Two Nerds Discuss Caprica..., VERBATIM SCRIPT SPOILERS. WARNING... Rating Options

[punchface]

to Max, the BadMotherFracker...

I was looking at the script fragments that we have and couldn't decide where to start. Eventually, I fig'd that the logical place to start would be with the main character, Joseph Adama. After that, we can do Adama's opposite, the Daniel fragment.

Anyway, here's a transcription of the first two pages of the eight page fragement, and my thoughts:

"Caprica" 2nd NETWORK REVISION 10/6/06

DANIEL (CONT'D)
You want something, *anything*, you just ask Sean, okay?

William nods, clearly enraptured by the game.

INT. BUCCANEER CLUBHOUSE - NIGHT

A plush, well-appointed clubhouse. Tastefully framed signed jerseys of all the great Pyramid players in history line the walls. FIND Daniel and Joseph at the bar -- a robotic bartender has just placed two drinks in front of them.

JOSEPH
Tonight's the first time I've seen him smile since the accident. (beat) Thank very much for doing this.

DANIEL
Easy. And you? How are you holding up?

JOSEPH
(cynically) We Taurons are nothing if not a stoic people.

DANIEL
Do you mind if I ask you a somewhat weird and personal question?

JOSEPH
Okay.

DANIEL
What would you do if you had the chance to be with your daughter again?

Joseph's taken completely aback and Daniel sees Joseph struggling.

DANIEL
You don't have to answer. Probably shouldn't have asked.

JOSEPH
No. It's okay. I just... haven't thought about it. (beat) You know, most of my family, including my parents, died in the Tauron civil war. My brother and I came here as orphans. When we arrived, they drove us to an orphanage... and I remember this field of wild flowers by the side of the road. (beat) This'll sound strange to a Caprican, but there are no flowers on Tauron. Not one. Religious reasons. (beat) It was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. In my life. All the colors... the petals... the softness. And... I wept. In public. For the first -- and the last time. (then) So I guess that's what I'd tell Tamara. Tell her... to find those things in life that make you cry. That make you *feel*. Because they're what make you human. (beat) That's what I'd tell her. If I could.

*

This is a decent bit for me. There's a couple of things that I personally find interesting in here. Obviously, Joseph and young Bill Adama have been taken out to the ball game by Dan Greystone. Cool. Very well.

I am curious about the writer's note on actor direction that instructs Morales to deliver the Taurons-are-a-stoic-people line "cynically". At first glance, this would strongly suggest that Joseph isn't sympathetic to our popular real-world ideas of Stoicism (which aren't exactly accurate) but basically amount to a constant call to simply "suck it up". We may come to find that this stoic thing is a symbol or verbal/idea shorthand for Joseph that refers to large portions of Tauron thought and culture. We'll see, I guess.

This supposition of mine that Joseph isn't warm to Tauron stoicism (and yet he's still got the bull in his blood no matter what) is enhanced by the story of the wild flowers. I dunno if Joseph (I just can't call the guy "Joe" even if Romo does because it just doesn't grant him any dignity in my mind) identifies the emotional reaction to the wildflowers with Caprican culture ie: A Caprican would react that way or not but he's quite clear that he identifies this capacity to feel, with being a fully realized human being. Personally, I think that he's correct. I believe that a goodly portion of the human capacity for ethical thought comes from our ability to feel on an aesthetic or philosophical rather than physical level. I think it's unfortunate that many sci-fi fans SEEM to be made uncomfortable or are bored by sentimentality expressed in sci-fi stories.

In any case, Joseph finishes this story with the contrasting bit that although he wept at this time, he never wept in public again. What's it gonna be Joe? Are you human or not? Are you Caprican or are you Tauron?

Waddayathink, sir?


punchface

[maxbell]

You know Joeseph is going to wind up being a bleeding heart, though. We know that much about him simply from listening to Romo, as you pointed out, as well as Lee. The other script fragments bear this out as well; the scene with Daniel in the Cafe, for example.

While this comes to bear on earlier storylines in BSG, it also follows the contour of the story. Eventually, it becomes necessary to give the character the impetus to help his rival 'play God' and while I don't care for that analogy in particular, the prospect of restoring his dead child to life is the subject of some speculation with regard to it's role in the eventual development of the model 005s.

It's clear, for example, that the intent is simply to restore the dead child to a robotic form, however from the description it's also equally clear that this form has nothing to do with the skinjobs we know now. The specific connection isn't apparent in the material that's surfaced, but it also seems clear that the project is being developed in parallel -- that the two are not one and the same.

