Pretty on the Inside

The first one-hour episode of Caprica did not disappoint, beginning with all kinds of trippiness from inside the artificial intelligence copy of Zoe and a super-huge CGI sweep through the gargantuan stadium used to play Pyramid, the big sport on the planet, as the Caprica planetary anthem played, everyone with both hands crossed over their hearts. And the opening titles, sort of Dallas on acid but without spoiling the images with the actor names (the transition from statue hand outstretched to Polly Walker's is a nifty hook) sets the dominant tone as well: semiotic labyrinth:



The SyFy embed is a little dark, but you get the idea. The series creaters, Rene Aubuchon and Ron Moore, are leading us deeper and deeper into this world that, as they state, seems beautiful on the outside but is corrupt on the inside. Each week, if the pilot and first real episode are any indicator, will give us more clues about this world: its customs, its art and technology, and its clues to its own impending downfall.

But the most interesting question by far is that of replicating what's inside of an individual human being, the personality, intelligence, responses...the soul. Now that Zoe Greystone is dead but her AI version lives on, most often trapped inside of a big ugly metallic robot, her best friend still relates to her as if in continuity with her dead friend. Her father is seeking something of the same.

And even Adams/Adama, who Greystone pere gave an opportunity to meet his daughter's avatar in black empty space at the end of the pilot, where she cried in tearful terror, "Daddy, my heart's not beating!" and cause him to turn against the project, even he now asks if that version of his daughter is currently living in abject fear somewhere in that cyberspace. Even he is wanting her rescued or otherwise put out of her misery in some way.

We normally ascribe feelings to stuffed animals, animated characters, even Transformer-type robots. The question Caprica asks is whether a perfect AI is somehow less human than we are, when we can relate to it exactly as we would to the real thing. Further, it edges towards asking us exactly what we're made of -- and if we're no more than a very advanced biological form of AI, and what does that mean to our sacred value placed on being individual, soul-delineated human?

My biggest counterveiling thought here is that the one thing that makes a conversation with my kids different than with their avatars is that they are constantly growing. In a year they won't have the exact same size and shape, and neither will their brains. The open question is AI learning, and as we know from BSG, cylons do learn. But is that the same as biological growth? Isn't the natural cellular growth/decay of the brain something that affects the very core of consciousness, the storing and accessing of memory, so that it would not be duplicable?

It'll be interesting to see if the show addresses it.

The composer, Bear McCready, does as great a job contributing to mood and thought as he did on Battlestar Galactica, and on his blog he describes the stark differences as well as certain similarities between the scores. In essence, Caprica is more chamber orchestra, as befits an advanced society, but as with the first series there is a melancholy running underneath the sophistication.

For your listening pleasure, his End Titles music, pulling together the major themes (characters, etc.) from the show:



I'm in for more -- take me through this maze on Caprica as well as the innerspace of AI Zoe and others who make up this brave new foreboding world.