps into her father's arms. She did this part too, and it put the rain to rest, and the sun came out, and Zoë was healed. The music swells, for a moment, and pushes into horror. His arms around the abomination become a cage as he snaps a USB drive from his pocket, and she derezzes again.
Lacy, freaking with the sudden Octavia Butlerian Jihad of it all, screams at him to stop, and he whips off the holoband in Zoë's room. He's weary; he's been through a lot. "I captured the code Zoë used to create the avatar," he says, removing her holoband. "It's time for you to leave." He watches her go, and cancels her security clearance with Serge. On fire with what he's just done, and what was done to him, he storms to a window and sits, raging and afraid, grieving again in a whole new way, with his daughter in his pocket.
| Season 1 | Episode 1
Agent Jordan Duram visits the Athenian Academy, summoning Lacy Rand to Sister Willow's office. Lacy is, of course, immediately terrified. She admits that she knew Ben Stark, but doesn't give much more information than that. "We have evidence to suggest that he was involved in the attack on the lev." She says it's crazy -- which is true, but not a mistake either -- and Sister Willow comes to her defense. "That's an absurd allegation, Mr. Duram." He tells them they have forensic evidence of Ben's involvement, and asks them if they knew he was into the Soldiers of The One.
"Ben Stark was a good and decent boy," Sister Willow blurts. "He would never be involved with some kind of a... Terrorist organization." He ignores her, turning his eyes on Lacy. She says she doesn't believe it, and he asks about Zoë. "What about her?" Lacy asks. It's almost as if she's been radicalized and trained for just this situation! She bounces immediately, eyes bugging out of her head, and Sister Willow turns all her nun powers on Jordan. "She's just gone through an incredibly traumatic event." Duram is not swayed.
"Where does the Athenian Academy stand on the question of monotheism, Sister?" She scoffs, asking if they're under investigation now too, but gives him the official line. "The Academy is dedicated to following the path of the Gods, the Goddess Athena being our patroness. We are, however, open to all forms of worship, including belief in a singular God." That's interesting. Jordan agrees. "That's very tolerant. And how many of your students are practicing monotheists?" No comment. "It doesn't concern you, Sister? That kind of absolutist view of the universe? Right and wrong determined solely by a single all-knowing, all-powerful being whose judgment cannot be questioned, and in whose name the most horrendous of acts can be sanctioned without appeal?" When you put it like that, terrorism almost sounds sort of fucked up. Clarice points out that he's pretty well-informed about these monsters, and he nods. "Know your enemy, Sister Clarice."
She grins. It's terrifying, but particularly gratifying as well: "Love your enemy, Agent Duram." She rests her case. Any way you look at it, that was fabulous. "That is what we followers of Athena believe." He takes off; Lacy's still hiding in the shadows outside.
Pyramid game, but we don't see it. The game is over, and the ill-fated Bucs have lost real bad, again. (Which is a bummer, but just wait until their star captain is a Final Fiver and they end up waging guerilla war against the Cylon on irradiated Caprica.) Joseph has just remembered that Daniel, far beyond having good seats, totally owns the team; Daniel laughs and says it's been a fantasy since he was a kid. He asks Willie's opinion, and the littlest Adams blames Rod Jenkins, so he laughs and says Willie should tell him so himself. Willie is impassive, but presumably excited somewhere deep, deep inside. In the locker room, they leave Willie to bother Jenkins and Daniel drags Joseph out into the hallway to have some kind of serious conversation.
| Season 1 | Episode 1
Joseph is beyond grateful for even this slim sign of life from Willie, and Daniel waves it away. They both light cigarettes, because it's been three whole seconds, and Daniel asks Joseph how he's doing. "You know us Taurons. We're nothing if not a stoic people." I'll say. Daniel literally goes, "Do you mind if I ask you a somewhat strange and personal question?" Man, if somebody ever said that to me I couldn't possibly say no, but I'd get very uncomfortable at least. You can ask it, but I'm telling you it's slim-to-zip that I'm going to answer it. "What would you do if you had the chance to be with your daughter again?"
