Do Robot Teenagers Dream of Electric Sheep?

One thing I meant to do yesterday but somehow got sidetracked from actually doing was to write about Caprica. Happily, I was reminded that it’s totally Worth Writing About, however emotionally guarded I may be about it.

From a perspective of philosophical and thematic coherence, I think the most exciting thing Caprica can do is develop and explore an area that Battlestar Galactica frequently touched on but rarely dealt with fully – the collapsing divisions between humans and computers, and what that means for humanity. It shows up again and again in BSG, but is often stuck in the form of hilarious, sexed-up musings by Gaius Baltar or tortured reflections from Boomer/Athena/Number Eight. Caprica has the chance to tell that story from its beginning, and tease out all the painful and intricate links that exist between a dead human girl and her self-aware avatar.

It’s a storyline that feels fresh and relevant and rich, both infinitely far away from the technology we have now and easily within our imagination of what’s possible. I love computer-waking-up plots (my favorite of which has to be Heinlein’s The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, with its cheeky, practical joke-playing, world-dominating computer Mike), and the show has begun to do a decent job of exploring that area. The most compelling device Caprica has employed so far is the technique of visually substituting avatar-Zoe for her hulking robot monster body, and switching cannily between the two. It plays with and sidesteps the dreaded uncanny valley, and gives us some high emotional stakes, at least for this one poor stranded virtual human.

So far, Tauron identity seems to be mostly about violence, tattoos, and snazzy hats

The problem is that the face of a full on Ray Kurzweil revolution, the show’s other minor plotlines are hard to care about. Caprica has been pressing the Caprican/Tauron racial divides pretty heavily in the recent episodes, and it feels like a version 1.0 incarnation of a civil rights plot harnessed into the same show with its newer, more attractive version 2.0 upgrade. Ideally it would create parallels and allow something as well-established as civil rights to speak to the new virtual rights territory, but right now it’s just dull. In this sense, Caprica also suffers from knowledge about its fictional future. If you already know that sixty years from now, Cylons will be a giant frakkin’ big deal and different human races are merely obsolete identities, it’s difficult to appreciate the esoteric diet of Taurons as meaningful.

At the moment, Caprica has a lot of promise but isn’t yet firing on all cylinders. Or maybe I’m just afraid of commitment.