Beyond the fact that the draft that's surfaced provides for some interesting and nuanced characters, however, it also appears that the actual casting for the mini is sufficient to the task; they look the part, their credentials suit the roles they've been cast in, and while it can't be said definitively this early in the process, the prospect is there for the cast to develop the same kind of ensemble chemistry seen in BSG.

[punchface]

It's clear, for example, that the intent is simply to restore the dead child to a robotic form, however from the description it's also equally clear that this form has nothing to do with the skinjobs we know now. The specific connection isn't apparent in the material that's surfaced, but it also seems clear that the project is being developed in parallel -- that the two are not one and the same.

There's some stuff in "later" script frags that relates to this that has influenced my thoughts but I'll get back to that in due time rather than jumping the gun. Maybe like you, or maybe unlike you, I'm not sure, I *DO* think that some how, Zoe and her nutty boyfriend Ben have some at least indirect connection to the Cylons that we know now. What seems pretty obvious to me though is that Greystone can not and does not "enslave" his robotic daughter. Not willingly at least OR, not as long as he remains convinced that Zoe R *IS* Zoe in most practical senses.

For the benefit of anyone reading this besides Max, there's a page or so in the Joseph fragment that deals with Amanda Graystone and Thomas Vergis, and bit of stuff between Zoe Greystone and one of her friends. The text has been crossed out with a sharpie but is still entirely legible. Regardless, because Max and I are moving linearly through the script, I'm not going to transcribe stuff unrelated to Joseph Adama while moving through the Joseph Fragment, when we get to Amanda and Zoe, I'll wrap back and do this stuff that for the time being, will remain on my hard drive and not here at Skiffy.

So...more Joseph stuff:

EXT. GRAYSTONE ESTATE - NIGHT

Establish...

INT. GRAYSTONE ESTATE - NIGHT

JOesph is sitting at a work table while Daniel carefully takes a SMALL ELECTRONIC DEVICE out of a durable, shock-proof case. He's treating the device like it's extremely fragile.

DANIEL
Gotta hand it to Vergis... it's an elegant design. Fortunately, it's close enough to our preliminary work that it shouldn't be too hard for Cyrus to construct a convincing paper trail...

He barely breathes as he carries the MCP and sets it into a small CRADLE on the table. Then he seals it behind a GLASS CASE. Once it's sealed, Daniel lets out a long breath. Joseph is unmoved.

DANIEL
You know this has more raw computing power than the three supercomputers at Apollo university combined?

JOSEPH
(flat) Does it work?

DANIEL
I won't know that until I try to put it into a robotic body and try to download Zoe-A into it.

JOSEPH
How long?

DANIEL
Couple days. Got a surprise for you, though.

Daniel gestures to the FLASH stick over on the work bench, where it's enmeshed in a maze of circuitry and connections.

DANIEL
Tamara-A is ready to go.

JOSEPH
What.....?

DANIEL
I used Zoe's original avatar program to search and download any data on Tamara Adams -- school records, medical, DNA -- well, you've heard the list. About 300 megabytes worth.

JOSEPH
(shocked) You mean... she's... in there?

DANIEL
(barely hearing him)
You know, the more I work with Zoe's code, the more I realize she was nothing short of a computer genius... can't believe I never noticed...

JOSEPH
I want to see her.

He gestures to a Holoband.

DANIEL
I thought you would. Go through the yellow door.

Joseph looks over at the Holoband like it suddenly turned into a snake that might bite him. He gingerly picks it up and puts it on...

---

JOSEPH
This will take some time to explain... the important thing is... we're together...

(note to the Skiffy readers, the following piece of Tamara Adama dialog has been crossed out in the fragement)
TAMARA
(starting to lose it) I can't remember how I got here... I can't remember where I was before now... none of this seems real... I don't feel real... this isn't real. This isn't REAL!

JOSEPH
Willie misses you -- I miss you -- we can be a family again --

TAMARA
Daddy, I can't feel my heart! WHY ISN'T MY HEART BEATING!?

She SCREAMS --

*

Okay, the bit where Daniel (echoing a piece of Zoe dialog) talks about the avatar code moving through the Colonial "internet" and harvesting 300 megs of comprehensive Tamara data and then proceeding to derive/sythesize Tamara A out of that data is irritatingly stupid to me. My suspension of disbelief is sorely taxed by this. It's not that I have a huge problem with the idea of building a person out of data, it's that I truly believe you need 300 petabytes of data, not 300 megabytes. The whole thing is ***** py and dumb and, in my opinion, the weakest point of in the fragments.