He's blocked himself so far off he didn't even know her, doesn't know everything his wife is up to, didn't know Tomas Vergis was so close to the MCP. He is so in the head he's just now realizing there's a whole world outside; he's being forced to grow up quick. Joseph shivers and stares at him; they share the sense of being totally appalled for a bit before Daniel backs down and says he doesn't have to answer it. Anxious to put Daniel at ease, Joseph tries to consider it for him. He leans against the wall and they sort of laugh about how weird it just got.
"Most of my family, including my parents, died in the Tauron Civil War. So my brother and I came here as orphans. When we arrived, they drove us to this orphanage. I remember this field of wildflowers on the side of the road. It might seem strange to a Caprican, but there are no flowers on Tauron. Not one. It was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen in my life. All the colors, the petals, the softness... And I wept openly, for the first and last time. So I guess that's what I'd tell Tamara. To find those things in life that make you cry, that make you feel. Because they're what make you human. I guess that's what I'd tell Tamara if I could." Daniel stares at him.
Willie's never seen anything like the lakehouse; they send him off to play with Serge in the gameroom -- which I'm guessing is going to be about 90% of his activities on this show -- and Joseph cutely settles a C-Bucs hat on his head before they take off. I'd like to imagine a little show or comic strip along the bottom of this show where Willie Adams and Serge the Robot have these amazing Kid Genius adventures and discover antigravity or strange pocket universes or whatever. Anything to break up the unrelenting bummerness and first-draft super-deep RDM speeches about flowers and the ephemera of the effluvia that are bound to crop up later on as unearned emotional plotpoints or whatever.
| Season 1 | Episode 1
Downstairs, Daniel activates a machine for the creation of holoband avatars. It looks like a futuristic phone booth as it comes to life. Joseph is not into the internet at all, but Daniel asks him to play along as a favor. "This is what happens when you buy a Holoband at any retail store... Basically, I'm going to scan your image for your avatar, which is in essence a virtual copy of you, physically." There's a slight non-harmful tingling sensation and then it's done. How awesome would it be if the first hour of the Virtuality movie were just this scene over and over for all fifty people in the cast?
They put on their holobands and Joseph takes a while getting used to things, but basically they're in this concrete room, not particularly blank or clean, just like a room. "I haven't had time to do any decorating yet. Step over here?" There's a door in the middle of the room, through which they get into Zoë's cage in the blackness. Her cell. She's pissed as all hell, predictably. "What are you doing, Daddy?" Awesomely, he goes, "Working." He introduces Joseph to Zoë -- "My daughter" -- and Joe just about climbs out of his skin; for a second he's freaked out enough that he looks uncannily like Aaron Douglas. He circles the girl, and reaches out to touch her... And she shouts, BOO! He jerks back, ripping the holoband off his face IRL.
"Frak! What the hell is this? What kind of sick, twisted thing are you doing here?" Daniel explains that A) there's nothing particularly twisted about it, and B) he didn't do it, Zoë did. With a skip in his step, he fairly twirls, explaining how she was more like him than he ever knew. "That's not her. Our daughters, they're gone," Joe says, like Daniel's nuts. He, um, is. He laughs and asks what if they could come back. "Do you know what your brain is, Joseph?" Probably not, as he's been reacting to all of this like it's witchcraft and he's this bumbling yokel and not an educated attorney, but in any case we do, so skip past the conversation we already had, and get to the point: "It's genius, really. She took a search engine, and turned it into a way to cheat death."
