How's this for a secret origin: The Cylons were an unsuccessful attempt to develop the Cinco Boy.

[hey RSS users--you gotta click the actual post to see a couple videos here]

People thought Battlestar Galactica was dark because its pilot episodes centered on genocide, with a dollop of 9/11 on top. That's true. But they were still a swashbuckling space adventure with dogfights and killer robots and sexy robots and so on. The pilot for Caprica, on the other hand, is pretty much just a suicide bomber blowing up a subway and killing some teenage girls, and chain-smoking fathers in dark suits dealing with their grief. There's some science-fictiony stuff in there too, to be sure--and in the DVD version that I watched, that stuff includes virtual-reality titties--but for the most part it's about as thrilling as importing your old files to your new MacBook. Nope, you come for the parents burying their children or you don't come at all.

That's a lot to ask of your audience, and a very big risk for a pilot episode on the network that brought us Ice Spiders to take. For all the talk of BSG as SciFi/Syfy's flagship show, it never did flagship ratings, Peabody Award or no. I can't imagine that in a culture as angry and ground down as we are right now, an actionless morality play about the lengths to which people are driven by grief is going to put up gangbusters numbers. Frankly I'd be surprised if it got renewed.

That would be a pity, because I really enjoyed this episode. For one thing, it just looks so classy. "Classy" usually means "blue-tinted" these days, but not here. I mean, sometimes I guess, but when I realized there was going to be a major plotline about the mob connections of our lawyer lead character Joseph Adams (nee Adama) and it was going to be shot in the rich golds and blacks of Gordon Willis and The Godfather, the blues and grays struck me more as Godfather Part II than perfunctory prestige picture. Throughout, the stately, ruminative pace of late Battlestar was maintained--an editing rhythm that puts you in the company of big, unpleasant moments and questions and lets you sit with them. I know to some that's a minus--cf. Jim Henley and his "Caprica: Planet of the Assholes" lament--but if I want happytimes I can watch The Golden Girls. (Except any episode with a touching Blanche moment. God, those are a punch to the gut. Or the one where Sofia's son Phil dies and she has to deal with her grief, to bring it all back home.) I don't mind assholes. I am an asshole myself.

Fine cast of assholes, too. I was particularly taken with Esai Morales as Joseph Adama. He came across like a classy, hardworking guy with some part of himself burnt out by a life of tragedy and unfortunate choices, and I bought his climactic conversion as an effort to try to relight that spark because living as he had brought no hope to him. Eric Stoltz had a tougher row to hoe as technological and corporate wizard Daniel Graystone--he had to deliver some mad-scientist speeches to Joseph when both were at a particularly low emotional ebb, which would be a challenge for anyone to pull off. The way he sold it was by hinting that his drive to technologically reproduce his slain daughter was a manifestation of grief-driven mania, but then utilizing all the tools of salesmanship and argument to expertise that made him Caprica's Bill Gates in the first place. When he guilts Adama into helping him steal the technology he needs, his "leave now and you'll always wonder what could have been" speech didn't feel like a cliche, it felt like something a results-oriented businessman would say to seal a deal.

Then there's Allesandra Torresani, as both teenage-radical trustafarian jerk/budding computer genius Zoe Graystone and the virtual-reality duplicate of herself she develops. It's funny reading everyone automatically lash out at teenage actors, like no one ever enjoyed The Goonies or Rebel Without a Cause; me, I liked her raspy sullenness and regional-production-of-Zooey-Deschanel looks. She seemed like the kind of smart-and-knows-it teen dickhead I was at my worst, and I thought she handled the heavy lifting of the show's wooliest "what is it to be human?" sci-fi ponderings with aplomb. Keep in mind that when Battlestar started, Grace Park, Tricia Helfer, and James Callis were all somewhat difficult to stomach. Things worked out pretty well with them.

On a purely nerd level, I got a kick out of the glimpses of Colonial society we got here. Strife between the Colonies, racism, cultural and religious differentiation, and the roots of the rancid brand of monotheism that infected the Cylons in BSG. Also, "Cybernetic Life-form Node." Not bad! Plus, the great Bear McCreary is back for the music. That guy's an MVP, and a huge part of what made both shows feel classy in the first place.

There's reason to be worried, of course. Wikipedia tells me that there are a lot of cooks in Caprica's kitchen. The concept was developed as a separate movie pitch by Remi Aubuchon, who was then thrown together with BSG's Ronald D. Moore and David Eick by Universal. Moore and Aubuchon, who's since departed the show, co-wrote the pilot for Friday Night Lights' Jeffrey Reiner to direct. There have already been three showrunners: Moore, BSG/Buffy's Jane Espenson (who has an aggressively mixed track record in this world), and Desperate Housewives' Kevin Murphy. BSG's worst fault was schizophrenia, even with a pretty consistent hand at the helm; who knows what result all this will have. Meanwhile the show could get bogged down by its fairly cheesy depiction of what a VR counterculture would look like (has science fiction ever done that convincingly? It's all Rent extras and underground Matrix rave orgies), or by making Polly Walker's secret, scheming terrorist cell leader a supervillainess, or by a whole plethora of potential pitfalls. But I have faith in Moore and Eick, faith they earned and rewarded in BSG. By gods, I'm on board.

Posted by Sean T. Collins at 9:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)