On the other hand, I really am looking forward to actually seeing Joseph meet Tamara in VR. That scene, if it survives intact through til the show airs will be chilling and excellent.

punchface

[DarthRazorback]

I don't know much about this show... but I know that I could not care any less about someone's opinion of the script.

[maxbell]

Okay, the bit where Daniel (echoing a piece of Zoe dialog) talks about the avatar code moving through the Colonial "internet" and harvesting 300 megs of comprehensive Tamara data and then proceeding to derive/sythesize Tamara A out of that data is irritatingly stupid to me. My suspension of disbelief is sorely taxed by this. It's not that I have a huge problem with the idea of building a person out of data, it's that I truly believe you need 300 petabytes of data, not 300 megabytes. The whole thing is ***** py and dumb and, in my opinion, the weakest point of in the fragments.

On the other hand, I really am looking forward to actually seeing Joseph meet Tamara in VR. That scene, if it survives intact through til the show airs will be chilling and excellent.

Complete agreement. I see this series as being by far more problematic in that regard than BSG is, simply because there is substantially more artistic latitude possible within BSG with respect to technology. Artificial gravity and faster than light travel are givens -- virtual reality and programming are not. Incidentally, I checked, and on average the estimated capacity of the human brain is in the neighborhood of 500tb to 1pb. Accurately recreating such a thing is not a function of reproducing it's content, however, but rather it's structure.

The basic concepts -- data mining, intelligent agents, neural interfaces are pretty thoroughly established and it's possible to write about them in a general sense without straining anyone's suspension of disbelief, but my suspicion is that ultimately, we're probably dealing with a draft that's been rewritten a few more times since.

A question I can't seem to get away from, myself, is simply whether or not Zoe-A is, for intents and purposes, a precursor to six. It seems critically important to leave the 005s sufficient room for development as a species. If they roll off the assembly line thinking that they are, for intents and purposes, alive, then that capacity obviously isn't present.

Consider: at present, there's a robot in development intended for use in making repairs to deep sea oil rigs. It's being developed as an artificial intelligence to allow it to make decisions about how to proceed with repairs to allow it to operate with a minimal level of human guidance, and being an expensive machine, it seems reasonable to speculate that one of the factors in that decision making process will be to avoid taking actions that would result in it being damaged or destroyed. Simply causing exasperation for an operator or possibly even refusing to take actions that might place human life in harm's way in the interest of it's own self-preservation is hardly grounds to attribute genuine sentience to such a device, however.

And it's quite a few steps to actually creating something that might be fairly considered sentient. But it's equally true that creating such devices will continue to move us towards creating sentience as well.

Simply copying someone's mind to a machine, though? That's substantially worse than merely thinking that anyone's going to have 300 megabytes of data sitting around on the net (I've been online about twenty years and I seriously doubt that I'm worth all of ten megabytes, at least in terms of what would be relevant in attempting to create a simulated version of myself).

Which is not to say that I genuinely expect that this is what the result would be, but it does directly address the question that is most interesting to me and likely anyone interested in seeing Caprica assume BSG's mantle and move forward as a regular series.

Clearly Zoe's religious tendencies play a role in cylon pre-history -- what role does Zoe-A, herself, play in the development of the model 005s, though?

[punchface]

Accurately recreating such a thing is not a function of reproducing it's content, however, but rather it's structure.

Agreed. Before I read the fragments, I spec'd that what Zoe Greystone had done was to simply make a .ISO or .BIN of herself, which is a copy of her structure, stored on and emulated by a computer...dude, hold on a sec, phone...

...

Woah...a ladyfriend of mine just called me with a tidbit that made me laugh. The girl who's playing Zoe, she was the highschool suicide jumper in the new Terminator show. I just watched that fracking episode yesterday!

...anyway...

...and emulated by a computer hoping that whatever the magic/voodoo of human sentience would simply work itself out in the piece of software that was an exact "soft" copy of a physical human. Then, the problem would be merely one of loading enough data into that simulation so that it became a particular person rather than just a tabula rasa person.

