Caprica - What we know so far

Roving reporter Beth reminded me of the first official trailer for Caprica, which debuted in late July on the SCI-FI network site. We still don’t have an official date for the actual TV movie / mini-series / full series, but there’s a lot that we do know so far:

What we know

Let’s start with the basic plot, some of which we can glean from the trailer above. “Caprica” is set 51 years before the 12 colonies are nuked in the surprise attack back the Cylons, kicking off the BSG series. We meet two families - the rich, science-driven family driven by genius Daniel Greystone, and the hard working family lead by lawyer Joe Adams. Of course, we learn in the trailer above that their family name is not, in fact, Adams. “Our family name, is Adama.” So that’s Joe Adama, father to Bill Adama and the grandfather lawyer who inspired Lee Adama to give up being a pilot and defend Baltar. Zoe Greystone, daughter of Daniel Greystone, has a boyfriend who is in this “cult” that worships a one-true God rather than the Gods that the colonies revere. Zoe is killed when her boyfriend blows himself up on a bus/public transport saying, “The one true God will drown out the many”. Apparently, Joe Adama’s wife and daughter were also killed on that bus. Joe Adama and Daniel Greystone meet at the memorial. Apparently Zoe Greystone was somewhat of a computer genius herself, and somehow “saved” her personality digitally before she was killed. Daniel Greystone discovers this and recreates her out of grief. She apparently realizes that she is no longer human, so this story could reflect some of that drama of her self-discovery of being a skin-job. So, somehow “Caprica” will tell the story of how Greystone created the original Cylons (we have to assume he ditches the skin-job method and switches to toasters without personality imprints), Joe Adama’s role in either their creation or hiding the fact that the first Cylon was, indeed, a skin-job, and potentially laying the groundwork for the Cylon War itself. The whole subplot of the “One True God” cult and Zoe’s invovlement in it, especially with her becoming the first Cylon, could shed a lot of light on where the Cylons got their original beliefs. What do you want to bet we see brief glimpses of the Final Five as leaders in this cult, playing into the “This has happened before and will happen again” premise and the thoughts that the Final Five predate the newer Cylon skin-job models? I’ll put money on it.

The Cast

I could not think of a better choice for Joe Adams/Adama than Esai Morales. I have loved his work dating all the way back to “La Bamba” where he played Lou Diamond Phillips / Richie Valens’ brother. He had great spins on “NYPD Blue” and most recently “Jericho”, and those with kids out there will recognize his voice as Dora the Explorer’s father Papi. The way he says the line at the end of the trailer, “Our family name is Adama” gave me chills. I can totally buy our beloved and aged Bill Adama being his son, can’t wait for what he’ll bring to the table here.

Eric “Almost-Marty-McFly” Stoltz looks to be great casting for Daniel Greystone as well. I’ve always liked Stoltz, from “Some Kind of Wonderful” to “Mask” up through his great turn in “Pulp Fiction”. I’ve often wondered what my life would have been like if I’d grown up with him as Marty McFly instead of Michael J. Fox, though. I expect to see a great intensity and intelligence to his performance here as Greystone, the father of the Cylons. Kind of a father of sorts to Gaius Baltar in a way? Obviously we won’t see Baltar in “Caprica”, so maybe more of a spiritual father if you will.

Paula Malcomson, I’m not so familiar with. She played Trixie in “Deadwood”, but I never caught up with that show so I don’t have a personal frame of reference. She got great reviews on her performance in that, and her role as Amanda Greystone, Daniel’s wife, looks to play right on her strengths. From early script treatments it appears she has a bit of a self-destructive streak that feeds into Daniel’s obsession with recreating Zoe.

And now, onto some of the supporting cast. Polly Walker joins the cast as Sister Clarice Willow. Personally speaking, I thought she was one of the best things about “Rome” where she played Atia of the Julii (not knocking Kevin McKidd or Ray Stevenson, they were great too). From the trailer it looks like she will be helping to console the main characters in their grief. I wonder if we’ll see some of the duplicity and alterior motives that made Atia such a great character, or if she really plays it straight as a priestess of the Gods on Caprica. I must admit that I’m not familiar with either of the actresses playing Zoe Greystone (Alessandra Toreson) or Tamara Adama (Genevieve Buechner), both killed in the bus explosion.

