![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat[Note to JM fans keeping track - he shows up in next weeks episode, which will also focus a bit on STO. This week's and last week's episodes in a way set up the rational behind STO or why it exists and why people are seeking it out or believing in it. STO is a reaction against the events that are occurring in the virtual world and in Graystone industries, as well as Sam Adama's world in the previous episodes. This is not a tv series that you can easily just pop into whenever you want, it is a rather complex serial story - with each episode unraveling a new layer. For that reason - I'm rather glad they have the character introductions - while they are not necessary for me, they are essential for new viewers. ]
There is a lot going on in this television series. More than usual. Most tv shows just have one story arc or possibly two, an A, and a B. This one had three. And they are interlocking threads. Told separately they lack emotional impact. A, B, C. The A arc is Tamara's tale of surviving in the virtual world long enough to find a way home to her family. The B arc is her family coming to grips with her death, and finally performing the last rites. And the C arc is Daniel Graystone who created the Tamara Avatar to manipulate Josef Adama into obtaining the fusion disc he required from another competing company to pull Zoe's Avatar out of virtual space and fuse it to a metallic Robot. Graystone is at this point desperately trying to save his company, after he sacrificed it to preserve his public image and standing in the last episode - by making holo's free. So what he has to do is demonstrate to the board of directors that he is still the one in charge, a necessary component.
Tamara and Zoe. Zoe was created by Zoe. Her intelligence and morality was created by her maker, which was herself. The Robot body is created by her father. He creates the material form, but is much like Pygmallion completely unaware of the soul underneath. He states in his speech to his board members - that you wonder what lies behind the robot's eyes, what it feels, how it feels, or thinks. Is it intelligent. Sentient. And look what we can do with it. We can make it do anything we want. It doesn't have any rights. It is dependent solely on our whim. It will work forever without growing tired without asking for a raise or better pay or benefits.
And for demonstration, he tells the robot to wander around the table, check out the board members, then pull its own arm off. The scene is disturbing even without the knowledge that Daniel is unknowingly telling his own daughter to pull off her arm to save his company.
Add to this story, Tamara's journey through the V-world or New Caprica. Where she hunts down Vesta, in the hopes that she can escape this world and return to her own - not realizing that this world, the V-world is her home. That she never existed outside it. She can't. She's computer code. An Avatar. Her journey is her realization of that. She wakes up. Realizing that she is no longer Tamara Adama, but more than that, a separate entity. Her human body and soul died on Caprica. This copy is living with the memories of her dead body in the virtual world.
Tamara comes to Vesta - innocent of the V-World. Vesta is playing a game - of Russian Roulet. Each person picks up a gun and the one who loses virtually dies, their avatar gone and forced back to reality. When Tamara insists on entering the game, because she wants to go home - Vesta shoots her, but unlike the others, Zoe merely bleeds and then heals, as if she is real.
Vesta - an older woman, who resembles Ellen Tigh (although I don't think it is the same actress). Vesta thinks Tamara is either someone who fell asleep with her holoband on or is in a coma. She doesn't know that Tamara is not an Avatar like Vesta, that she was created from Tamara's DNA code after Tamara died. She didn't exist in the V-world prior to that point.
She was created off of the same code pattern that Zoe used to create an AVATAR, that is separate from herself. Unlike Vesta, TAMARA is part of the V-World, and yet not. Vesta is just a guest.
Tamara is made into a player in a game that Vesta and her teen sidekicks are playing. Vesta is an adult. We learn in this episode that adults are playing in the V-World and introducing the teens and kids to their pleasures. Much as Sam introduces Willy Adama to his world of crime and its pleasures and power, as opposed to going to school.
The V-World New Caprica City a different version of the real one. It's the same with a few alterations and the fact that anything goes. It is Caprica with the mask pulled off, what is happening underneath the calm, perfect surface. Everyone is a gamer - playing for points or virtual money. Virtual money is how you play the game. To the gamers - this is not real, it is just a game. But to Tamara it is real. She's just a pawn in their game at this point - a means to an end. The boy sees Tamara as a means to an end, he cares about her, but from his perspective she's alive in the real world, the outside world, and this is JUST an Avatar.
The boy tells Tamara that anything that is pure code can be manipulated - just as Daniel Graystone tells the board - the robots can be controller to follow their whim. It is not intelligent. But what if it is? What if the code is awake, alive?