A question I can't seem to get away from, myself, is simply whether or not Zoe-A is, for intents and purposes, a precursor to six. It seems critically important to leave the 005s sufficient room for development as a species. If they roll off the assembly line thinking that they are, for intents and purposes, alive, then that capacity obviously isn't present.

I have a notion of a possibility that I get at the end of one of the forthcoming script frags that suggests to me (I'm just guessing and feeling a hunch) that the Zoe-R experiment is a failure and that Dan Greystone thinks that his daughter is truly dead. He then goes on ahead and uses some/most of what Zoe inadvertently taught him to enhance the U-87 into the first robot worthy of the classification, Cylon. Eventually, the Colonials get the 0005s and the wars happen and the Cylons take control of their own destiny and transcend their machine origins etc. etc. blah blah we know the rest...

...but even though Zoe is truly "dead", that there may be ghosts of her, fragments of her, floating around in the psyches/souls of these early Cylons and that stuff never goes away.

Here's the last bit of the Daniel fragment and then I'm going to lock it up for tonight. I have some laundry and freelance stuff to take care of before bed.

INT. DANIEL'S PRIVATE LAB - NIGHT

Joseph tears the HoloBand from his head and throws it across the lab.

DANIEL
You okay -- what happened?

Joseph's heart is racing -- touches his chest, aware on some level of the irony. It takes a moment to steady himself.

JOSEPH
Destroy it.

DANIEL
What?

JOSEPH
She doesn't want to live like that... she couldn't feel her ehart... it's an abomination.

DANIEL
It's a *miracle*. Joseph -- she's probably confused by everything, that's only natural. But once she's out of the virtual world and in a real body --

Joseph suddenly PINS HIM TO THE WALL, barely restrained violence now boiling to the surface. Daniel's eyes go wide.

JOSEPH
(low, deadly) Destroy... it. *Now*.

DANIEL
Okay. Okay, Joe...whatever you say.

Joseph releases him, and Daniel picks up a computer sheet and makes a few marks. He holds it out for Joseph to see.

Daniel
There -- I've wiped all the files from memory. She's gone.

Joseph suddenly can't get out of here fast enough. He heads for the door.

DANIEL
You'll be back. A week, a month, a year.

JOSEPH
Our daughter's are dead. I have to live with that. And so do you.

Joseph exits.

DANIEL
(quiet) No. No, I don't.

As Daniel goes back to working on the computer sheet.

(at this part in the fragment, there's some stuff with Daniel and what appears to be his final experiment with the MCP and the U-87 combat chassis. I'll save this stuff for when we talk about Daniel rather than Joseph and related matters)

INT. JOSEPH ADAMS' APARTMENT - WILLIAM'S BEDROOM - NIGHT

Joseph sits with William in his bedroom.

JOSEPH
We're going to make a new beginning starting tonight, you and me. Our family will survive this, we're going to put our lives back together. Your mother is gone and Tamara is gone. They're not coming back.

Suddenly, without warning, tears begin to stream down William's cheeks. Joseph takes his son in his arms and they hold each other tight as Joseph struggles with his own emotions.

JOSEPH
I want you to know who you are, William. We come from a long, proud line of Tauron peasants who knew how to work the land and still stand proud. You're named after your grandfather, did I ever tell you that?

WILLIAM
No.

JOSEPH
He was killed in the Tauron uprising fighting for what he believed was the right of all the Children of Kobol -- to live free. It's a good name William and you should wear it proudly. And our last name isn't Adams - I changed it when we arrived on Caprica. (beat) Our family name is... Adama and it's a good, honorable *Tauron* name.

Tears begin streaming down his cheeks as he holds his son. We then notice RUTH in the doorway, taking in the scene.

*

...and that's it for the Joseph fragment. I'll pick up with the number two character in the show, Daniel Greystone, tomorrow.

Brief thoughts:

The Taurons fought the hells out of each other some 30 or so years prior to Caprica and about 80 85 years prior to the holocaust. There were peasants fighting for what exactly?....civil liberty? I wonder what Tauron government looked like prior to that war and I also wonder what it looked like afterward.

What is a computer "sheet" vice what we know today (and the post Cylon-War colonials also know) a keyboard. Is it a keyboard mouse-pad thingy that you use a stylus with but is only as thick as a piece of fabric or something? Is is a step after that new Macintosh that's super thin?


punchface

[punchface]

Let's start up on the Daniel-centric fragment. At 14 pages, (plus spare change in other places) it's a good deal longer than the Joseph bit. The Daniel fragment starts off, weirdly enough, with a bit of Zoe's best friend, Lacy Rand, Amanda Greystone, and Serge, the Greystone's household 'bot which I'll skip and throw in with the Amanda fragment probably after Zoe which will be the fragment we address after Daniel.