The questions

So, now we start to delve in to the “what the frak” section. The first and most obvious one is around the first skin-job, Zoe. Now, we know that 51 years in the future, humans get their “first” look at skin-jobs and are shocked that “the Cylons look like us, now”. Zoe is going to have to be kept a secret in order to maintain that plot point. No one else can know about Zoe being resurrected as a Cylon, and those who do know (looks like Joe Adama is one of them) can never say a word about it to anyone. Bill Adama, who we’ll certainly see as a child in this series, can not know about Zoe.

So, how does Zoe become the first of the toasters, when she herself is a skin-job? Some of possibilities are that Daniel Greystone sees the commercial viability of being able to resurrect the dead as robots, perfect copies. We kind of see this in the trailer when he asks Adama, “What would you do if you had the chance to be with your daughter again?” and, “Isn’t that worth whatever price you have to pay?” Maybe this concept gets rejected at some point before the copy of Zoe can become public knowledge, and he realizes that the Cylons would make better servants to humans. Thus, he makes Cylons shiny metal toasters rather than personalized skin-jobs that might make people feel more guilty about bossing them around. Now, do the “chrome-dome” Cylons know that they were preceeded by a skin-job, which is what makes them try to reinvent the skin-job with the hybrids as a plan to integrate into society? I’ve seen some theories go so far as to say that Daniel Greystone himself becomes the first hybrid. Not sure if I buy that, but it will be interesting to see how they play it all out.

And, lastly, how does this relate to the final episodes of BSG, if at all? Speculation has it that we might see brief cameos of the Final 4 as we know them in pre-BSG Caprica. But what about that elusive last Cylon that we don’t know yet? We know that the final Cylon isn’t in that awesome “Last Supper” picture, Ron Moore came out and said that much at least. We don’t really know if the last one is someone we’ve met already, though. Since the “Caprica” movie is slated to air before the final episodes resume in January 2009 (at least, December is what we’ve heard but no official date yet), will there be a connection with the final cylon and something / someone in the Caprica movie? What if it’s Zoe? Maybe Bill Adama remembers Zoe Greystone from his youth, not knowing she was a Cylon at the time, and when he sees her it all comes back? What if it’s Daniel Greystone? What if, holy shit, it’s Joe Adama, copied in some way? Doubt it, but that would be a mind bender, wouldn’t it? Well, at least we won’t have to wait too long after the series starts back in January to know who the last one it, I’ve read that the final cylon will be revealed pretty early on in the first episodes.

So, that wraps up all the information that I’ve seen on “Caprica”. As of right now, the only official thing is that 2-hour movie, though additional episodes have been ordered. From the Chicago Tribune “Watcher” blog,

The 2-hour “Caprica” film, written by “Battlestar” executive producer Ron Moore and “24’s” Remi Aubuchon, wrapped weeks ago and Sci Fi executives are contemplating now whether to make it a full series that would debut in 2009. A few weeks back, Sci Fi execs felt so good about the show that they ordered additional scripts, but there’s been no news since then.

There are other BSG movies in the works (the one directed by Olmos starts shooting Monday) so we’ll continue to get our BSG fix long after the final episodes of the series, at least. Also from the Watcher,

Also, the second “Battlestar Galactica” TV movie begins shooting on Monday in Vancouver. When the existence of the movie was finally confirmed by Sci Fi a few weeks back, the network noted that Edward James Olmos (Admiral Adama), Michael Trucco (Sam Anders), Aaron Douglas (Chief Tyrol) and Dean Stockwell (Brother Cavil) would appear in it. Olmos is also directing the film, which is Cylon-centric.

So, plently of fun to come. Leave your thoughts / theories in the comments, or as always shoot me an email or tweet.

Related posts:

1. Tyrol strikes again, reveals Cylon history
2. Thank the Gods, BSG is back on frakking schedule
3. What the frak? Maybe no BSG until April 2009?

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