EPISODE REVIEW: Caprica: “Pilot” (Episodes 1 and 2)

I’m sorry you have to blame those of us that became teenagers in the 70’s for Star Trek. If we did not watch it when they syndicated it the first movie would not have been made and it would have died the same death that most of the 60’s sci fi shows did. But we were jonesing for space and other than UFO and Space: 1999 it was the only game in town. Lost in Space was just too silly for a teenager to watch and the animated Star Trek or Star Lost did not last long enough to give us our fix. By the time Star Wars came out the Star Trek ball was rolling and the rest is history. Maybe if the networks had bought Genesis II we would have been spared but they didn’t and Rodenberry had no other universe he could be god in.

The local stations tried putting on Time Tunnel, Land of the Giants, The Invaders but they always came back to Star Trek. I remember as a kid playing a pickup game of baseball and someone with a watch would say its 10 minutes to Star Trek and all the neighborhood kids would run home to watch it. The 70’s was a dark time that will be remembered by future generations for not letting that damn show die.

Star Trek can't really be anything *but* Trek. It's very much a formula, and if you screw with the formula, the cattle tend to get nervous, there's a lot of braying, the barnyard animals get skittish, the cult of Roddenberry starts complaining, and that's that. 

Yeah, that's the complaint. Pity that Firefly et. al. will never be remembered...

Also, Frak this formatting

Another thing working in Caprica's favor is that BBC America is running Doctor Who. This may be a departure from the Beeb's normal programming strategy w/re/to Who and other franchises- used to be that if another U.S. Network wanted a show, that BBC-A HAD to pass on it. This may have changed, as I'm fairly sure that Speed Network would loooove Top Gear, and SyFy would be a logical home for Who and Torchwood. (Primeval is a special case, as it's not BBC, but ITV).

If SyFy can't(or won't) have Doctor Who, there's a gaping whole in their schedule.

Oddly, my complaint with Enterprise was that it didn't dial it back far enough. There should have been projectile weapons (or at least sidearms), no transporters for living beings, etc. They flirted with it at first, but it was watered down. Caprica doesn't deviate as much from my expectations. But then, there was more backstory clues in TOS, weirdly.

The show is actually a chimera. David Eick (IIRC) pitched a show at about the same time someone else was pitching another one. The suits suggested they pool their efforts, which they did, and we ended up with Caprica. Point being is that it's not a mere shoehorn (although they might want to use one, RDM-style.)

However, things like Cyberpaper and VR are extremely useful, even if they're not networked, and we never see them, nor hear any reference to them like "You know, in the old days we could just use VR goggles to train pilots..."

Yeah, but few of the people there would remember the days that old (Tigh maybe, possibly not even Adama.) And cyberpaper et al. are much less useful if you're worried about ANY contamination (sneakernet is still a network.) They obviously still had the systems they deemed essential (and some kick-ass displays,) but relied on analog and paper as much as they could manage.

But then, they were a front-line military unit, and a holdover at that (the newer Battlestars had lowered their standards, and Pegasus only escaped through a fluke.) It's not at all unreasonable that civilian infrastructure, especially the consumer end, was much more adventurous (especially since it had started to permeate the military.)

Remember, the Pegasus was the new flashy military ship. The Nimitz (or whatever is more current) to Adama's Enterprise.

I remember Aaron talking about how old fashioned the equipment on Galactica was - "Phones with cords" - and all, but he was comparing it to "Modern" stuff, and pointed out that the ship was 40 years old. Some of that old stuff was Adama's well-justified technophobia, some of it was, I think, them returning it to original condition for the Museum...

It's unclear what the 'original condition' of BSG-75 was in the show, but the museum's upgrade requests were denied by Adama while the ship was still technically in service ("There will be no networked computers on this ship while I'm in charge.") That paranoia was directly due to Cylon War 1. The miniseries pretty much opened with Baltar explaining that the anti-AI rules were outdated, since the Cylon threat had receded--and obviously AI research was a part of the origin of that threat.

It's not stated in a single-quote way (that I can think of) but if you read between the lines (and I've spent literal years doing this,) the idea that a rejection of networked/overly complicated devices took hold at sometime in the interwar period, and then receded just before CWII makes perfect sense.

If you can make a rave look morose, clearly you’re doing something wrong

No, I think they managed to do some (rather challenging) thing very right there. That 'joyless celebration' was exactly what they were going for.

As for the technology, it was established very early on in the miniseries that there had been a 'dialing it back' period during/after the First War. They had developed advanced tech, had that used against them by the Cylons, dumbed everything down for a while, and then gradually ramped everything back up (excepting, mercifully, on Galactica.)

Using my dark powers I return this post from the dead. Well not really I just watched Caprica on SYFY on demand for no cost. (Thank God)

Now it was well made and the acting was on par with most things on TV but it felt forced. One of the problems was that the planet Caprica looked like Canada which is a nice country but I don’t think I would travel light years to get there. There has to be a way not to have every thing look like Montreal or Vancouver.

The time line they give, 58 years before the fall also seemed a little short for the invention of the Cylons and there revolt. One hundred or more years would make more sense for the events that were hinted at in BSG. I thought it was needless to link the Adama family to the creation of the Cylons to the point of having a young Admiral Adama in the show.

Now the next thing that bothered me was the obvious technological difference between Caprica and BSG. It just does not make sense that because of the Cylons they would stop using paper touch screens and virtual reality. They could not get McAfee or something to stop the Cylons from corrupting there networks. (A hardware fix would do it to.)

The last thing that really got to me was the idea that the Cylons got their idea of one true god and a hate for the colonials from the mind of a 16 year old girl. What is this a remake of WarGames? It makes the whole BSG universe just seem a bit silly and throws the whole cycle of history BS they used in doubt.

If they are going to make a series telling a story that does not need to be told at lest make it a little more logical? Do we need one more sci fi/fantasy show based on teen anger and rebellion.

R3 the why you put it is more believable than what they are setting up with this new show. The way they are heading with this pilot and from what I can guess from trailers is that the human Cylons were there from the start which is just dumb. I might try it out when it hits SYFY but noway am I going to rent the thing.

There is a reason that I like the back story to the 70’s Galactica over the new one. The new back story of the Cylons being a slave race that revolt does not work. If the Cylons were so integrated into Colonial society as say Rome’s slaves plus having combat models they would win because the colonial government would collapse. Remember the Janissaries of the Ottoman Empire controlled the state. If you have soldier slaves the slaves end up being in charge. Even if they stay loyal like in the Ottoman Empire. The only reason that Rome’s slave were never able to pull off a revolt was because of the large standing army of freemen that were the legions.

Having the Cylons as an alien race makes more sense for BSG but that would mean the show Caprica really has nothing to do with BSG. It would be just a cyberpunk soap opera which would probably be better than being part of the BSG universe.