Caprica

[whitefire]

I have been watching this spin off since the start. It has had very mixed reviews indeed, with a large balance coming down with the opinion that it is a bit boring, slow and too light on SF.

I for one actually like it a lot. I like the interpretations of our current (or very near future) society, and I like the SF elements that are there - the technology is well balanced and realistic - almost everything has a purpose and is not too wildly "out there" which is always a danger.

The story arc is simple, and again a plausible explanation of how the cylon philosphy / religion emerged - ultra decadent virtual world, pretty decadent real world (multiparty marriages, corruption throughout society, Judges & police taking bribes, mafia running things, etc..).

The current state of the story - with the Soldiers of the One (STO) still being largely unexplained and enigmatic - is a good balance between tension and expectation. STO clearly have a longer history  than the initial impression given, and the little hints given away in episode 4 ("Gravedancing") might even link the to the colony of Geminon which is clearly a planet and society which the Capricans have little time for (references in speech to "Geminon scum" for example).

I also like the way the Taurons are developing as a people - initially you get the impression from Adama Snr. that they are merely conservative, treated badly and therefore downtrodden. It then emerges bit by bit that they are responsible for a mafiosa style series of operations, have a strict honour code and a strange matriarchal society (Adama's mother in law was quite scary the way she was butchering the chicken while discussing killing Mrs Greystone).

Interestingly, for an SF drama, there is less focus than usual on the hardware - little has really been seen of the military or the Cylon robot body, other than the lab test scenes and the excellent (if a bit odd and potentially perverted) scientist-geek-fancies-robot-so-dances-with-it-while-geek-chick-hides-in-robots-memory-stack scene.

For me therefore - so far so good. I think the next couple of episodes will need to really pull out the stops to ensure a second series, and to move the plot forward substantially, for whilst Episode 4 was good it was a tidying up episode bringing a few little strands together rather than moving the story forward much. It's about now when consideration of the next series will be investigated I guess - I really hope they carry on with this. We've so much more to see - the development of the civil war - the STO, the propagation of the cylons, computer hacking into the military hardware that prompted the Battlestars to be built with the low tech they had, the psychological processes the cylons go through (don't forget Adam's older sister who ran off in the virtual worl to god knows where!).