The boy tells Tamara that this mean nothing to her, but the game means everything to him - this world allows him to be someone, to actually matter - which he doesn't in his own world. We jump to Josef Adama and his son fishing, who is bored and angry - and doesn't want to deal with the bullies who are ridiculing him with racial slurs until he beats up on one of them - with his father yanking him off. Demonstrating what the boy is telling Tamara, who yearns for the real world that Willie has with Josef, that he, the humans, are less than satisfied with what is real - they are busy trying to escape from it. To go elsewhere. The V-World with its violent games and sex orgies provides a release, an escape from the frustrations of today. They spend all their time in a fantasy dystopia. Losing meaning and purpose in the process.
The culmination of the episode is when Tamara and the boy break into the opposing players vault, Tamara disrupts the security guards code as she takes their bullets, shielding the boy and finally collecting a billion of the virtual money, in essence winning a portion of the game.
They return with the money and confront Vesta, who tells Tamara she doesn't exist, is dead in the real world, but there are all sorts of things she can do with her. An Avatar that can disrupt the security code is a tool that she Vesta can use. At the same time, we have Daniel showing off U87/Zoe - "beyond artificial intelligence, there is artificial sentience...can't you feel it, there is serious mind in here." Yet, when asked what the practical implications: "Are you seriously asking me what the practical implications are of creating a new race to stand beside us? This cylon will become a tireless worker that won't need to be paid, won't retire, or get sick, won't have rights and won't get paid. Will do everything and anything we ask of it. U87 rip your arm off." And U87 does. "Looked painful, didn't it? It will do anything we want, the sky is the limit and the world has just changed."
Meanwhile in the V-World, Tamara hugs the boy, takes the gun, and blows all Vesta's henchmen back into the real world, leaving boy - who she pressures to go back to the real world and locate her real father - bring him to her. After the boy leaves, she turns to Vesta, who asks, what are you? And Tamara responds: "Awake". Then goes off into this world with new found confidence, gun hanging by her side. The comment resonates through the episode, because she is constantly referred to as being asleep. When Vesta asks for the money, Tamara states no, you are going wake me up and send me home. But Vesta responds that you aren't just asleep, you are dead. The henchmen - you aren't going home, dollface. Vesta stating, don't worry, we got plans for you baby, there's things we can do. That's when Tamara takes control. Tells Vesta, she is AWAKE and shoots.
As a counterpoint, we witness the Tauron ritual for saying goodbye to the dead and granting them passage. Letting the dead go. It's a family occasion, with friends, hand=clapping games, food, and pasting of pictures. Culminating in Josef Adama and his son presenting coins symbolizing their love and grief for those who've died. Coins similar to the ones Tamara collected in the noirish virtual world. Josef offers one for Shannon, and Willy for his sister Tamara. Then Josef takes the tattoo of his grief. The symbolism of the coin - here it is given to the dead, to symbolize honor and grief and love for their passing, while in the V-World it is taken after defeating the competition, often killing them, for points to win a game, and in Daniel Graystone's world it is a profit margin - the result of creating a race of artificial lifeforms with intelligence that can be manipulated to do whatever we wish.
The episode also deals with power and how each character uses it. Daniel uses his to save his company and obtain more profit. Thinking little of the consequences. Or that the technology that he's creating is responsible for the dystopia that drove his daughter to seek out the Soliders of the One or the STO. The STO exist as a reaction to the V-World and Daniel Graystone.
Josef struggles with his power...with how to handle his wife and daughter's death. His brother Sam finally convinces him to step up for his son - but when he does, a knock comes, and he is once more brought face to face with the fact that Tamara's AVATAR is lost in the V-World and can't get out. The episode ends with a powerless Josef chasing the boy Tamara met from the V-World through the streets...while Tamara/Tammy...walks solitary through the V-World's streets with her gun by her side.
Brilliant episode. And topical in its themes - a layered critique of the consequences of our technological advances, and our technological addictions - especially video games and the increased desire to escape. At the same time, it is a critique of the drive for meaning.
The pull towards extremes. Human beings tend to be extremists - going too far in one direction or the other, not always finding the necessary balance in between.
