Category: TV Dramas (Page 142 of 235)

It’s full speed ahead for “Caprica”

May 13, 2008 / John Paulsen

After some time on the Sci-Fi Channel’s backburner, Ronald D. Moore’s “Caprica,” a spin-off to “Battlestar Galactica,” has been cast. They’re starting with a two-hour pilot, and I guess they’re going from there.

From its IMDB page…

Two families, the Graystones and the Adamas, live together on a peaceful planet known as Caprica, where a startling breakthrough in artificial intelligence brings about unforeseen consequences. A spin-off of the Sci Fi Channel series “Battlestar Galactica” set 50 years prior to the events of that show.
Was originally pitched to NBC/Universal by Remi Aubuchon as an independent series with no connection to the “Battlestar Galactica” (2004) franchise. NBC/Universal read the pilot (an allegorical story about slavery with robots) and suggested Aubuchon meet with Ronald D. Moore and David Eick (who were considering a Battlestar Galactica spin-off series at the time). Aubuchon, Moore and Eick met and within a couple of months the “Caprica” series was born.

Esai Morales (“Jericho,” “NYPD Blue”) will play Joseph Adama, the father of Will Adama. Morales is inherently watchable and should provide a great cornerstone for the series. Paula Malcomson (who played Trixie on “Deadwood”) will play a surgeon who is also a double agent, while Eric Stoltz (“Some Kind of Wonderful,” “Mask,” “Pulp Fiction”) will play a wealthy computer engineer whose work will give birth to the Cylons. I’m fans of both Malcomson and Stoltz as well, so I’m pretty pumped about this cast.

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Battlestar Galactica: “Faith”

May 10, 2008 / John Paulsen

Maybe they should rename this show “Demetrius,” because things are a hell of a lot more interesting on that ship than they are on good ol’ Galactica. Let’s jump to the end and discuss what the hybrid said (and correct me if I’m wrong):

The dying leader will know the truth of the opera house. The missing three will give you the five, who have come from the home of the thirteenth. You are the harbinger of death, Cara Thrace. You will lead them all to their end.

I was all ready to theorize about this on my own, but Cara and Co. were kind enough to spell it out for us. Apparently, the final five Cylons – Tigh, Sam, Tyrol, Tory and ? – came from the thirteenth colony (Earth) and can lead the fleet back. In order to identify the five, the Cylons need to reactivate D’Anna, as she’s the only one who knows their identities. Presumably, she’ll lead them to the five and the five will lead them to Earth.

Okay, that should be easy enough, right?

But then there’s the whole thing about Starbuck being the “harbinger of death” and that she will “lead them all to their end.” Honestly, that doesn’t sound very good.

So the prophecy kind of contradicts itself. Presumably, getting to Earth is a good thing, though the hybrid made it sound like they were on the road to death. It’s possible that she was talking about just the Cylons (or just the humans), and how Cara will lead them to their doom. There’s a lot to chew on there.

Back on Galactica, President Roslin gave more responsibility to Tory (great!) before going to see Doc Coddle for her cancer treatments. (By the way, I have a theory that Coddle is in fact the final Cylon because he is always there in sick bay when something major happens. Humans need to sleep sometime, right?) Anyway, while there, Roslin met a friend, Emily (played by Nana Visitor, who also played Major Kira on “Star Trek: DS9”). I think Emily’s role was to get the President thinking about death, the One God, and Baltar’s sermons. Apparently, Roslin could have joined her mother (played by Barbara Bush) but instead decided to go back to the land of the living. Good for her.

I’m not real clear on what the Eight did in the hybrid room. Was she trying to kill it? The Centurion must have thought so because he dumped some lead into her, so that might have been part of the Eights vs. Sixes mini-war that was going on behind the scenes. Or maybe the Centurion just took issue with the Eight trying to take the hybrid offline at all.

Things seem to be picking up, which is definitely a good thing. I just hope that the show Adama’s face when Cara Thrace jumps back to the fleet with a basestar in her back pocket. I also wonder if anything is going to come of Sam placing his hand onto the controls of the basestar. He didn’t touch it for long, but he did touch it.

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Lost 4.11 – Cabin Fever

May 8, 2008 / Jason Zingale

Just when I was beginning to feel comfortable with the various mysteries surrounding the show, the writers had to go and throw a new one into the mix that is so unbelievably confusing, I’m beginning to question if they still know what they’re doing. I mean, I totally buy the whole Ben Linus/Charles Widmore connection, but since when did Locke become such an important entity that he was literally being recruited by Dharma as a child?

In fact, Richard Alpert didn’t only visit him as a prematurely born baby (I’m still curious as to how Alpert manages to remain the same age for nearly 50 years), but he contacts him twice more throughout his childhood – once under the guise of a “school for special kids” and again via a pamphlet for a Portland-based science camp. Then, as an adult going through rehab following his accident, Locke is visited by another Dharma suit: Abaddon, who suggests that he experience the Australian walkabout to help discover himself. It’s all very coincidental, and while the writers utilized this same tactic in the first two seasons, those instances weren’t bound by such disbelief.

