Caprica

Thw Wikipedia entry relates "Caprica is a television series set in the fictional Battlestar Galactica universe" which is the idea in a nutshell.

Having watched the first three episodes I will add that its the result of a head-on collision between "Terminator" and "Skins". By the end of episode three we have the a Frankensteinian plot of how the emotionally distraught scientist has captured the the cyber-persona of his dead daughter and transferred it into a nine-foot mechanical monstroid. The Battlestar Galactica story (for which this is a prequel) starts off with second Cylon War and the nuclear annihilation of millions on the planets of the Twelve Colonies across which the human race has spread. I suspect that things start turning out badly in episodes four to twenty-one.

So why did I mention Skins? I liked Skins for its use of unknown actors and plots which tackled "issues" unflinchingly. By "issues" I refer to matters which adults tend to skirt around or euphemise and teenagers and "Young adults" (I blanch at employing the term but, hey ok?) have to deal with on a daily basis and on their terms. Do I need to be more explicit? Ok. drunkenness, distribution and consumption of proscribed drugs, inadvisable sexual relationships (there's a lot of that) and in one of my favourite episodes, stealing a dead body.

(It's these things which children tend not to talk to their parents about so if you find a stiff tucked away at the back of the garage, ignore it for a couple of days before tackling your kids with questions about how it got there.)

Back to Caprica. The milieu in which the action is set suggests sixties America from the clothes, thirties America from the politics and America in the very near future for the technology. I noticed in tonight's episode a lot of the cars being driven were old Citroens. Presumably that was done to jar any feelings of familiarity building up in the target audience, to emphasis that this was not middle America but another planet and another time and another culture.

On Caprica there are the politics of discrimination as one political/criminal body represents immigrants from another human planet who remind me of the Sicilian and Italian immigrants as portrayed in the Godfather.

There are the politics of religion as the monotheists who are at odds with the majority polytheists and resort to suicide bombing to spread their beliefs. This allows us to view the work as an allegory for the conflict between islamic fundamentalism and the Judeo-Christian west. But that is only one element of a piece which at episode three is still setting up its story arcs and plots and introducing us to the characters.

Which is where I come back to Skins. In that I remarked to myself how beautiful and attractive the new and unknown actors were. These impressions have been repeated on me with actors enlisted for similar roles in Caprica. First among these is sweet-faced Alessandra Torresani who reminds me of sweet-faced Megan Prescott from Skins. Alessandr Torresani's character is blown up in a suicide bombing and her cyber-persona occupies the first of the Cylons, robot soldiers who are nine feet tall and made of metal. The director alternates between a view of the actress and a view of the robot, often during the same shot. This helps us identify the mood and feeling and responses of the character which the faceless and clumsy mechanoid cannot convey. This is, as far as I am aware, a new technique and avoids the heroic effort most monster-depicting actors have to employ to convey anything through layers of latex and paint. On reflection, this underlines what a good job was done by Boris Karloff in the first Frankenstein movie and the many who have had the temerity to fill his shoes in the movies that came after.

Alessandro Torresani is far from being new or unknown, her career in the media started at aged 9 and she turns up in an episode of Terminator, The Sarah Connor Chronicles. I was going to watch that because it contains performances by Summer Glau who was a hero in the Firefly series and its movie spin-off Serenity. I was hooked on Firefly from the trailer and enjoyed the curtailed TV series. Oh, and according to Wikipedia Megan Prescott turned up in an episode of Doctors, but I'm sure I never watched that. My claim that these actors for Skins and Caprica are new and unknown stands, because they are new and unknown to me.

And now a last word on Caprica. I shall endeavour to follow the series through to the final episode. Of course I know how it ends but I expect to be ebtertained by some twists and surprises along the way.