Caprica episode 9 review

9. End Of The Line

As Caprica leaves our screens for a six month sabbatical, with the back end of its maiden season to come, it’s fair to say that it’s a show that’s occasionally sparked into life, but often fallen under a weight of questions. This episode is, I’d argue, one of the best we’ve seen thus far, but it’s also hard to make a case that it’s left us tantalised for the day it comes back.

That said, it did a lot of things right, dealing for the most part with the problems that Daniel Graystone has made for himself.

Domestically, his attempts to cook a meal for his wife, Amanda, go off the boil when she starts questioning him about the allegations Vergis made. When she confronts him about the theft of the MCP and the death of the two people as a result, he fails to give a convincing answer, sending her seemingly permanently off the rails. By the end of the episode, we’re led to believe that she’s jumped to her doom, with the closing shot of Daniel receiving a phone call likely to be the news of her death.

His virtual daughter isn’t faring much better. Under pressure to hit a new, shortened deadline to deliver 100,000 Cylons, he orders the wiping of the prototype Cylon, basically erasing Zoe’s avatar in the process. After the way he basically mentally tortured her last week, Daniel’s going to hit further problems when we meet again as Zoe – after killing Philomon – is now on the run. Needing 100,000 Cylons, Daniel Graystone doesn’t have one as things stand.

Elsewhere, his holoband technology and the V-world appears to be eating away at Joseph Adama. I’ve not really enjoyed this story thread, as Joseph hunts for Tamara in the virtual world, but at least it seems to be wrapped up now for the time being. Tamara’s appearance and actions put pay to any hopes that his daughter is still alive, and thus we’ll be left to see the ramifications of this on Joseph as he comes to terms with it.

Outside of Daniel Graystone’s circle is the Soliders Of The One group which, since the pilot episode, hasn’t done a fat lot. That changes, though, with a power struggle between James Marsters’ Barnabus and Sister Clarice.

Sister Clarice has been an utterly underwhelming character to date, and in no way comes across as an important figure in a terrorist cell. Barnabus looks far more unhinged, and here he’s recruited Lacy to the STO. She’s given the job of switching the key fob on Clarice’s key chain, and it turns out that it’s the trigger to a lot of explosives she’s planted.

With Barnabus pointing a gun at her head, Lacy detonates the bomb, but we see that Clarice has left her car when she sees Amanda about to jump. The power struggle still has some mileage, it seems.

All roads, though, come back to Daniel Graystone, who’s finally had to sell the Caprica Buccaneers team to Vergis (and just how shoddy did the stadium look), not knowing that the same Vergis has secretly struck a deal to take on the Cylon project. That’s assuming, of course, that Graystone can’t meet the new deadline, which looks very, very likely from here.

Now, sitting back and reflecting on all of that, you might conclude that these are the ingredients of a fairly routine episode. Thing is, you’d be pretty much on the money. This didn’t feel like a show about to go on a long break, and instead, while we got some progress on some issues, it carried on very much in the vein that we’ve seen to date.

Which leaves Caprica with some pressure on its shoulders. There’s little doubt, half way through season one, that there are terrific and substantive ingredients here, but the show’s been reluctant to do much with them to date. From the back end of season one, we’re looking for much more progression in the narrative, and just a little more momentum than we’ve seen to date. For, while this was a good, solid episode, it’s not really addressed some of the issues that are crying out for some work.

Read our review of episode 8 here.