For all his atheism, Joe's a pretty essentialist fellow: "No, it's an illusion. You said so yourself." True. She's a copy. But a perfect copy, in every way, he says. (Not the point.) "Still doesn't make her your daughter," Joe says, which is closer to the truth. "There's an axiom in my business: 'A difference that makes no difference is no difference.'" Nice wordplay, and of course the only way he can approach this and stay sane, but I'd say it's closer to "A difference that makes no difference is a zebra." Or I mean, instead of zebra you could say, "Killing machine with an identity crisis."
| Season 1 | Episode 1
"She looks like Zoë, she talks like Zoë, she thinks like Zoë, remembers all the events of her childhood, has all the same likes, dislikes, flaws, strengths, all of it. Who's to say her soul wasn't copied, too?" Joe. Joe is to say. But Daniel can't hear it, and the logic breaks in an unpredictable way: "How can you prove or disprove that idea?" That souls can't fit on a CD-ROM? Um, you're the one that brought souls into it in the first place, Nutsack McGillicuddy. "I know that she is my daughter, and I know it in the only place that matters." His heart, predictably. "The only difference between her and the Zoë that lived in this house is just that: she lived in this house, instead of a virtual world." A claim, note, that not even Zoë was interested in making when he met her.
"I want to bring her here. Joseph, I want her to live in this world once more. I want to hold her in my arms, and I want to kiss her, and I want her to feel the sun shine on her face." [Three, two, one...] "I want her to see the flowers at the side of the road, Joseph." [Bingo.] "But for me to be able to transfer the virtual representation of Zoë you just saw in there into a physical body out here, I need a very special, very particular piece of equipment." Joe's stuck on the totally creepy part, the "physical body" part -- "...Like a robot?" -- but Daniel has already justified his way around the entire crazypants cathedral of these concepts. Whatever issue Joe has here, Daniel's already thought of sixteen more and a way around every one of them, because he is the Frankenstein that makes Frankenstein look sane.
"Robot is a crude name for what we're talking about. This is a CYbernetic LifefOrm Node!" (Awkward!) Joe mentions all the ways this is spooky and yucky, dead fake skin and hair and whatnot, and Daniel's like, "These are surface details!" He says basically that Joe is just being a hypocrite because after all, we always tell our daughters it's what's on the inside that counts -- and I mean, you can't give a robot bulimia, right, so it's error-proof -- and tries desperately to overrule everything at once so he can get back on track. Because sometime in the last twenty-four hours Joe stopped being his friend and brother-in-pain, and started being a piece of trash member of the criminal elite, so stop trying to bond over our dead daughters, because that part's over, and start working on stealing the Meta-Cognitive Processor from the Vergis Corporation.
| Season 1 | Episode 1
Joe's skin goes cold, because how gross can you possibly be? Daniel's like, "I have not yet begun to get gross. I know your connection to the Ha'la'tha. I know who and what you are." What you are. And what is that? Joe shakes. "I also know about the pit in your stomach. I know about the sleepless nights. I know about the wishing and praying to whatever Gods will listen that you could have everything back the way it was. Well, I can bring Tamara back. I can bring her back." Joe, rightly, tries to push past. But it's like, he keeps trying to make sure his hands stay clean, and they keep getting dirty. He keeps telling everybody he's not total slime, and they keep forcing him to act like slime anyway, and he has no choices. So you have to grab whatever territory is left beyond what other people own, the parts of your soul that aren't tattooed over by the compromises you've already been forced to make, and hope that in sixty years, or a hundred, your son will forgive you for having to live in an imperfect world.
"You can see your daughter again. Isn't that worth whatever price you have to pay? If you leave now, you'll never know for sure, you'll always wonder." He sits on the stairs in front of Joe, the very picture of Gaius Baltar for just a moment, pressing way too hard on the yuckiest bruises he can find, desperate. "You'll walk by her room, you'll see her pictures on the wall, and you'll ask yourself every day for the rest of your life whether you had a chance to bring her back. Now if I'm wrong, have me beat up. Have me killed, I don't care. But if I'm right? If I'm right, and you have a chance to see your daughter again? Possibly even your wife?" Joe shakes his head, hurting. "Isn't it worth trying?"
