Caprica's resurrection.

Despite my feelings about the lame-arse Haven SyFy (SciFi, goddamit!) has redeemed itself, with Caprica version 1.1



For anyone who's never seen the show, I'd have to say it's not something instantly accessible, but bear with me. It's part of the Battlestar Galactica universe, and.........hello?.... Hello?  I think I've lost a few people there already.

Well (deep breath), I suggest you start playing this music then read on....(Spoiler alert: If you haven't seen the first half of series 1, skip the next paragraph)



...It's about 2 families living on Caprica, the capital world of the 12 colonies of humankind, 50 years before the Cylons come along and wipe out all but 50,000 members of the human race - there's this rich Dyson-type inventor bloke called Daniel Greystone, his jailbait genius daughter Zoe, who gets killed in the first episode in a train bombing by these religious nutters called the Soldiers of the One - it was her boyfriend what done it - anyhow, her mum's a surgeon who understandably is grief-striken and is a bit delusional too, and mopes about a bit. She becomes the close personal friend of her daughter's creepy teacher (played by Polly Walker from Rome) There's the Adamas too: Taurons, frowned-upon by the (generally) racist Capricans - Mob lawyer Joseph loses his daughter Tamara in the same bombing. But Zoe Greystone's a genius, remember - she's made a virtual duplicate of herself in Cyberspace, and her somewhat amoral dad downloads her and puts her in this robot soldier he's got which doesn't work. Until of course, he puts the virtual version of Zoe in it. Et voila! The first sentient Cylon centurion is born, and with it, their method of resurrrection too. A virtual version of Tamara Adama is also made, and she becomes trapped in an online game and becomes uber-powerful in it. It's kinda like wi-fi, except with souls...

 And that, friends, is my summary of Caprica Version 1.0 - I've actually left loads of detail out, because, unlike Battlestar, it was really really soapy.

By the end of the first half of the series, I was really beginning to get a bit bored, but  Caprica Version 1.1 is a different beast. Slicker and with more direction, it romps along, spanning and interweaving storylines on Caprica, Gemenon (the rather cold and inhospitable homeworld of the Soldiers of the One) and in Cyberspace, taking in religious zealotry, corporate ambition and greed, and even has a classic mob scene. Take a look: it's almost a homage to the the Godfather. Here, Daniel Greystone, in desperation, turns to the Tauron mob for help...



Episode 10 is much darker than the previous half of the series, and is all the better for it - the desires, the plotting and the scheming of the main characters has come to the fore, and what none of them realise is that the cylon race is almost inperceptibly developing in the background. And what's more, the series very cleverly shows you exactly why they hate humans enough to want to wipe them from the face of the 12 colonies.

Bravo, SyFy, Caprica has just become one hell of a ride.

Caprica will return to Sky 1 in January 2011