CAPRICA 1.5 - "There Is Another Sky"

WRITER: Kath Lingenfelter
DIRECTOR: Michael Nankin
GUEST CAST: Luciana Carro, Karen Elizabeth Austin, Camille Mitchell, Hiro Kanagawa, Genevieve Buechner, Julius Chapple, Richard Harmon, AC Peterson, Eve Harlow, Travis Turner, Graham Chabot & Thomas Saunders

[SPOILERS] Caprica's most enjoyable episode yet owed a debt to all forms of virtual reality science-fiction, but it's understandable that The Matrix will dominate most people's thoughts. "There Is Another Sky" sure benefited from tackling the show's interactive "V-World"; it's fresh territory to explore, visually exciting and just made for a refreshing change of setting and pace. The plot's structure also worked better by limiting screentime for the Graystone's and focusing instead on the Adama's...

This was primarily an overdue adventure for Tamara (Genevieve Buechner), who's trapped in the virtual reality "V-World" -- unaware she's just a digital phantom of a teenage girl killed in the MAGLEV bombing. In this episode, Tamara sought help to escape her digital prison from some mobsters led by a woman called Vesta (Camille Mitchell), who was dismissive of Tamara's story at first, but came to realize the opportunities she represents when a gunshot to her stomach failed to "de-rez" her back to reality and healed within minutes.

Tamara was thus partnered with a young gamer called Heracles (Richard Harmon), who hates his real-world existence, and proceeded to give her a guided tour of the "game" she's inadvertently playing: "New Cap City"; a noir version of Caprica City that feels like a hybrid of Grand Theft Auto and Dick Tracy. Heracles intends to become the first person to ever win the program, by stealing money from the current best player, a white-suited kingpin known as Chiro. To do this, Tamara's unique regenerative ability are employed to distract Chiro and his bodyguards at a club, while Heracles furtively downloaded the mob boss' avatar so he could later gain access to his personal bank and rob its vault.

It was all great fun, as it sounds. The retro-futurism was a joy, but it's also a compelling idea to have Tamara be such a powerful entity within the virtual world, already flexing her digital muscles to heal wounds and eliminate enemy software programs. It could perhaps slip into Matrix tropes too obviously, but for now it's just a great idea to have a dead girl find a level of importance and control in a fake world that she could only dream of in reality. Given her family's Tauron background as gangsters, there's also something rather satisfying about the prospect of Tamara Adama becoming the V-World's leading mobster. Thinking ahead, I wonder if Zoe has comparable abilities when she downloads herself into the V-World (logically, she should), and if she'll become Tamara's nemesis once she realizes Zoe's responsible for her bodily demise?

In the real-world, Joseph (Esai Morales) and Willie (Sina Najafi) went fishing as a way to connect, now that Joseph's been made aware of his son's grief turning to truancy and violent behaviour. This meant Joseph had to embrace his Tauron culture (which is something he's been reluctant to do) and let his wife and daughter find peace by participating in a ritual alongside his son.

Daniel (Eric Stoltz) didn't get too much screentime this week, but his headline scene was a memorable turning point for the series. Facing the ignominy of being ditched by his own company by his Board Of Directors, for publicly refusing to accept Holoband-related revenues, Daniel inspires everyone to follow his vision of the company's future: Cylons as sentient manservants. Using Zoe as a demonstration model, as she's the only robot that has an unnerving aura of intelligence (for reasons unknown to him), Daniel's impassioned speech about this next phase in Graystone Industries is successful enough to let him keep his position. So, the stage is set for Daniel to mass-manufacture Cylon slaves, although I assume he'll first have to find a way to duplicate the Zoe model's inimitable behaviour patterns?

I enjoyed "There Is Another Sky" a great deal. I particular like the duality that's coming to the fore between Zoe and Tamara. Zoe's the digital avatar of a dead religious activist from a privileged background, who's found a way to exist in the real world inside a robot; Tamara's the digital avatar of a dead girl from a criminal background, who's can exist in a virtual world. Both present a radical leap forward in their respective hardware/software existences, and will assumedly continue to grow more important, before converging. Well, that's my prediction. I wouldn't be surprised if a subclass of Cylon slaves are eventually created by Daniel, only for the Soldiers Of One to find a way for their teenage followers to download themselves into these Cylon bodies via the V-World, with Tamara as a kind of virtual facilitator/gatekeeper in league with Zoe. But would Tamara be persuaded to help the people who killed her, or would she need to be tricked? Oh, I think I'm getting ahead of myself.

Overall, this episode came as blessed relief for me. I still have some concerns with Caprica as a series, but I got a stronger sense of direction and purpose with this episode. Plus, it was a more entertaining balance between pure sci-fi adventure and human drama. Seeing Joseph become aware his daughter's still "alive" in V-World, after Tamara got word to him through the offline Heracles, was also a provocative way to end things. I'm just not 100% sure why Heracles didn't hang around to explain more and instead ran off scared by Joseph's reaction to this news, as it felt more like a way to keep the story going than a genuine human response.

2 MARCH 2010: SKY1 (HD), 9PM