Thank God Eric Stoltz is still capable of being superhumanly charming on occasion, because if you really thought about the kind of person Daniel Graystone is turning into, and how willing he is to drag everybody else down with him, you would probably barf. There's being manipulative and then there's being profane. AM he brings Amanda a tray with breakfast, as the sun rises on a wonderful new day full of ethical outrages and unnatural abominations to bring to life. She's pleasantly surprised, and he offers her a hilarious, huge, sweet grin. "Excuse me, I used to cook for you all the time! Eggs a la Graystone, wild mushrooms, sausage, rosemary bread and, of course, your black tea. Enjoy," he says, producing a napkin; she smiles up at him from the bed.
| Season 1 | Episode 1
"I miss you," she says softly, and he grins. It's like he was a puzzle with half the pieces missing, and now they're back. We didn't know him before, not really. All we saw was weak-willed conciliation, playing mother against daughter and then jumping in as the peacemaker; we didn't see him strong, and wild. Confident. He's still crazy in the eyes, but he's cleaned himself up and you can see how he got where he is. All it takes is a vile dream and the promise of an approximation of that old life, and he's back in the saddle. "We can make it through this," he promises, taking her hand. "Together. Just the two of us." He kisses her hand, her mouth, her forehead, and tells her to eat.
Meanwhile, because Daniel mentioned the flowers by the side of the road that one time, Joseph has lost his mind entirely and is now going to his brother in the mafia to go to Tauron and steal this thing from the Guatrau's friend Tomas Vergis. The leverage for Sam to do this stupid thing is that Joseph will deliver the "message" to Minister Chambers. The threat. And then Sam literally goes, "Isn't this one of those big lines of yours you're always so worried about crossing, Yusif? You sure you really want to do that?" By which we're meant to understand, you see, that Joe's crossing one of those "big lines" of his. Morally speaking.
...Oh come on, you know the ones! The ones we've heard a lot about but haven't seen any evidence for, and plenty of evidence against. I mean, why make any of this stuff actually happen on the show, when you can just tell us it's happening, and either way you've done your job. Sure, there were a million ways to reverse Joe's position on the avatars back there, so we picked of course the one lame shorthand one with the wildflowers, which worked so well that now he's crossing some big ethical line where he's going to go talk to a guy. So just in case this lazy-ass writing doesn't sell the weak sauce that is the end of this movie, Joe's eyes bug out and he pouts at the pain of crossing one of those big lines of his.
So Joe goes to talk to the guy, the Minister of Defense guy, and just in case you thought it was a threat the Minister goes, "You're not actually threatening me, are you?" and Joe's like, "No way, not at all." Then the Minister says some racist thing about Taurons, I guess so that we won't think Joe's culpable for anything that happens past this point and thus invalidating the entire point of this ethically gray area that's neither ethically gray nor, strictly speaking, an area, and whatever, the guy's racist and the Cigarette Smoking Man looks fabulous and his lips are still Bonne Belle Raspberry like they've been since before he learned to water-ski, long ago. "So you crawl under that rock where your Guatrau lives, and you tell him that not only will I not be pressured or blackmailed, but the government of Caprica is going to take a very special interest in him, his business and his low-life lawyers." Good. So Joe is like, "Are you sure? Because now you're going to die, which is such a bummer for me. I've got these big lines I won't cross." And CSM tells him that he's not going to die.
| Season 1 | Episode 1
Then some very meaningful sex and dying, artfully intercut for no real reason. Daniel crawls all over his wife in a tiny white undershirt as though he's not pushing sixty. Joe is somewhere crying as usual and looking at pictures of dead people and drinking to calm his nerves. Somebody has snuck into somebody else's house without shoes or a shirt, so you can see their tattoos that say they are Ha'la'tha coming to kill your racist ass. I love how the CSM was like, "Don't be stupid, just tell the Godfather to suck my dick and then I'm going to go to sleep without taking any safety precautions." Then the music is very beautiful while the Graystones fuck and the mafia guy... This house must be about sixty miles big because he's still creeping. Through the house. Then the guy kills the guy in the bed while Daniel and Amanda are coming and Joe's crying and sipping on sadness sauce because one time he warned a man that he was going to die. Isn't that so meaningful?
