Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Caprica Reboot

As you longtime TransGriot readers are aware of  I'm a serious sci-fi fan.   I own the Star Wars saga on DVD, loved all of the Star Trek shows except Enterprise, and was a huge fan of Battlestar Galactica old and new series.

I'm eagerly watching the prequel Caprica, which takes place 58 years before the events depicted in BSG.   As we BSG fans now know these events are 150,000 years from our current time on Planet Earth and light years on the other side of our Milky Way galaxy.

It's centered on two powerful families, the Greystones and the Adamas.

SyFy just started running the Season 1.5 shows October 5, and I spent a few hours one evening catching up on the three episodes I missed so I'll be ready for tonight's broadcast..

We BSG fans know how it will end, with the nuclear devastation of the Colonies in a Cylon sneak attack 58 years from now.   But the interesting part will be hopefully getting to see the events that lead to the First Cylon War, colonial political unification and that 40 year gap between the departure of the Cylons from colonial space and their deadly return.

It's already been interesting to see some of the various colonial worlds such as Caprica, Tauron and Gemenon, the polytheistic religious life, differences and different cultures on them and some of the tensions and cultural beefs between them

I also love watching my Tauron peeps.   There's a sizable Tauron cultural presence on Caprica due to the immigration resulting from the Tauron Civil War and prejudice directed at them by Capricans is widespread..   And as I discovered in a recent episode, some of the denizens of other world aren't too enamored with Capricans either.

The Adamas, one of the two families profiled on the show it are from that world.   

And yes it's those Adamas.   11 year old Willie Adama is the same one who will grow up to be the future commander of the battlestar Galactica 

His father Joseph is a civil rights attorney who does side work for the Tauron mob and his uncle Sam is a highly ranked same gender married member of the Halatha,

Nope, that was not a typo.  Sam is gay and nobody inside or outside his family is tripping..  


It's been a fascinating exploration into more of the events feeding into the BSG universe backstory while once again mixing issues into the shows ripped straight from our world's headlines.   Religious fanaticism, terror in the name of religion, development of AI and what it means for humans, and technology development and its impact on society. 

I hope SyFy is wise enough to pick it up for a few more seasons and allow it a chance to find the audience it deserves.