Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Caprica

I've been watching Caprica and below are just some not so coherent thoughts about it. I seem to be having some difficulty with coherence lately. Anyway

1. I have not seen Battlestar Gallactica but know about it, about the Cylons and that it has something to do with divinity, humanity, creation, and evolution. I have decided not to watch BSG until Caprica is finished.

2. Everyone's a shade of grey and there is no clear cut good guys or bad guys. It seems that Daniel Graystone is the hero but he's using stolen technology to create the Cylons and he's presenting them to his board of directors as a robotic, never tiring, yet sentient slave race. How is enslavement of sentient beings good? It's not.

3. Loving that some of the biggest players are young women: Zoe, Tamara, and Lacy. Both Zoe or Tamara are forging new by being these sentient and independent avatars. Granted neither one of them wanted it and it happened purely by accident. Shades of Buffy. But still, they're are paving the way for some brave new future. Willie Adama grows up apparently to be bad ass Edward James Olmos, but so far he hasn't had much to do.

4. The issue of culture, race, and ethnicity is explored with the Adamas being Tauron and the 2 brothers, Joseph/Youseef and Sam, taking 2 different paths to dealing with being of a minority culture that's looked down on.

5. Multiple sexualities are accepted: people are gay, straight, monogamously married, multiplely married and it's all accepted. Jane Espenson, one of the producers, has spoken about this elsewhere.

6. The amount of collateral and support material is amazing. on the Syfy website there's behind the scenes videos andThe Caprican blog written as if it's a real on-line paper for Caprica City. That's a serious amount of work. It just fires up my imagination. And the producers are doing a podcast for each episode. You no long have to wait for the DVD to get all the commentary and extras.

7. The visual style and technology of Caprica is a mix of 1930s, 40s, and 50s as well as futuristic computers and it's easily accepted. When Firefly came out as a mix of western and sci fi, people had a hard time accepting it.

8. Like Firefly and Dollhouse, Caprica's in the Friday night death slot. But at least with Hulu and other technology, I don't have to wait for the DVDs to watch it.

1 comment:

Saren Johnson said...

I don't care for Caprica. Not sure what is causing my disconnect because I really loved BSG.