So Lacy heads into the mysterious offices of Sister Clarice Willow, and has herself a memory of when she got inducted into this cult this one time. Zoë appears to her in the library and Lacy bitches at her for flaking out on her, and Zoë's like, "Sorry but I totally joined a cult and it is eating up my free time. Want to find out more?" Ben's like, "Trust me, you totally do." And Zoë invites her to a prayer meeting, but not the stupid kind where you pray to the Gods. A way cooler crazy kind where eventually you blow yourself up for no reason. Ben gives her the hard press: "You pray, Lace, but your Gods don't answer. You hurt, but your Gods don't heal. You go to the V-Club for sex and sin, but it doesn't fill the void in your soul. There is truth in the world, Lace. There is a right and there is a wrong. And there is a God. A God who knows the difference." Ben is beautiful. Maybe that's all it took.
Later, Lacy's explained all of this to Clarice, and Clarice is like,"You are SO in a cult! I know what that's like, because I was also lonely and susceptible to charisma once, and I felt really alone, but then guess what?" She draws the infinity symbol in a little pool of condensation from Lacy's guilt water, because I guess she got tired of Lacy evading every anvil about this that's been lobbed at her head for the last two hours. Lacy jumps into her arms, grateful and exhausted from carrying it on her own. So then Lacy pulls it together all, "So wait, Ben totally was a terrorist?" Clarice shakes her head. "Labels like 'terrorist' are what this corrupt and decadent culture calls people who are trying to fight the real evil in this world. Ben was eager to strike against all that was slowly choking this world to death, and so he did something... Premature. Something unauthorized. But was blowing up that train evil? Wrong? No. He was fighting evil with all his heart." Wrong. It was totally awful and there was no reason for it whatsoever. Not actually that grey either, especially considering the only response from the administration was like, "Those darn STO cult people, we thought we had it licked." Lacy asks about Zoë and Clarice gets a little bit into her personal space because Zoë was "and is" very important to "us." So the coolest thing about the show, which was the idea that children have thoughts and agendas and are interesting people? Nope. They're just being manipulated by evil teacher-witches, even in death.
| Season 1 | Episode 1
Daniel stands around with the MCP microchip or whatever and Joe asks pointless exposition questions and basically the deal is that they have to put the device into a robot body and then "try and download Zoë's avatar" into it, and that's going to take a couple of days. On the upside, Tamara's avatar is ready; Daniel's been rebuilding it based around Zoë's algorithms and it's ready. Also, again, Zoë was a genius. Don't know if I mentioned that. So Daniel takes Joe into the darkness and it's horrible, and Tamara comes running into his arms and she's freaking out, because obviously this is going to be hard to understand, and he hugs her and tells her everything's okay, but she's like, "Um, you are crazy and I am apparently a computer program and so no, everything isn't okay." They yell at each other for about a million years and then there's more poetic objective-correlative, only this time the flowers on the side of the road have been replaced by Tamara can't feel her heart beating, you know, like you usually can, so she starts chewing on the lack of scenery and screaming about this, hysterically, and finally he takes the holoband off so he can freak the fuck out in Daniel's office and say about her heartbeat a few more dozen times.
Daniel's like, "Yeah, I get why this would be confusing, because she's dead. What's the problem?" Oh, it's an abomination again, this is evil, wrong, blah blah. I wish Joseph had the presence of mind right now to be like, "God damn it man, don't you know I took a meeting with a man who was later murdered in which I told him he was going to be murdered? I crossed a line here." But instead he just acts like a rube so that Daniel can roll his eyes and be an evil mad scientist some more, because Ronald Moore has issues with understanding any science fiction written after like 1970 and always goes to this careworn hoary Roddenberry place with things.
