Caprica – A Singularity in the Making

How do you follow something as cerebral and exciting as Battlestar Galactica? Well it seems writer / producer Ronald D Moore & Remi Aubuchon and his colleagues decided to go retro with some future-chic providing a glimpse of how machines could become sentient with the existential spin-off TV series Caprica.

Anyone who has followed Vernor Vinge’s 1993 Singularity Theory or is concerned at what will happen with the upcoming Singularity [as long as Mankind does not destroy itself before the singularity occurs], will find Caprica totally captivating.



So with Episode 9 of Caprica ‘End of the Line’ signaling the mid-season one climax, what can we make of Battlestar Galactica’s bastard daughter?

The Guardian reports

While Caprica, like BSG, now has established a large and deep narrative, last night's a cliffhanger episode arguably lacked the punch of BSG's finest mid-season finales. That said, the show still appears to have enough momentum and unanswered questions to fuel a full season.

Caprica has wisely, I think, managed to keep the BSG homages and portents to a minimum so far, focusing instead on building a layered universe with a smart retro-future aesthetic that meshes BSG storytelling and Mad Men style, with the CGI small-scale and non-intrusive. Viewers have to admire the care taken in the world-building, such as the intricate slang and rituals created for the "foreign" Tauron characters. It is familiar yet other-worldly.

There have been plenty of present-day analogies and weighty themes thrown into the mix. Already we've seen sexual politics, moral grey areas, and techno-espionage aplenty, but the depiction of Caprican society has been particularly on the nose. Theoretically it's got it all, embracing the unlimited potential of technology, but something is rotting inside. It's spinning out of control: a world where some would rather flee into virtual reality or join terrorist cults than participate in meaningless conspicuous consumption.

Eric Stoltz as Daniel Graystone has emerged as the real gem in the cast. BSG's producers clearly like conflicted scientists (see also Gaius Baltar), and Stoltz excels at playing a complex genius driven by such grief and hubris that he creates the downfall of his entire race. We saw one particularly gripping character moment in episode eight, when Daniel tried to provoke his daughter into betraying her presence in the U-87 by playing on her childhood fears of fire.

Read More from The Guardian

While Time Magazine stated –

I've really liked this show, even as the ratings have struggled to recover from an initial drop-off. While Syfy continues to tout the show's performance with the ever-important younger demo, I've watched the weekly tally hover right around a million viewers. The numbers for Friday's cliffhanger show 1.1 million viewers, with a 0.5 rating for adults 18-49 (tied for a series high). Yes, the season premiered right up against the Haiti telethon, and the hyper-serialized nature of Caprica has meant that it's harder for newbies to access the series if they missed week 1 or 2. I, for one, think the show would do a whole lot better if it aired on a different night of the week.

But I digress. The show's producers have clearly been building up to last Friday's cliffhanger, and Syfy has now pulled it off the air until the fall, in hopes that a larger audience learns to love the show by then. You can find most of the episodes in their entirety right here, and if you are one of those few who catches up with it during this indefinite “hiatus,” here's betting that you fall into one of two camps: The viscerally bored or the intellectually stimulated.

The gulf between these extremes illustrate's the show's ratings problem.

Caprica may be a Battlestar Galactica prequel, but it's a show that up to this point has almost been devoid of action. It's an insulated bubble of a thing, about two dead daughters, two fathers who aren't quite getting the whole mourning process, and the virtual avatars of these two girls who continue to roam through a futuristic virtual space. (I've written truckloads of detailed copy about the show over at Techland, and you can find all the detailed analysis here, along with an interview with the show's co-creator here). There was a brilliant moment in an early episode where the series all but came to a standstill in a black box, with three avatars looking at each other. In one corner was the virtual representation of a living teenage girl. In another corner was the avatar of Zoe Graystone, who created a standalone virtual replica of herself prior to her death. And in a third corner was the avatar of another dead girl, constructed after her death in a botched experiment. She has no memories of her real-life alter-ego. She is a wandering CG construct, existing unto herself.

Confused yet?

