Caprica S01E7 "The Imperfections of Memory"

[hazelk]

Ultimately Caprica falls or rises depending on how successfully it conveys its fin de siècle malaise. Contemporary America re-imagined as the final days of the Roman empire. Taurons appear to be the Greeks in this scenario at least that’s the language they speak. Alternatively, Europe on the cusp of the Great War. In my parents' house we had a set of encyclopedias called the Books of Knowledge that only referred to one Great War. They made for strange reading.

On that basis episode 7 was a great success. Again three character strands intertwining. Amanda and Clarice dancing around their dead or hoping to raise them. Joseph desperately seeking Tamara and Daniel finding Zoe.

Two adult women passing the Bechdel because one is a crazy and the other a lush. Amanda, not a very sympathetic character in the previous episodes. Apparently a neurosurgeon, reduced to shrine attendances and haunting her empty mansion in designer shoes. This episode explained the brittle façade with a history of survivor guilt (all of this has happened before) for a ghostly brother. Clarice’s religion seems like a Californian cryogenic cult obsessed with virtual instead of literal resurrection. Or, going with fin de siècle, like turn of the century spiritualists. Spiritualist terrorists, although the terrorist element seem to be more about the flesh and its mortifications. Clarice is making moves on Amanda and it’s not entirely clear who’s leading in their dipsomaniac dance. She knows it’s a seduction of some kind and maybe it doesn’t matter as long as they both get loaded.

Joseph and Heracles holobanding up in an alley. The camera can’t keep its eye off a barcode on the wall as they slip into V-world. Adama the elder sticks out in New Cap City like the slightest trace of analogue in a digital system. All the others are players but for him it’s life and death. Could be that’s how you win the game, by not playing. Like Daniel finding Zoe when he was looking for his robot not her. But she’s not Zoe, not a copy, her heuristic is generative not replicative. Lacey recognizes this and chooses virtual Zoe over the flesh original. Maybe something this whole world is doing and that’s the problem. Nothing is real. It’s all a game. Caprica on the run from its present, chasing its past into oblivion and falling unknowingly into its future.

Comments

[yourlibrarian]

Adama the elder sticks out in New Cap City like the slightest trace of analogue in a digital system.

Nice phrase, that :)

[hazelk]

:-) I was pleased with that one - I thought the analogue/digital talk was all pretty cool.