So Daniel of the Green Kirtle leads him down the slippery slope to cyberperdition about how what is artificial, like are eyeglasses artificial, or is Joseph saying only the Gods have power over life and death. Just so you know that Daniel has found time in the last scene to go absolutely bugshit insane and turn into a total cliché, he yells, "Well, I reject that notion. I reject that notion!" Joseph rejects the notion of hanging out with his crazy ass for a bit, but Daniel pulls him back in: "We have a chance to have our daughters back. And your wife. Think of what that would mean to your son, Joseph. How much would it mean to William to be held by his mother again?" (Or Joseph? To see his DEAD WIFE AGAIN? I get the daughter parallel thing, whatever, but it's so Purity Ball to play the whole thing as daughters and then randomly go like, "Oh, and your wife totally got blown up too, which sucks. Sort of.") Joseph runs away and Daniel puts on his glasses so he can look even closer at his own craziness. Which just erupted out of nowhere and now has nothing to do with grief.
| Season 1 | Episode 1
Zoë's sort of made peace with how Daniel kidnapped her out of heaven and put her in hell and now wants to put her in a scary robot body so she can be his scary robot daughter-bride, even though all she wants to do is go back to the temple and be in a cult like she was made to be. She's happy to be talking to him, though, because after all she does love him, but I would point out also that she has no context for how he's crazy and shitty and boring now. He's all excited about how she's coming home for some reason, and she's grossed right out: "It's never been my home, and it stopped being a home for the other Zoë a long time ago." He's confused by this, so she explains to him about how Zoë was leaving to go be in a scary cult the day she got blown up. Daniel is all dismissive of this for some reason, but Zoë keeps going: "I know where she was going. She told me she had a plan. She was going to Gemenon. And you know why? Because she found God. The real God." Daniel REJECTS THIS NOTION ALSO.
"The children of Caprica are lost, Daddy, okay, we are all lost if we don't turn to the light. Listen to me, okay? When are you going to realize that later is too late? When did you ever listen, ever want to listen? You and Mom, you knew it all. Your arrogance was killing your daughter. And that's how you lost her. Not to some bomb." She walks off into the dark, and he's all alone in the nothingness.
I love Zoë. Zoë Twopointoë. It's like two different movies -- the boring stuff with the telling-not-showing and the paper-thin unjustified emotional freaking out, and then the Cyber-Buffy Cruel Intentions part -- which is actually not even a problem, because this is a pilot. Plot, characters, large brush-strokes. And it's great, and it makes me excited for the show. Huge, wonderful ideas expressed clumsily are what this franchise is based on, and it's the elegantly constructed episodes that weave these things into actual character and sweeping arcs that matter. So if they talk like this and explain their drama out loud and reject these notions, I'm not so caught up in my personal box of what constitutes good drama that I can't acknowledge the canvas, and how wonderful the actual art will be.
So Daniel does some computer things and the yellow light sweeps back and forth in the robot face, and watches the totally Matrix code language falling like Tetris rain and just when he's giving up, the thing starts to shiver. Its hand twitches and slowly it begins to move, and he begins to cry with joy. It's terrible, and wonderful. She jerks around, operating her hands and arms, and the eye turns red. Her voice fights its way up: "Daddy. Daddy. Daddy. Daddy. " It steps forward, once and again, and he smiles. She reaches out for him, and falls to her knees, arms up toward him, supplicant, as she crashes. He screams her name, slapping on his holoband as the computer crashes, but there's nothing. He sits in that dark cell, with nothing at all, weeping.
| Season 1 | Episode 1
Joe comes into Willie's room, now convinced that all they have is each other, and puts Tamara and Shannon to bed. "Our family's gonna survive this. We're gonna get past this. We're gonna put our lives back together again. Mommy and Tamara are gone." He swallows. "They're dead and they're not coming back. So we have to honor them by continuing to live as best we can." Willie almost has an emotion, and then nods instead, and Joseph tells him that they are from a long, proud line of Tauron peasants who knew how to work the land and still stand proud, just like Gaius Baltar, and changes their name from Adams back to Adama. "You're named after your grandfather, did I ever tell you that?" No, it never came up. That is so stupid, I'm so sure he never once told him that. So the Adama song starts playing, and they hug.