Yes, all of this is quite trippy, but that's part of the show's allure. It keeps scrambling up our conventional notions of humanity, reality and morality. In these three avatars, we see a sliding scale of humanity, between the real girl in a fake world, the echo of a real girl in a fake world, and then the fake replica in a fake world. All three avatars can function, and feel emotion, but they represent very different things. So who's real, and who's not? As Zoe's avatar is downloaded into a robot in the real world, does she owe any allegiance to Zoe's father? After all, technically Zoe is dead. This is Zoe II, with a mission all her own.
For all the series' flaws, they have successfully given us a character who is neither human nor robot. But something in between. That's pretty remarkable.

Now I know that Jim hasn't been covering this show intimately, so it's a little hard for me to bring everyone up to speed. And I guess that's not really the point of this post, anyway. I merely wanted to give a shout-out to a show that I think has turned a rather significant corner. In last Friday's "mid-season finale," each and every storyline exploded (or imploded, depending on how you look at it). Daughters betrayed their fathers, characters attempted suicide, cyborgs that were locked down in computer labs have now broken out, and are engaged in high-speed car chases. Even a sweet-natured high school teacher, who did little more than sit around and talk for the majority of the first season, is involved in a car bombing.
I'm going to refrain from giving away all the twists and turns, and instead encourage you to simply catch up with Caprica while it's away on break. Give some heady, smart sci-fi a try. As someone who thinks that A.I. is the best sci-fi film of the last decade, I have been thoroughly riveted by Caprica, and all the moral implications of its artificial life. If you could bring a dead loved one back in the form of a hologram, would you? Should you? What does it mean, to cheat death and escape mourning? And what would your loved one's replica owe you? Heck, what is love? Is it the exchange of emotion, or a one-way affair?

Read more from Time.com

While we wait for the second slug of Season One of Caprica, you can catch up with more information via the SyFy Channel in the US or Sky One in the UK. If you’ve missed Caprica, the extended pilot is available on DVD for US Here and UK Here while the second part of season one of Caprica is planned for Autumn [if you live in the UK], or Fall [if you live in the US] 2010.

Personally speaking, I’m rather excited to see what happens when human material gets integrated into the machine, because with Caprica, we are taking a glimpse into the future; as long as we don’t destroy all we survey.

Edward James Olmos speaks about Battlestar Galactica THE PLAN

Being a huge fan of Battlestar Galactica, I have ordered the US DVD release of The Plan which went on sale this week to much anticipation.

Movieweb have a feature interview with Edward James Olmos who plays Admiral William Adama -



Written by series writer Jane Espenson, Battlestar Galactica: The Plan begins before the attack on the 12 colonies and will show events mainly from the perspective of two Cylon agents. The narrative largely follows multiple versions of the Cylon models One (Dean Stockwell) and Six (Tricia Helfer), who have infiltrated the remaining humans, both on the planets, and those who have escaped into space. From there, the events of the television series are shown from a Cylon perspective, and their underlying plan is revealed in a way that will change your outlook on the new Battlestar Galactica series forever. Also starring Michael Trucco, Aaron Douglas, Dean Stockwell, Tricia Helfer, Grace Park, Rick Worthy, Matthew Bennett, Callum Keith Rennie, Michael Hogan and Rekha Sharma and directed by Edward James Olmos, Battlestar Galactica: The Plan blasts off on DVD and Blu-ray on October 27th.

Read More Here

Reviews are appearing all over; such is the popularity of Battlestar Galactica, and because of the frenzied anticipation, the word on the street though positive, is tempered due to the brilliance what came before THE PLAN -

At wired.com –

There’s plenty of eye candy in The Plan, too: The space shots, nuke attacks and havoc wreaked on the colonies’ 12 planets are on par with the rest of Galactica’s gritty CGI look. There are also a few bits of gratuitous nudity, both male and female, that will doubtless be cut from this unrated DVD version when the movie airs on Syfy.

What The Plan doesn’t have is much in the way of heavy revelations. It also lacks a strong, standalone narrative. Perhaps most disappointing, the characters who made the series so compelling — Olmos’ steely fleet commander William Adama, Katee Sackhoff’s unpredictable fighter pilot Kara “Starbuck” Thrace, Michael Hogan’s irascible Saul Tigh — barely appear in The Plan. When they do, it’s usually in recycled scenes that will have fans of the series flashing back to the show’s glory days.

Galactica completists will eat up the tiny insights into the Cylon POV: the knowing smiles of skinjobs as mushroom clouds bloom over Caprica, the way Leoben (aka Cylon Number Two, played by Callum Keith Rennie) obsesses over Starbuck.

