Caprica - The Pilot - Review
Nov. 21st, 2009 11:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatI am going to try to keep this review free of spoilers. Just finished watching what may well be the best science-fiction series pilot that I have seen. (And considering how much sci-fi tv shows I've watched in my lifetime - including ones released in the 1970s, that no one remembers such as Space 1999, and a sci-fi show that starred Ike Eiseman and Roddy McDowell, this is saying something. Sure Lost had a good pilot, but I saw flaws. BSG's mini-series pilot drug in places. If you count 33 as the pilot - yes that ranks up there with this baby.)
Caprica - written by Ron Moore and Remi Aubuchon, directed by Friday Night Lights veteran Jeffrey Reiner, and starring Esai Morales as Joseph Addams (Adama) and Eric Stolz as Daniel Graystone...is the prequel series to BattleStar Galatica. It takes place 58 years prior to the fall of Caprica and the events of BSG.
The themes covered in the pilot reminded me in some respects of similar themes that Joss Whedon has attempted to cover in Dollhouse and the creators of V are trying to address - in fact Caprica is covering a combination of those themes, but in an innovative and far less didatic, clumsy and confusing manner. This movie had me riveted. And the twist, blew me away, even though I saw it coming - actually because I saw it coming. It is a frightening film. And it addresses the themes of ethnicity, racism, identity, religion, souls, worship, and arrogance or "god-syndrom" in a way that is rarely done, and hardly this well. The last show that came close was possibly Torchwood: Children of the Earth.
Much like BattleStar Galatica before it, the themes were addressed in a manner that left more questions than answers. The moral lines here are blurred.
After their daughters are killed in a terrorist act, a scientist, asks a defense attorney - what would you do to have the ability to hold, to see, to be with your daughter again?
Mary Shelley was asked a similar question ages ago and came up with the novel Frankenstein. What the scientist comes up with is far less black and white then what we often see in film versions of Shelley's novel, and far scarier than anything most film and television versionsMary Shelley of Frankenstein could have imagined.[ETC: I have not read Shelley's Frankenstein. Just seen the film versions.]
And that's just one layer. The other questions asked are about religion, to what degree are our actions justified by our beliefs? Is belief in an absolute philosophy, a right and a wrong, possible? And if so, are our means to ensure that type of order justified? Where are the lines drawn?
Unlike other sci-fi tv shows, Caprica has an interracial cast or a multi-ethnic one. It is not like V - where the vast majority of the extras and leads are "white", ethnicity is an issue here. Also gender inequality is to a degree addressed but again in a subtle non-dogmatic way.
Ron Moore has also built an intricate world. Transportation, politics, ethnicity, technology - like our own world, commenting on our world but different. Doing what sci-fi does best - commenting on difficult themes through the safety of another world, a makebelieve world not our own.
The filming is flawless, as are the performances - if you go by tv standards. The pacing - well there's never a dull moment, and yes, you get enough of the characters to know who they are and more importantly to care - not an easy trick to pull off.
I can't say much more without giving too much away and this is a story that you really should not be spoiled on. It would remove some of the delight of discovery.
The pilot is due to air in January on SyFy, but it may be cut, so if you can rent the DVD via netflix or you may be able to find it online. The series will be run by Jane Espenson, but according to ImBd - Ron Moore and Aubonouch wrote the first 3-4 episodes. I pretty much know from the pilot who Marsters is likely to play now - and it will be interesting. Caprica like BSG plays with the moralities of science, and the conflict between science and religion. Where do we draw the line? It also plays with the moralities of warfare, violence and defense. Racial conflict. Ethnicity. How we identify ourselves and much like Star Trek DS9, Babylon 5, Farscape, and Torchwood Children of Earth - does it in a manner that does not always provide clear answers so much as more questions.
If you love science-fiction, you owe it to yourself to give this one a shot.