The Centurion is working much better now, in front of the new Minister of Defense. It blows up all the Serges, eye moving from red to yellow to red, and the Minister lady stares for awhile, sort of freaked out. One of the Serges falls, injured on its side, seemingly terrified. The Centurion blows it to hell. "All targets neutralized. Program completed ... By your command."
Replacement Minister Joan Leyte thanks Dr. Graystone for inventing an awesome new way to kill people, and brings up how Tomas Vergis is accusing him of stealing the magical microchip thing, but blows it off because Taurons are motherfucker dirt-eaters, because of racism. She's about to leave and then asks what this thing is called. "Cybernetic life-form node. A Cylon, Minister." She thinks this is interesting, but not as interesting as it will be in about twelve years. Cyrus celebrates, but Daniel is still sad, staring down at his robot daughter in the ashes, because it didn't do what he wanted it to.
But that night, the body of the robot is lying on a beautiful table in a very white room. You can hear her eyeball start up, and her hands begin to twitch. She sits up -- this whole shot and scene are gorgeous, gorgeous -- and touches her hands. Her eye is red, and terrified. She hangs her legs over the side, feels at her head with her giant strong hands. On the table, she can see her reflection; she takes a moment to process that. Lacy's phone rings and she whips off the holoband right before -- in a deleted scene -- something crazy happens at the V-Club that she misses out on. "It's me. Zoë. I'm here, and I think I'm gonna need your help," she says, and Lacy stares into space because what on earth now. And the Zoböt looks at the camera, and ... Black.
| Season 1 | Episode 1
And it's dicey, this third body of Eve, because she's already been through two. Religion got hold of one and her father got hold of the . And I mean, now's when I would hope that she would Hulk Smash her way through the fucking building and get it together, or put out an APB on the Final Five and beg them to come faster. Because of all the faces, all the bodies of Eve, she's still not in charge of a one. And I don't know that it's it's necessarily a great idea to tell a story about a teenage girl where that's not at least a fucking factor. Gin a body meet a body comin thro' the grain, gin a body kiss a body, the thing's a body's ain, and all that. I mean, Jane's on this show like white on rice and Jane can do that, so I shouldn't bother. But after the BSG finale it's okay to have fears. Without these fears, how would our artists put them to rest? Story's about resolving conflict.
So then there are the deleted scenes, which are awesome. It makes sense that they're deleted, because this is a movie, and I'm assuming when it airs they'll be back in. There's one where Zoë is freaking out to running away to Gemenon, and Clarice yells at her for being a big baby, saying that when you find yourself at the crossroads, it's natural to be afraid but you have to either go forward or backward. Zoë assures her that she's completely certain about what to do , and she touches the girl's hair some more. She is a girl-touching lady for sure. Zoë kisses her ring -- with the giant cross in the middle -- and then does that stomping party-girl walk away to Lacy, who is clearly very devoted to her, and makes Lacy say the same things in turn to her about how they're totally ready to run away and join a cult.