But there’s not much that would make sense to viewers who haven’t already seen Galactica. It’s hard to imagine, for instance, what a BSG virgin would make of the Beat-poet babble spewing from the mouth of the hybrid in the bathtub aboard the Cylon basestar.

If you haven’t seen all four seasons, explore the complete series and file The Plan for future viewing. If you’re a Battlestar Galactica fanatic, don’t place too much hope in this mediocre coda. Watch it like you would the deleted scenes on a DVD, and don’t let it scrap your memories of one of the most ambitious sci-fi shows of all time.

At New Jersey Entertainment –

Fans of "Battlestar Galactica," like fans of most great science fiction (and, let's be honest, lots of mediocre to bad science fiction) tend to be a ravenous bunch — always eager for more from their favorite show.

So even though the series came to a very definitive conclusion back in March, and even though a prequel series called "Caprica" will debut on Syfy early next year, the "BSG" fandom is understandably psyched for today's DVD release of the new movie "Battlestar Galactica: The Plan." But the finished product, which mixes original scenes with archival footage, at times feels as if it meets the bare minimum requirements to qualify as new material.

Because the series finale (which many fans are still not happy with) closed off most avenues for a sequel, and because the series had such a tight story line, there isn't really room to tell a new story about these characters. Instead, writer Jane Espenson and director Edward James Olmos have to content themselves with filling in a lot of blanks — specifically, with showing the events from the series' first few seasons from the point of view of the Cylons instead of the humans.

So instead of Olmos' Admiral Adama as our central character, "The Plan" (which will presumably air on Syfy sometime next year) is built around Dean Stockwell as malevolent Cylon leader John Cavil, who we learned late in the series had engineered the genocide of humanity as an act of rebellion against his human-loving creators. We see Cavil and most of the other Cylon models (Lucy Lawless doesn't appear as D'Anna Biers) preparing for the destruction of all of humankind, then desperately scrambling once they realize they failed to kill everybody.

I truly admire Edward James Olmos for promoting the importance of "humanity" being united, as well as his work with underprivileged youngsters. It was good of the UN in conjunction with the SyFy Channel to welcome Olmos and many of the cast and workers from Battlestar Galactica to ehe United Nations on Humanitarian Issues committee.



So if you haven’t explored Battlestar Galactica – it’s time to behold one of the greatest TV series every filmed – and available on DVD.

FRAK ME!

Many of you may realise that I have become totally obsessed by the Battlestar Galactica series. During The World Mystery and Crime Thriller Convention Bouchercon held in Indianapolis – my dear friend Jon Jordan and I swopped DVD’s and Books. I brought over the latest British releases of Ashes to Ashes, Spooks series 7, Spooks Code Red and others, while Jon and Ruth kindly brought the US Ultimate Boxed set of Battlestar Galactica for me. The US set is far superior to the UK set, as it contains features such as the Web-Episodes which were missing from British set. Jon Jordan is also as big BSG fan, and he sported a ‘FRAK ME!’ badge. Even David Morrell remarked on the badge when he met Jon and I, as he too is a big BSG fan. Jon was telling me about when he met Edward James Olmos [Adm. William Adama] at a recent comic convention in the US. Well in peculiar twist of fate, I bumped into British Actor Jamie Bamber who play’s Adama’s surviving son at last week’s CWA Specsavers Dagger Awards in Grosvenor House in London.

I had a great chat with Bamber [pictured on the right with me in fan-boy mode], and we were equally confused why BSG is not as huge in the UK as it is in America. Bamber told me that he felt hugely privileged to be part of BSG as he considers it one of the best acting gigs he’s had. “Working on Battlestar Galactica will take some beating” he said, and he’s right because I feel it is one of the greatest TV series I have ever watched. Each episode is like listening to the dials of a ‘safe’ click open, as the elements of story, acting, visuals combined with the theological / moral / quasi-religious themes make it completely hypnotic.

Now the countdown for ‘The Plan’ is ticking, which is due for release tomorrow reports The Philadelphia Daily News -

BATTLESTAR GALACTICA: THE PLAN. Blu-ray, DVD and digital download, starting tomorrow.

"LET'S GET this genocide started."

As rallying cries go, it's no "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"
But then "Battlestar Galactica's" Cylon model "No. 1," John Cavil (Dean Stockwell), isn't exactly Ronald Reagan.

