CAPRICA Review: SyFy looking to repeat BSG success.

This Friday night SyFy will re-air the pilot, which came out on DVD eight months ago. So all you die hard fans who picked it up last April can give it a miss because you already know what is going on and they took out all the nudity anyways. Oh yes, you haven't seen it and didn't know? Indeed. Boobies. But only virtual boobies. In scenes that conjure up thoughts of Stephenson's Snowcrash, sadly though sans Yakuza and katanas, the people of Caprica can jack into V-Clubs [virtual clubs] and their avatars, normal height and not blue, engage and indulge in all manners of hedonistic pleasures and exploits. Zoe Graystone, her boyfriend Ben and classmate Lacy jack in to such clubs.

But Zoe is harboring a secret within the walls of the program. She has created an exact and virtual duplicate of herself and is keeping it/her hidden. She and her friends have plans to take this avatar to Gemenon and are doing so at the beginning of the pilot. It would seem that she has quite the little brain in her head; much smarter than her father, Daniel Graystone, himself a successful and brilliant man vying for a weapons contract and trying to get his Cylons ready. These are sure to be the Centurions from the first Cylon War.

For those of you who haven't seen the pilot film you will also meet Joseph Adama, father of William Adama. Yep. Admiral William Adama. As any decent BSG fan will tell you Joseph is a lawyer, alluded to throughout the original BSG series, and he is trying to make a decent life despite coming from the planet Tauron and having a brother, Sam, who is an enforcer in a Tauron gang. Again, fans will know that there is prejudice and animosity between cultures of each of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol in the Cyrannus galaxy [over my shoulder I hear someone yell 'NERRRRRRRRRD' from the street outside my window].

Tragedy besets both families when a terrorist organization, the monotheistic minded group Soldiers of The One, attacks a commuter train and family members are lost. And an incidental meeting between Daniel and Joseph at a public hearing regarding the tragedy sets the two families into a headlong clash that is sure to have its own tragic consequences. Favors are asked, decisions and choices are made that set both men on to shaky moral standing.

It is too soon to tell how well Caprica is going to do. One, it is very different from BSG. Caprica is a family saga while BSG was a tale of survival. It also may be slimmer on action because these are times leading up to the first Cylon War. Though there is action of sorts there is no Galactica, Vipers or Raptors. Instead, Caprica, through the first three episodes I was lucky to preview, begins by asking a lot of moral questions and philosophizes about the meaning of existence and life. Without giving it away I dare not say any more than that, especially if you haven't seen the pilot film through to the end to know why such questions and themes come about in the first place. 

I like Eric Stoltz and Esai Morales in their respective roles as Daniel and Joseph. Esai taps into that Adama brooding spirit nicely. There is something about Alessandra Torresani [Zoe] I find a bit... wonky. She reminds me of Zooey Deschanel but she is NOT Zooey Deschanel. Oh no. There can be only one.

I also have to say I really like the look and feel of Caprica, a futuristic 1940s if you will, where the choice of what you put on top of your head was a fedora or a fedora. The characters may sometimes look like they've walked out of an Otto Preminger film but the world is undeniably futuristic.

It is hard to preview a new series when you know you shouldn't give anything away. I'm three weeks ahead of a lot of you and all I can say is that by the end of episode three things are put into motion that may very well make this a very riveting watch on Friday nights. Other shows by episode three have left me hoping and praying that things will get better. Please god when is it going to start to be cool? I don't have that feeling after the first three episodes with Caprica. How they'll make a series out of only two families is anyone's guess though. Who do you go to for those filler episodes? How quickly do you move through to the fall of humanity and on to the first Cylon War?

SyFy is counting on Caprica to do what BSG did for them. I haven't received a preview package from them THIS pretty and elaborate - search my Facebook page - so you know they are banking heavily on this to be successful.

Caprica stars Eric Stoltz (Daniel Graystone), Paula Malcomson (Amanda Graystone), Esai Morales (Joseph Adama), Polly Walker (Sister Clarice Willow), Alessandra Torresani (Zoe Graystone), Magda Apanowicz (Lacy) and Sasha Roiz (Sam Adama).