Joe talks to some old Taurons in the park and asks Willie what he'd do to have his sister back. Willie points out that he's being weird and hypothetical, because his sister (AND MOM) are totally dead. Inside the house, Joe yells at Ruth for filling his head with all this Temple of Mars crap about "dead is dead," and she makes fun of the afterlife and his atheism, somehow both at once, and they talk about how they're both Taurons and always will be, which I guess adds to that gross scene above where he talks about farming being better than actually living in society. Stick me on a farming hovel and I better have at least three Sixes there with me just so I don't kill myself out of boredom and filthiness. There's another Ha'la'tha-related scene even more boring than the other ones, because that's the point of those scenes, telling us about his dirty deeds and dirty hands without letting him actually get them dirty, because at least his cloying self-righteousness is better than the howling insanity that Daniel's apparently into and we need at least one person to identify with. Well, not "we." I'm perfectly happy rooting for Clarice and Twopointoë, but I'm guessing you knew that.
| Season 1 | Episode 1
Clarice in her sexy civilian clothes visits Zoë's Temple with Lacy, and she's like, "Bitch I grew up on Sagittaron, nothing shocks me." Then at some other point, there's much dancing and sluttiness in the V-Club, and Clarice and Lacy are both party-stomping through there, and that's when Lacy's phone rings, with the Zoböt on the other line. So she derezzes and it's a good thing too because guess who's in the club? Dead Ben, and he's ever so excited to see Clarice, what with being dead and all. They praise The One for a bit and then hug, and both stare creepily in the opposite direction, because no matter how complicated this already was, it can always get complicateder.
So that's Caprica. I'm a fan of dynastic family dramas, especially when the people are rich and gorgeous. And you know, I always said Battlestar Galactica would be perfect without all the spaceships and shooting, and you said I was crazy, but I guess somebody was listening because that's essentially what this is. I feel like we won't exactly have a replay of the John Cavil situation, where everything cool or sad or scary that happens is ultimately just one very sad screwed up little boy pulling strings. It seems like it can bear that weight a little better.
And I like too how it's such a succinct and sort of knowing survey of religious attitudes, like you have this sliding scale of the predominating religion where the two main character men are atheists, caught in this struggle between that and another religion nobody takes seriously. I like that a lot. And I like how secular the religion is, on Caprica, because that reads true, like it's mostly just irritating for most people. That whole Catholic school thing. It certainly makes me respect Kara Thrace even more, which I didn't think was possible.
And then you've got the naughty headmistress who's so into doing her part for the cause that she's willing to blow up her army of children to make them even more effective. That's just amazing, right there. I like how everybody's just about the same amount of fucked up and wrong, because that means everybody also just about the same amount of fucked up and right, which seems like the responsible thing to do with a religious story.
I like the girls, a lot. And that Duram guy, I love. Ben and Clarice and Amanda, so far I'm intrigued and feel warmly toward their crazy asses. There's a lot of likeable people. I like the family dynamics, which although they're pretty redic here -- "You'll regret that for the rest of your life!" -- that's often truly how it works out. I like how Joe's fighting a religious war in his own household that ties into his own ethical quandaries in such a flipped-over, fascinating way. I like that Daniel is willing to freak out anybody, even little girls. I feel like there's not a character here that won't demand the same wary affection as the characters on the other show eventually did, and that's not something I would say lightly. If you think about the many, many different ways you were able to feel about Gaius, for example, or Laura? That took major skills, from the writers and the actors, and a lot of effort on your part sometimes to get there. But I mean, if Daniel can even try to do for cackling mad-scientism what Lee Adama did for idiotic self-righteousness, that will be a major contribution to the genre.
| Season 1 | Episode 1
And while it's a little hokey around the edges, I do love the portrait of a society on the verge of collapse. Not because I'm into cautionary tales, but because the franchise has always done its part to say, like it or not, terrorists generally have reasons, and you're better off figuring out what they are, because ignoring it on the grounds that they are evil is not a great way to make it go away. I'm not positive right now is a perfectly welcoming time for the particularly hardcore way these emotions get processed here, but I guess we have to remember this was written and developed in a slightly darker America, and that while a story running rings around the concept of compassion was appropriate to a global moment when compassion seemed in short supply, maybe -- I hate to say it, but -- a story about abandon and its consequences is the right story for a time of greater hope. See you in the fall for The Plan and year for the thrilling return to Caprica.