Nevertheless, it appears Locke is the new (less evil) Ben, and after dreaming about a conversation with a former Dharma worker named Horace, the trio set off to find the cabin using Locke’s newly learned information. It’s with a map he finds in the Dharma death pit (i.e. the place Ben dumped all the bodies) that they’re able to locate the always moving cabin, but Locke is sent in alone when Ben declares that his destiny has already been fulfilled. When he enters, however, Locke doesn’t find his expected guest, but rather… Dr. Christian Shepherd, who claims he can speak on Jacob’s behalf.

This is where the show totally lost me, because not only does it not make sense that Jack’s father is on the island (and seemingly not a ghost), but apparently, Claire is now a part of the whole cabin/Jacob secret as well. She’s acting mighty creepy, too, and if that weren’t enough, Christian has just told Locke that in order to save the island, he’s going to have to move it. In the words of Harold Lee, “What the fuck?”

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Battlestar Galactica: “The Road Less Traveled”

May 3, 2008 / John Paulsen

This week’s episode provided a little bit of movement in the two more compelling ongoing storylines: the fate of the Demetrius and the intra-Cylon war.

While I understand how Starbuck’s crew is getting eager to return to the fleet, what are the odds that they stumble upon Leoben at the site of an intra-Cylon battle? It’s obviously not a coincidence so either Starbuck (skinjob or not) is indeed on the path to Earth or she’s (intentionally or unintentionally) leading the ship into a trap. This is the first good clue the ship has discovered on its mission, and there simply isn’t time to go back and check in with the fleet before following the clue to see where it leads. However, that makes me wonder why Adama and Starbuck wouldn’t arrange for some backup meeting point and time if the circumstances prohibited the Demetrius from returning to the fleet at the 60-day mark.

Maybe the solution is for Starbuck another crewmember to take a raptor or two and follow the clue while the rest of the crew meets up with the fleet. One thing’s for certain – Starbuck needs to talk to the hybrid, and fast. Leoben wants to form an alliance between the humans and the remaining Sixes, Eights and Twos that would allow Cara to fulfill her destiny, which Leoben says is to lead the humans to Earth.

Back on Galactica, Baltar’s tiresome evangelizing intersected with the Tyrol’s semi-dreary mourning/coming-to-grips storyline. The former Chief decided to shave his head and jump rope in his cabin, which are (apparently) common reactions to discovering that you’re a Cylon and losing your wife to suicide. The whole Tyrol/Baltar holding hands thing seems extraneous right now, though I sure hope there is some purpose to it. Watching Baltar preach just makes me squirm, so I hope that he eventually gets what’s coming to him.

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Lost 4.10 – Something Nice Back Home

May 1, 2008 / Jason Zingale

It only makes sense that following last week’s awesome episode, tonight’s show would be comparably worse. Them’s the rules of “Lost,” I’m afraid, and though we got some more insight into the events leading up to Jack’s eventual post-rescue breakdown, the action on the island was considerably tame.

I mean, does Jack’s appendicitis really qualify for that level of dramatic tension? Hardly, but when Juliet announces that she’s going to have to operate, everyone freaks out, including Jack, who becomes so unruly during the actual surgery that Bernard eventually just knocks him out with some chloroform. Before all that, however, Faraday and Charlotte head to the medical hatch to pick up some supplies for the surgery, and since everyone has decided that they’re no longer to be trusted following Bernard’s Morse code trickery last week, Jin and Sun tag along with orders that if they try to run away, they’re to shoot them in the legs. That’s always a nice way to make someone feel at home, no?

Of course, I honestly believe that none of the original freighter folk (Faraday, Charlotte, Lapidus and Miles) are bad people, but that doesn’t change the fact that they’ve been placed in an incredibly awkward and high-tension position. For all the hoo-hah caused about their possible disloyalty, however, it seems like the only reason that entire subplot was written was so that Jin could approach Charlotte about her ability to speak Korean. Charlotte denies it at first, but when Jin threatens (in Korean, of course) to break Daniel’s fingers, she gives in. And what exactly does Jin want in trade for keeping Charlotte’s secret? A promise that when the helicopter arrives, she’ll take Sun away from the island.

Meanwhile, Sawyer, Claire and Miles are still making their way back to camp, and with the exception of their discovery of Danielle and Karl’s bodies half-buried in the ground, it was a pretty pointless subplot. Sure, we got to see Sawyer verbally attack Miles like he was the second coming of Hurley, but it wasn’t really going anywhere until Claire mysteriously wandered into the jungle, supposedly with her father. Sawyer goes looking for her, but all he finds is evidence of bad parenting at its absolute worst – poor Aaron all alone underneath a tree.

Claire wasn’t the only one seeing visions of Dr. Christian Shepherd, though. In Jack’s flash-forward, the good doctor discovered that not all good things last forever, and after a brief romantic stint with Kate, he eventually breaks things off following her admission that she went behind his back in order make good on a promise to Sawyer. Was Jack jumping to conclusions perhaps a little too quickly? You bet, but wouldn’t you too if you were seeing your dead father walking around your workplace? Of course, and though Jack gets some happy pills from a friend of his (cue bushy beard and mental breakdown), he’s still understandably freaked out by a recent visit from Hurley who claims that all of the Oceanic Six are really dead. I’m not exactly sure how to react to this sudden increase in the supernatural (Miles can talk to dead people, Hurley can see Charlie, Jack and Claire can see their father), but I’m definitely looking forward to finding out.

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