Overall rating: A+
There is a lot going on in this television series. More than usual. Most tv shows just have one story arc or possibly two, an A, and a B. This one had three. And they are interlocking threads. Told separately they lack emotional impact. A, B, C. The A arc is Tamara's tale of surviving in the virtual world long enough to find a way home to her family. The B arc is her family coming to grips with her death, and finally performing the last rites. And the C arc is Daniel Graystone who created the Tamara Avatar to manipulate Josef Adama into obtaining the fusion disc he required from another competing company to pull Zoe's Avatar out of virtual space and fuse it to a metallic Robot. Graystone is at this point desperately trying to save his company, after he sacrificed it to preserve his public image and standing in the last episode - by making holo's free. So what he has to do is demonstrate to the board of directors that he is still the one in charge, a necessary component.
Tamara and Zoe. Zoe was created by Zoe. Her intelligence and morality was created by her maker, which was herself. The Robot body is created by her father. He creates the material form, but is much like Pygmallion completely unaware of the soul underneath. He states in his speech to his board members - that you wonder what lies behind the robot's eyes, what it feels, how it feels, or thinks. Is it intelligent. Sentient. And look what we can do with it. We can make it do anything we want. It doesn't have any rights. It is dependent solely on our whim. It will work forever without growing tired without asking for a raise or better pay or benefits.
And for demonstration, he tells the robot to wander around the table, check out the board members, then pull its own arm off. The scene is disturbing even without the knowledge that Daniel is unknowingly telling his own daughter to pull off her arm to save his company.
Add to this story, Tamara's journey through the V-world or New Caprica. Where she hunts down Vesta, in the hopes that she can escape this world and return to her own - not realizing that this world, the V-world is her home. That she never existed outside it. She can't. She's computer code. An Avatar. Her journey is her realization of that. She wakes up. Realizing that she is no longer Tamara Adama, but more than that, a separate entity. Her human body and soul died on Caprica. This copy is living with the memories of her dead body in the virtual world.
Tamara comes to Vesta - innocent of the V-World. Vesta is playing a game - of Russian Roulet. Each person picks up a gun and the one who loses virtually dies, their avatar gone and forced back to reality. When Tamara insists on entering the game, because she wants to go home - Vesta shoots her, but unlike the others, Zoe merely bleeds and then heals, as if she is real.
Vesta - an older woman, who resembles Ellen Tigh (although I don't think it is the same actress). Vesta thinks Tamara is either someone who fell asleep with her holoband on or is in a coma. She doesn't know that Tamara is not an Avatar like Vesta, that she was created from Tamara's DNA code after Tamara died. She didn't exist in the V-world prior to that point.
She was created off of the same code pattern that Zoe used to create an AVATAR, that is separate from herself. Unlike Vesta, TAMARA is part of the V-World, and yet not. Vesta is just a guest.
Tamara is made into a player in a game that Vesta and her teen sidekicks are playing. Vesta is an adult. We learn in this episode that adults are playing in the V-World and introducing the teens and kids to their pleasures. Much as Sam introduces Willy Adama to his world of crime and its pleasures and power, as opposed to going to school.
The V-World New Caprica City a different version of the real one. It's the same with a few alterations and the fact that anything goes. It is Caprica with the mask pulled off, what is happening underneath the calm, perfect surface. Everyone is a gamer - playing for points or virtual money. Virtual money is how you play the game. To the gamers - this is not real, it is just a game. But to Tamara it is real. She's just a pawn in their game at this point - a means to an end. The boy sees Tamara as a means to an end, he cares about her, but from his perspective she's alive in the real world, the outside world, and this is JUST an Avatar.
The boy tells Tamara that anything that is pure code can be manipulated - just as Daniel Graystone tells the board - the robots can be controller to follow their whim. It is not intelligent. But what if it is? What if the code is awake, alive?
The boy tells Tamara that this mean nothing to her, but the game means everything to him - this world allows him to be someone, to actually matter - which he doesn't in his own world. We jump to Josef Adama and his son fishing, who is bored and angry - and doesn't want to deal with the bullies who are ridiculing him with racial slurs until he beats up on one of them - with his father yanking him off. Demonstrating what the boy is telling Tamara, who yearns for the real world that Willie has with Josef, that he, the humans, are less than satisfied with what is real - they are busy trying to escape from it. To go elsewhere. The V-World with its violent games and sex orgies provides a release, an escape from the frustrations of today. They spend all their time in a fantasy dystopia. Losing meaning and purpose in the process.
The culmination of the episode is when Tamara and the boy break into the opposing players vault, Tamara disrupts the security guards code as she takes their bullets, shielding the boy and finally collecting a billion of the virtual money, in essence winning a portion of the game.
