Note: The following review contains spoilers for all aired episodes of Caprica, including the most recent, “Know Thy Enemy.”
After last week’s “There Is Another Sky,” which told a very focused story about Tamara Adams’ evolution and the Adamas’ mourning process, “Know Thy Enemy” feels like more of a transitional episode, introducing new plot elements, characters, and conflicts, and paying off earlier moments. The main theme is, naturally, stated in the title and mostly manifests itself in an ironic fashion. With the exception of Barnabas Greeley, played by James Marsters, who does little to obscure his inherent creepiness–he first appears with barbed wire entwined around and biting into his arm, blood dripping down, and even other STO people, such as Clarice, object to his extreme methods–the rest of the episode is involved with enemies masquerading as friends. Vergis approaches Daniel about purchasing the C-Bucs under the guise of friendship, when his actual goal is to make him suffer; Clarice pays Amanda a friendly visit, ostensibly to say goodbye to Zoe, but actually to steal information needed to create her own Zoe avatar.
One even has to wonder about Zoe’s motives in flirting with Philomon. While her actions seem to be motivated by having a crush on him, her tone of voice when she says “Someone’s about to get lucky,” as she answers his dating profile, sounds like this also could be some sort of elaborate embarrassment revenge scheme. “Know Thy Enemy”‘s theme is even reflected (and humorously so) in the friendly, faux version of Daniel that appears to guide Joseph through his tour of the holoband, only to be abruptly interrupted by the actual Daniel who arrives at the Adama home, fuming that Joseph has betrayed him to Vergis.
The Vergis plot is particularly fascinating, because it confirms for us that on Caprica, people’s actions have consequences. One may have thought that it had slipped the mind of the show’s writers that the brilliant Daniel Graystone had made his Cylon innovation by stealing from his competitor. This little irony has been subtly woven in throughout the series but hasn’t been highlighted again until this episode, when Daniel learns that (a) two men died in the break-in and (b) Vergis blames him for it. Daniel, therefore, is receiving punishment for his actions both from Vergis and from himself. Throughout the episode, he has visions, almost flashbacks, of the two men being killed, as if he had done it himself, which demonstrates that he does have a conscience. He blames himself for the deaths as assuredly as if he’d stabbed them with his own hands. When Daniel speaks to Cyrus about this in front of the Cylon, it also seems to be the first time that Zoe may realize just what her father is capable of, and the morally gray actions he will take in the pursuit of scientific knowledge. It is unclear whether she realizes he did this to bring her back.
Additionally, I don’t remember whether we knew in the pilot that Vergis was a Tauron, but this makes the plot more interesting on two levels. The first is that Joseph put his and Sam’s life in such extreme danger in ordering the theft, by going against another Tauron–and an extremely powerful one, to boot–that it is clear how closely connected Joseph and Daniel were for that short period of time. This was an extremely significant action on Joseph’s part, and it makes the severity of their split even more palpable. As for the second level, the Tauron enemy that Daniel has made in Vergis is an extreme parallel of the enemy he made in Joseph and serves to further underline the severity and machismo of Tauron culture, particularly when it comes to their Hammurabian eye-for-an-eye revenge mentality.
This episode also gives us a further peek into the workings of the STO. It is now pretty clear that Clarice does not approve of the bombings that are currently occurring, though we don’t know for sure whether she’s opposed to bombings in general or just these most recent ones specifically, due to the negative attention they’re drawing to the STO. We do know that she doesn’t like Barnabas and believes that the Conclave (presumably the heads of the STO) shouldn’t be looking towards death and suicide bombings for furthering their cause but should instead be looking towards apotheosis. This is starting to give us a better picture of what her agenda is: she wants to uses Zoe’s avatar idea in order to propagate the “continuation of the soul into eternity,” i.e. the afterlife. In other words, she sees avatars as a manner by which one can live forever.
And with this piece of the puzzle falling into place, the link between the Cylon religion, as it was presented on Battlestar Galactica, and the STO begins to come more into focus. Could it be that the ultimate goal of both has always been about preserving life after death? If so, the resurrection of Zoe and Tamara can be seen not only as a thematic forerunner to Cylon resurrection but one of the main reasons for it. This concept makes a fascinating comment about the connection between technology and religion in the BSG universe. Technology is one way that man attempts to leave a legacy and make a sizable impact on the future. If that legacy can be used to preserve people of the current generation, however, man never has to die. Perhaps the STO will ultimately come to believe that the proper way to serve god is to be like him, to fashion themselves even more in his image, by becoming immortal. Perhaps this, then, is how Cylon resurrection became conflated with the belief in the One God.
Other memorable moments in “Know Thy Enemy” include Amanda calling the Cylon a “frakkin’ ugly monster,” having no clue that her daughter is in there, reacting to her words, the scene where Philomon continues to anthropomorphize the Cylon, just as Daniel indicated in the last episode that people would, and, of course, Zoe’s virtual date with Philomon. For the moment, Barnabas seems fairly one-note, with James Marsters as oddly flat in the role as he was in Torchwood and Smallville (I’ve only really seen him come alive on screen as Spike), but his screen time was very short, and the writing on this show always eventually introduces deeper layers to its characters, so it’s not blindly optimistic to expect that this aspect will improve. Other than that, this episode, while not the best of the series to date, provides quite a few tasty morsels to chew on, while we wait for the next installment.
Related posts:
- Caprica 1.09: “End of the Line” (Mid-Season Finale)
- Caprica 1.07: “The Imperfections of Memory”
- Caprica 1.08: “Ghost in the Machine”
- Caprica 1.05: “There Is Another Sky”
- Caprica 1.04: “Gravedancing”
