So Caprica is no more. The final episodes have aired, and while I was underwhelmed by episode 15 (I think I managed to miss 14 which might be one reason I didn’t care for it), the last three where the action and tension was racked up were a lot better.
After spending far too long having not much happen, pretty much all the characters’ storylines were pretty exciting. My favourites, the Greystones, were at the centre of the best stuff. Amanda’s spying on Clarice and the STO had her stealing Clarice’s holoband, which included the simulations for a pretty horrific terrorist attack on a packed sports event.
After her police contact is shot (who did it again? Sam? The cops?) Clarice’s family realise she is their mole and plan a home invasion on Greystone Manors to steal it back and kill Daniel and Amanda. As one of Clarice’s husbands is Scott Porter (also on The Good Wife and also a sleaze!) I was quite pleased when he got his hand almost burnt off then brained by Cylon Zoe later! The actual home invasion was also pretty exciting, seeing the lengths they had to go to to defeat Daniel’s formidable defences – although their techie knowledge surely should not have been quite the match it was for a genius like Daniel.
Meanwhile, Daniel and Amanda head to V world to try and find Zoe, who is holed up in a woodland paradise. Amanda gets in a few digs about Daniel’s daft attempts to contact her, which mainly involve force. “How have you coped without me these months?” she asks. So true, he is a prat!
The actual reunion is moderately touching, and possibly important in that we see later it leads to Daniel and Zoe creating a flesh and (presumably) bone body for her – or skin job as Zoe presciently names it. She also pops her consciousness back into her metal cylon body in Daniel’s basement lab in time to save them from Clarice and her gang.
The Adama’s have never been my favourite part of Caprica, but there was some satisfying stuff for them too. The biggest shock being the death of young Willy Adama – hand on, wasn’t he supposed to grow up to be Cmd Bill Adama, father to Apollo and Laura Roslins favourite gruff boy? I was always a little put off that the kid seemed to be so immersed in the gangster world, and all is revealed when we meet William Mk2 – or Bill. Do parents really name children the same even if the first is killed?
In the final episode (co-written by the always fab Jane Espenson, whose name hasn’t appeared on the writing credits as much since the early days) saw Daniel and Amanda framed by a crooked STO loving cop (Peter Wingfield is nearly always a slimy baddie) and on the run as suspected terrorists. They find the missing holoband and thanks to Daniel’s technical know how, fly in a troop of cyclons to assassinate the attempted bombers. Hooray! We all love cyclons!
The episode ends with a little coda showing us what happens next. Cylons are walking dogs and working construction. They are also genuflecting in the aisles of churches while Sister Clarice preaches that God loves them (surely she should be under arrest??) Daniel and Amanda pull Zoe out of the first goo bath that we saw every time a cyclon resurrected on BSG. So is she like Six and Boomer and the BSG skin job cyclons? She wasn’t one of the twelve models we met, but was she the prototype?
So all in all, Caprica finished much stronger than most of the run. The premiere episode way back when was great – the action of the bombing, Zoe discovering cyberworld, who was Clarice etc. Sadly, a lot of the episodes in between have been too slow moving or had going-nowhere stories. I could have done without the majority of the Adama family shenanigans, Amanda’s breakdown and falling in with Clarice, Daniel’s moping and tendency to bruise his little ginger face, all the daft V world stuff. What we really wanted from Caprica was how the cylons came to be and they took too damn long getting us there. With the thrills ramped up as in these last few episodes, Caprica showed what it could have been.