Caprica - written by Ron Moore and Remi Aubuchon, directed by Friday Night Lights veteran Jeffrey Reiner, and starring Esai Morales as Joseph Addams (Adama) and Eric Stolz as Daniel Graystone...is the prequel series to BattleStar Galatica. It takes place 58 years prior to the fall of Caprica and the events of BSG.
The themes covered in the pilot reminded me in some respects of similar themes that Joss Whedon has attempted to cover in Dollhouse and the creators of V are trying to address - in fact Caprica is covering a combination of those themes, but in an innovative and far less didatic, clumsy and confusing manner. This movie had me riveted. And the twist, blew me away, even though I saw it coming - actually because I saw it coming. It is a frightening film. And it addresses the themes of ethnicity, racism, identity, religion, souls, worship, and arrogance or "god-syndrom" in a way that is rarely done, and hardly this well. The last show that came close was possibly Torchwood: Children of the Earth.
Much like BattleStar Galatica before it, the themes were addressed in a manner that left more questions than answers. The moral lines here are blurred.
After their daughters are killed in a terrorist act, a scientist, asks a defense attorney - what would you do to have the ability to hold, to see, to be with your daughter again?
Mary Shelley was asked a similar question ages ago and came up with the novel Frankenstein. What the scientist comes up with is far less black and white then what we often see in film versions of Shelley's novel, and far scarier than anything most film and television versions
And that's just one layer. The other questions asked are about religion, to what degree are our actions justified by our beliefs? Is belief in an absolute philosophy, a right and a wrong, possible? And if so, are our means to ensure that type of order justified? Where are the lines drawn?
Unlike other sci-fi tv shows, Caprica has an interracial cast or a multi-ethnic one. It is not like V - where the vast majority of the extras and leads are "white", ethnicity is an issue here. Also gender inequality is to a degree addressed but again in a subtle non-dogmatic way.
Ron Moore has also built an intricate world. Transportation, politics, ethnicity, technology - like our own world, commenting on our world but different. Doing what sci-fi does best - commenting on difficult themes through the safety of another world, a makebelieve world not our own.
The filming is flawless, as are the performances - if you go by tv standards. The pacing - well there's never a dull moment, and yes, you get enough of the characters to know who they are and more importantly to care - not an easy trick to pull off.
I can't say much more without giving too much away and this is a story that you really should not be spoiled on. It would remove some of the delight of discovery.
The pilot is due to air in January on SyFy, but it may be cut, so if you can rent the DVD via netflix or you may be able to find it online. The series will be run by Jane Espenson, but according to ImBd - Ron Moore and Aubonouch wrote the first 3-4 episodes. I pretty much know from the pilot who Marsters is likely to play now - and it will be interesting. Caprica like BSG plays with the moralities of science, and the conflict between science and religion. Where do we draw the line? It also plays with the moralities of warfare, violence and defense. Racial conflict. Ethnicity. How we identify ourselves and much like Star Trek DS9, Babylon 5, Farscape, and Torchwood Children of Earth - does it in a manner that does not always provide clear answers so much as more questions.
If you love science-fiction, you owe it to yourself to give this one a shot.
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no subject
Date: 2009-11-22 09:15 pm (UTC)Currently plodding my way through Bram Stoker's novel Dracula - which I've discovered is far more black and white and asbolutist in print than in the many film versions. It was unfair of me to assume that Shelley was like Stoker in this regard.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-23 06:30 am (UTC)As for Dracula and Frankenstein the novels, there is a fundamentally different perspective in the time of origin alone. Bram Stoker was a late Victorian, and you can see a lot of foreigners=others=threats going on. Mary Shelley, writing nearly 80 years earlier was a Romantic (in the literary sense of the word) who spent most of her life living abroad; the Romantics tended to project themselves into the Others/Lonely Outcast/Rejected-by-Society person, that's pretty much the default setting safe to assume with any Romantic writer. Accordingly, the monster doesn't die in Frankenstein; the creator does.