For die-hard "BSG" fans, though, the line from "Battlestar Galactica: The Plan" is bound to come across with its full measure of dark comedy. And die-hard fans are the only logical targets for "The Plan," which goes on sale tomorrow on Blu-ray, DVD and through digital downloads.

Written by "BSG" executive producer Jane Espenson and directed by Edward James Olmos, who reprises his starring role as "Galactica's" Adm. William Adama, the 90-minute feature revisits the futuristic series about humanity's struggle against its own creations, the Cylons, from the Cylons' point of view.

Which means that Stockwell's Machiavellian Cavil gets more face time than he probably ever has before, a development that may not sit so well with fans of the more sympathetic - and gorgeous - Cylon No. 6 (Tricia Helfer), who's featured far more prominently on the DVD jacket.

When Olmos told fans at San Diego Comic-Con this summer that "The Plan" would make them want to watch the whole series over again, I'd honestly thought he was just plugging the series DVD.

He's right, though. Because in slicing off the Cylons' version of events, the movie necessarily telescopes large portions of the series, which ran for four seasons on what used to be called the Sci Fi Channel. If you lost track of that action at any point, you're bound to be wandering in the wilderness for long stretches of "The Plan."

Read more about the 2010 spin-off series Caprica

Battlestar Galactica is the best Frakking TV series I’ve ever seen “So Say We All”

Battlestar Fantastica

I have been incredibly busy with work and catching up on my thriller and crime fiction reading / reviewing, my own writing, as well as preparing for my trip to Bouchercon Indianapolis next week. Hence my blogging has become somewhat sporadic and erratic.

Due to my high work load; I rarely watch TV preferring to read in the evenings. The only TV series that have caught my eye and forced me to track down the DVD box-sets have been Spooks [US Title MI5], ‘The Wire’ and previously Millennium. Both those series still haunt me and I regularly watch them when I can. I have never got into the excitement of ‘Lost’, ‘Prison Break’, ‘24’ or many of the recent ‘Star Trek’ incarnations – though when I was younger [and had more time], I was very keen about the original 1960’s ‘Star Trek’ and ‘The Man from Uncle’. Now I stumbled rather late into a TV series that has really rocked my world; a series that dominates my mind and provokes deep thought.

Earlier this year, I went to see Bruce Springsteen at Hyde Park [London] with Stav Sherez and Nick Stone. While we caught up on what’s new in our lives; Stav mentioned how much he was enjoying “Battlestar Galactica”, which made me roar laughing. I was never a fan of the 1978 series, and as I don’t really watch TV, I was unaware of the 2004 series which re-worked the original premise. Stav and I are both fanatical about the work of Philip K Dick and explained that if I liked Dick’s look at reality, I’d love ‘Battlestar Galactica’.

Stav told me that I must watch Ronald D Moore’s re-imagined ‘Battlestar Galactica’, and was truly evangelical about it. But as usual, life and work got in the way; that is until last week when I read amazing reviews in the British press to coincide with the release of the complete DVD Boxset of ‘Battlestar Galactica’. Remembering Stav’s excitement and despite the cost, I ordered the sucker. Within the box-set, were the 3-hour Miniseries, seasons I – IV, ‘Razor’ a ‘Battlestar Galactica’ film as well as many extras.

I have since been watching the entire series [in sequence] and have been devastated by its sheer brilliance. Everything about the series is exceptional, and for my money it is the best TV series I have ever watched. It could be the best TV series of all time.

The premise is sheer poetry, the characters as vivid as real-life, the filming like a combat news-reel, extraordinary special effects, but most of all it resides in your brain as it works through the moral dilemmas that cloak our reality. All day it haunts me until I can get back and watch it late into the evenings. It is the stuff of exhilarating madness.

I would urge you to watch this wonderful series, because it is exceptional and beyond ‘entertainment’.

Following the miniseries, were two episodes that can be viewed online –

‘33’ - This is episode one from series 1

Link:

‘Water’ - This is the second episode from series 1

Link:

All that is left is The Plan – a feature length film due out on DVD later this month and which will be on cable in November.




There is a spin-off series ‘Caprica’ which has recently piloted in the US and available on a US import DVD with the series coming to screen in 2010.

I really don’t want to say anymore, because you really must watch it for yourself, because ‘Battlestar Galactica’ is the best TV you are likely to see – “So Say We All”