They return with the money and confront Vesta, who tells Tamara she doesn't exist, is dead in the real world, but there are all sorts of things she can do with her. An Avatar that can disrupt the security code is a tool that she Vesta can use. At the same time, we have Daniel showing off U87/Zoe - "beyond artificial intelligence, there is artificial sentience...can't you feel it, there is serious mind in here." Yet, when asked what the practical implications: "Are you seriously asking me what the practical implications are of creating a new race to stand beside us? This cylon will become a tireless worker that won't need to be paid, won't retire, or get sick, won't have rights and won't get paid. Will do everything and anything we ask of it. U87 rip your arm off." And U87 does. "Looked painful, didn't it? It will do anything we want, the sky is the limit and the world has just changed."
Meanwhile in the V-World, Tamara hugs the boy, takes the gun, and blows all Vesta's henchmen back into the real world, leaving boy - who she pressures to go back to the real world and locate her real father - bring him to her. After the boy leaves, she turns to Vesta, who asks, what are you? And Tamara responds: "Awake". Then goes off into this world with new found confidence, gun hanging by her side. The comment resonates through the episode, because she is constantly referred to as being asleep. When Vesta asks for the money, Tamara states no, you are going wake me up and send me home. But Vesta responds that you aren't just asleep, you are dead. The henchmen - you aren't going home, dollface. Vesta stating, don't worry, we got plans for you baby, there's things we can do. That's when Tamara takes control. Tells Vesta, she is AWAKE and shoots.
As a counterpoint, we witness the Tauron ritual for saying goodbye to the dead and granting them passage. Letting the dead go. It's a family occasion, with friends, hand=clapping games, food, and pasting of pictures. Culminating in Josef Adama and his son presenting coins symbolizing their love and grief for those who've died. Coins similar to the ones Tamara collected in the noirish virtual world. Josef offers one for Shannon, and Willy for his sister Tamara. Then Josef takes the tattoo of his grief. The symbolism of the coin - here it is given to the dead, to symbolize honor and grief and love for their passing, while in the V-World it is taken after defeating the competition, often killing them, for points to win a game, and in Daniel Graystone's world it is a profit margin - the result of creating a race of artificial lifeforms with intelligence that can be manipulated to do whatever we wish.
The episode also deals with power and how each character uses it. Daniel uses his to save his company and obtain more profit. Thinking little of the consequences. Or that the technology that he's creating is responsible for the dystopia that drove his daughter to seek out the Soliders of the One or the STO. The STO exist as a reaction to the V-World and Daniel Graystone.
Josef struggles with his power...with how to handle his wife and daughter's death. His brother Sam finally convinces him to step up for his son - but when he does, a knock comes, and he is once more brought face to face with the fact that Tamara's AVATAR is lost in the V-World and can't get out. The episode ends with a powerless Josef chasing the boy Tamara met from the V-World through the streets...while Tamara/Tammy...walks solitary through the V-World's streets with her gun by her side.
Brilliant episode. And topical in its themes - a layered critique of the consequences of our technological advances, and our technological addictions - especially video games and the increased desire to escape. At the same time, it is a critique of the drive for meaning.
The pull towards extremes. Human beings tend to be extremists - going too far in one direction or the other, not always finding the necessary balance in between.
Overall rating: A+
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-02-27 10:40 pm (UTC)I think the show has become my favorite thing on tv and that before there is even a glimpse of JM.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-27 11:11 pm (UTC)Agreed. I am in love with this tv series. It is one of the few tv shows that I actually look forward to each week and am never disappointed in. (I look forward to Lost but am more often than not disappointed.)
And I adore the female characters in this series. Zoe, Tamara, Lacey...are all brilliant in different ways.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-28 07:24 am (UTC)If I can get up any interest, I watch his appearances,but if it's some crime show I usually leave it.
Hm, I never started with Lost, because it looks so horribly like the writers have no idea how to solve the big puzzle and mystery for mystery's sake is something I really dislike. I'll wait on the fan reaction to the end and then maybe start watching.
I love the females on Caprica too, all their very different personalities and also that they interact so much. Makes me realize all over how small the tv box for women is usually. Usually there are so few female characters and they are so preoccupied fawning over men that they barely talk to each other about plot related things.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-28 01:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-28 01:42 pm (UTC)I'll watch everything fantastic for the sake of it but smallville ended up like charmed, it seemed completely uninspired, at least during the seasons I saw. Good for it if it ever picked up speed, but I just disliked the characters and actors too much to go on.