Eric Stoltz plays one of those scientists: a super-rich technophile whose rebellious daughter Alessandra Torresani is killed in a terrorist bombing in one of Caprica’s opening scenes. When Stoltz learns that Torresani was spending time in a virtual nightclub where kids gather to act out their violent fantasies and sexual desires, and that she’d created an avatar fully invested with her own memories and personality, he becomes determined to find a way to use that virtual version of his daughter to revive her in robotic form. But he needs some proprietary technology to do it, so he asks for help from another man who lost a daughter (and a wife) in the bombing: Esai Morales, a foreign-born lawyer with ties to a criminal organization. Initially intrigued, Morales gradually begins to question the morality of what Stoltz is proposing.
When Caprica goes to series next year, it’ll reportedly be about the ongoing contest of wills between Stoltz and Morales (the latter playing the father of Galactica’s Admiral Adama). There are also hints in the pilot movie of future BSG-like inquiries into religious fanaticism, racism, and human arrogance. On the whole, it’s a well-plotted introduction to the world of Caprica, in terms of establishing both the premise of the series and the tone, which is clearly going to be more grounded in familiar human drama—almost soap-opera-like—than Battlestar was. Some BSG stalwarts may have some difficulty with the muted science-fiction/action elements, but it’s a lovely piece of work on its own merits, imbued with real visual poetry by director Jeffrey Reiner, who’s been the go-to guy on Friday Night Lights for its first three seasons. This new show feels different, but its concerns are the same. Eick, Moore, and company aim to show how grief and fear drives us to construct precarious paradises, with the seeds for their own destruction rooted underneath.
Key features: Deleted scenes and a frank, detailed, entertaining commentary track by Eick, Moore, and Reiner.
