Caprica: Season 1.0

It’s been a while since a sci-fi series left me with as bad a taste in my mouth as Caprica has, so much so that I became pretty juvenile just a few episodes in and started referring to it as Crapica. This shockingly inept prequel to Battlestar Galactica is firing on so few cylinders it’s difficult to even know where to begin discussing it. Well, for starters, it’s worth mentioning that the 90-minute pilot, which is included here in both its rated and unrated forms, is a fairly competent and clever kick-start that promises greatness around the corner. Unfortunately, any sense the concept possessed is thrown out the window almost as soon as the series proper begins.

The place is, of course, the planet Caprica, 58 years before the events seen at the start of Galactica. Caprica is supposedly in a state of moral decay, akin to Rome before its fall. We know this because many of the adult characters smoke cigarettes(!) while the teenagers engage in sex-fueled and violence-driven virtual reality games. This is in and of itself problematic, because the world seen within the video games would be cause for alarm, but the outside real world of Caprica itself isn’t all that different from our world today, except everybody dresses like they’re from the 50s; everybody, that is, save for the Graystones, a rich family of scientists who seem to be a few steps ahead of the rest of the planet.

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Warehouse 13: Season One

As someone who loves science fiction, it’s unfortunate that I’ve got an almost irrational resistance to programming on Syfy. It goes all the way back to their brutal treatment of Farscape, and while logic tells me that Battlestar Galactica should have made up for that misstep, I still find it hard to trust the network to this day. Or maybe it’s just that most of their programming sucks, and is aimed at the lowest common denominator.

Needless to say, I skipped Warehouse 13 when it was on last year, and once I started watching this set I assumed I had made the right decision, as the first four or five episodes (out of 12) aren’t much to write home about. The warehouse in question is located in the hinterlands of South Dakota. It houses a seemingly infinite number of artifacts from history – artifacts that inexplicably contain strange and unique powers (you’ve seen it before at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark and the beginning of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull). For instance, Edgar Allen Poe’s quill makes whatever it writes happen, while Lewis Carroll’s mirror contains the spirit of an evil Alice.

There’s a schlubby caretaker named Artie Nielsen (the always great Saul Rubinek), who in the 90-minute pilot enlists the aid of two Secret Service agents, Pete Lattimer (Eddie McClintock) and Myka Bering (Joanne Kelly), both of whom are far too attractive for their professions. Their job is to trek across the U.S., hunt down artifacts, and bring them back to the warehouse – but not before getting in all manner of trouble first. There’s also the owner of Warehouse 13, the mysterious Mrs. Frederic (C.C.H. Pounder), who instills fear with her steely gaze, as well as Leena (Genelle Williams), a quiet, possibly psychic woman who runs the B & B where the Warehouse employees reside, which is one of the show’s stranger narrative moves. Why can’t they just get apartments, like normal people?

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Red Dwarf: Back to Earth

If you don’t know what smeg is all about, the Urban Dictionary defines it as such: “A futuristic British all-purpose swear word. From Red Dwarf.” Battlestar Galactica has frak, Farscape has frell…and Red Dwarf has smeg. If it sounds funnier than frak or frell, that’s because Red Dwarf is really a comedy that just so happens to be set in the far future, on a spaceship called the Red Dwarf. It first started on BBC Two in 1988, racking up a total of eight seasons before finally ending in 1999, and it built up a pretty serious following in the process; although I suppose describing anything to do with Red Dwarf as serious makes me a complete and total smeghead.

Truth be told, despite being a disciple of British sci-fi and comedy, I never really got into Red Dwarf which to this day mystifies me (perhaps even more so after watching this reunion special), as it should’ve fit like a very comfortable glove. The number of episodes of Red Dwarf I’ve seen over the years could probably be counted on one hand. I’m hardly an authority on it, but given the chance to check out Back to Earth – the only new Dwarf in over a decade – I jumped at it, if for no other reason than to see how I’d react all these years later.

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Battlestar Galactica: The Complete Series

Humans create Cylons.

Cylons destroy most of humanity in a nuclear holocaust.

The survivors run from the Cylons in a creaky old spaceship, looking for the fabled planet Earth.

It’s funny, but for as complex a show as it often is, Battlestar Galactica can still be boiled down to the bare bones with those three sentences. Probably the greatest triumph of the series, though, is that it’s built around the two topics which are considered taboo for cocktail parties and dinner conversation: religion and politics. It’s entirely possible that such a series could only be successful under the banner of science fiction, and yet Galactica only uses the sci-fi label as a ruse to tell the kind of stories it wants to tell. Read between the lines: the show really isn’t like any other TV science fiction that’s come before it.

Of course, devotees of the original 1978 incarnation would be all too happy to explain how, without the groundwork Glen Larson laid, Ron Moore’s new version never could have existed. They may be right, but none of that would change the fact that, even as a Star Wars lovin’ kid, I always hated the ‘70s version. Even though it only lasted one season, it felt like it was on forever, a perception likely exacerbated by the Gods-awful Galactica 1980 series which followed it for a half a season. Somewhere out there, no doubt, there’s a kid who had the exact same reaction to the new version of the series, but that’s not because it’s bad. It’s because this isn’t a show for kids. In fact, it’s hard to imagine anyone under the age of 12 finding much of anything to enjoy about it. The stench of the original series stuck with me so thoroughly in my adult life, however, that it wasn’t until the second season was well under way that I broke down and gave the remake/reimagining/rehash a chance on DVD – mostly because it had been recommended to me over and over, and I figured I ought to give it a chance. Obviously, this anecdote has a predictable outcome: the show was actually good. No, it was better than good: it felt transcendent. Much of my reaction was due to watching it on DVD, and now that the entire thing is available in one massive package, you too can experience it on DVD or Blu-ray, which is by far the best way to imbibe in this show’s wares.

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Battlestar Galactica: Season 4.0

At this point in its timeline, Battlestar Galactica simply works better on DVD. This batch of episodes, which makes up the first half of the show’s final season, was incredibly frustrating to watch upon broadcast. Of course, the commercial breaks are a given annoyance, but the cinematic flow of the series wasn’t helped by the seven-day breaks between installments. Furthermore, the episodes contained in this set are almost entirely character-driven. At the close of the third season, viewers were left with two big developments that would drive the fourth and final season: the revelation of the identity of the twelfth and final Cylon, and whether or not Earth would finally be reached. One of these is seemingly addressed in the final moments of 4.10, “Revelations,” but it’s a torturous road getting there.

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Battlestar Galactica - Season Three

If you’re not already into the Sci Fi Channel’s revival of Battlestar Galactica, Season Three is probably not a good place to start – unless you don’t mind being utterly confused and left feeling like you’ve arrived late to a very intense party. The season begins more or less where the second left off: The majority of the human survivors had settled on a habitable planet they dubbed “New Caprica,” and within a matter of months found themselves enslaved by the Cylons and living in less than humane conditions. At the top of the conflicted heap is the newly elected President Gaius Baltar (James Callis), who’s forced to aid the Cylons in their takeover for fear of his life. Meanwhile, somewhere out in space resides Galactica, with a patient Admiral Adama (Edward James Olmos) at the helm, strategically devising a plan to rescue the New Capricans from their dire situation.

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