Note: The following review contains spoilers for all aired episodes of Caprica, including the most recent, “There Is Another Sky.”
“Gravedancing” was very much the Greystones’ episode. ”There Is Another Sky,” on the other hand, belongs to the Adamas, to such an extent that for nearly the first half, I wondered whether we would see any non-Adama characters this week and, while we did eventually get a few brief, but key, Greystone scenes, this episode neglected people like Sister Clarice and Lacy and their plot threads in favor of zeroing in on the current state of the Adama family, both those living in a traditional sense and those who are not.
The real meat of the episode is, of course, Tamara’s journey through V-World and her evolution from scared and lost girl to something different and far more powerful. Her arc over the course of the hour constitutes a fascinating exploration of someone currently experiencing the flip side to Zoe’s situation. The Zoe avatar has been snatched out of her original environment, where she was free and unchained, and is now trapped inside an enormous, heavy body, controlled by a father who doesn’t even know she is there. Tamara is in a new environment as well, but one which she is slowly learning to use in her favor. Like the Zoe Cylon, she is extremely powerful and practically invincible, but unlike Zoe, she is beginning to discover that she can do whatever she wants. Cylon Zoe, on the other hand, is constrained by her body, by the rules the scientists have enforced upon her, and by her own devotion to the original, human Zoe she is trying to please.
In the lawless world of New Cap City, a girl who cannot be killed can become a ruler, and Tamara’s discovery of this truth hastens her journey from timid girl to self-possessed woman. While the episode certainly plays with the irony that Joseph and Willie are at first mourning and then finally allowing themselves to let go of Tamara’s memory even though we know she still exists, the even deeper irony is that Tamara is slowly but surely becoming someone very removed from the daughter, sister, and, in Sam’s case, niece, whom the Adamas love and remember. When Heracles arrives at Joseph’s door to tell him he saw his daughter on the Holoband, little does Joseph know that by this point, he really may be chasing a ghost that no longer exists.
Earlier on in the episode, Tamara doesn’t understand why Heracles cares so much about the game, to which he explains that it “actually allows me to be something.” In a very concise manner, the show is exploring why anyone chooses to devote hours of his or her life to playing a video game that delivers no solid rewards in the real world. Tamara responds, “Maybe if you weren’t in here playing this game, you could be something out there, too.” What she learns by the end of the episode, however, is that for her, the game really is her life now, and it can be a glorious life with no rules or traditional societal expectations. She begins to learn the appeal of the decadent aspects of the teenage Caprican holoband communities she once shunned, such as the marvelous visual pun of the Russian Roulette Wheel. While Zoe seemed to get most of the attention at the start of the series, this episode hints that that may have been a slight misdirect. We as viewers have underestimated Tamara for too long. Other people in the holoband, such as Vesta, however, indicate that the idea of someone stuck in the holoband has been a cultural myth that no one has been able to prove before now. Perhaps Tamara is a Chosen One of sorts, like Zoe had planned on being.
Just as Tamara begins to revel in the holoband, Greystone Industries begin to move to the next big thing. In an interesting parallel to our world’s Microsoft (a company called “Microcap” is referenced here) and Bill Gates’ original attempts to keep other computer companies from advancing the technology, Daniel Greystone here defuses the situation that has arisen as a result of his announcement that the holoband would become free to all users by noting that attempting to maintain a hold over the holoband would be fighting a losing battle and what they should really be doing is looking towards the future, to Cylons.
Daniel’s speech is rife with dramatic irony, for numerous reasons. For one, we know that Cylons will indeed change the world, as he predicts. What he doesn’t know is that they will destroy it, as well. Even more ironic, however, is Daniel’s hubris. He argues to the board that what makes Cylons so unique is that they are the first artificially sentient creatures and that they can advance Caprican society by being a tireless workforce that won’t need to be paid, will have no legal rights, and will never object or complain. But Daniel seems to be missing the point of sentience. He never worries that such intelligent (he refers to the Cylon’s mind as “brilliant”), incredibly strong beings might one day not like the world which he has envisioned. Additionally, he thinks that people will buy Cylons due to humanity’s propensity for anthropomorphizing objects. Well, Cylons are either a species or objects; they can’t be both. The supreme ironies, of course, are (1) that his daughter is inside of this Cylon, though he doesn’t know it, and (2) that the reason she is inside the Cylon is because he himself attempted to anthropomorphize it by installing her avatar inside it, and (3) that the fact that he doesn’t know she’s alive in there and thinks he failed is one of the main reasons he has decided to take such a hard-nosed approach to the Cylons, viewing them as tools and chattel, nothing more.
This leads to one of the most disturbing scenes in the series to date, in which he orders the Cylon to rip off its own arm, to demonstrate to the board how pliable it is, and it follows his instructions. More than anything else we’ve seen, this truly nails why the Colonists, in the future, will be so resistant to treating the Cylons as anything but machines. It is particularly telling that this society has created robots without the Asimovian laws in place after which most robots in science-fiction are modeled. Isaac Asimov’s rules are:
- A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
- A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
- A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
Interestingly, Caprica depicts its people as being so full of hubris that not only has Daniel not taken care to keep his robot from harming itself, for he wants it to be fully compliant in all ways, but he hasn’t seen fit to install any safeguard that would keep it from attacking a human. He sees no threat. It is this attitude of entitlement and supremacy that will lead to the ultimate fall of Caprica.
Related posts:
- Caprica 1.08: “Ghost in the Machine”
- Caprica 1.02: “Rebirth”
- Caprica 1.09: “End of the Line” (Mid-Season Finale)
- Caprica 1.07: “The Imperfections of Memory”
- Caprica 1.06: “Know Thy Enemy”
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I am loving how this series continues to evolve, since I personally had a hard time seeing how the premise lends itself to an ongoing series – and, of course, the writers have proved me completely wrong. There’s a strong focus on characters, but also slowly opening up new worlds – particularly New Cap City in this episode.
That scene at Graystone Industries was stunning. And I was unexpectedly moved by the wake scene.