EXT. CAFEE - NIGHT

Joseph and Daniel are each lost in his own reverie, each literally watching the world go by. A long, still moment before:

JOSEPH
(awkwardly) I should be going. Thank you for the coffee.

He sticks out his hand.

DANIEL
Sure.

Daniel takes Joseph's hand, but then suddenly his entire being seems to collapse and suddenly he's (crossed out) sobbing into the other man's shoulder. (crossed out)

DANIEL
Sorry.

JOSEPH
No, I...

DANIEL
This isn't... it's not me... I don't...

JOSEPH
It's okay. I know. (beat) Tell you the truth... I'm about five seconds from throwing myself in the middle of traffic.

Daniel nods, pulls himself together, takes in a deep shuddering breath. Daniel looks back at the table of discarded coffee cups and cigarette butts.

DANIEL
I needed that. To just sit. Smoke. So... thanks.

JOSEPH
Easiest job I had all day.

The hints of a smiel briefly play across both their features as Joseph nods and Daniel signals his Driver, sho smartly opens the car door for him.

DANIEL
Can I give you a ride home?

JOSEPH
No. Thanks. I live in the city.

They shake hands and Daniel heads off toward his car, then stops and looks back.

DANIEL
Hey -- you follow Pyramid at all?

JOSEPH
I've been known to lay a few cubits down on the Bucks. (beat, wry) To my great misfortune.

DANIEL
Bucks suck this year. But I've got courtside seats. You interested?

Joseph hesitates for a moment. Then...

JOSEPH
I have a son. Could I bring him -- He's nine.

DANIEL
Absolutely.

Daniel hands him a card.

DANIEL
My private number. Call me and we'll work out the details.

JOSEPH
Okay. Thanks.

Daniel gets in the car and Joseph watches him drive away...

*

For me, this is just a nice scene of our two protagonists chilling out and crying in their beer. It's all good for me but I don't have much to say about it.

punchface

[Subjekt2323]

Skimmed through this. First impression: In reality severely unimpressed, but when remembering the general quality of broadcast sci-fi writing, only expectedly disappointed. It seems that caprica might be a very "flat" narrative.

[maxbell]

Brief thoughts:

The Taurons fought the hells out of each other some 30 or so years prior to Caprica and about 80 85 years prior to the holocaust. There were peasants fighting for what exactly?....civil liberty? I wonder what Tauron government looked like prior to that war and I also wonder what it looked like afterward.

What is a computer "sheet" vice what we know today (and the post Cylon-War colonials also know) a keyboard. Is it a keyboard mouse-pad thingy that you use a stylus with but is only as thick as a piece of fabric or something? Is is a step after that new Macintosh that's super thin?

I think it's that Tauron is the Mexico of Kobol.

And the computer you've seen before -- Hiro Protagonist had one in his desk drawer in Snow Crash -- just a flexible sheet that you can roll up and stuff in a mailing tube or tape to the wall with duct tape. Clear, rubbery, acts like a touch-screen, can as easily emulate a newspaper as a windows desktop. Like an i-Phone, but flexible

Interesting because it serves as a marker for the technology within the colonies, without being overly obsessive about being especially unique or new -- you'd want it to be familiar enough to the typical science fiction fan that they'd recognize it, and outside of that, there's just consistency of presentation. I'm going to be really shocked to see a phone with a cord.

Otherwise, everything that's being presented so far is still just a backdrop for the characters.

[punchface]

I think it's that Tauron is the Mexico of Kobol.

And the computer you've seen before -- Hiro Protagonist had one in his desk drawer in Snow Crash -- just a flexible sheet that you can roll up and stuff in a mailing tube or tape to the wall with duct tape. Clear, rubbery, acts like a touch-screen, can as easily emulate a newspaper as a windows desktop. Like an i-Phone, but flexible

Interesting because it serves as a marker for the technology within the colonies, without being overly obsessive about being especially unique or new -- you'd want it to be familiar enough to the typical science fiction fan that they'd recognize it, and outside of that, there's just consistency of presentation. I'm going to be really shocked to see a phone with a cord.

Otherwise, everything that's being presented so far is still just a backdrop for the characters.

Okay, I know that this is liable to get me mocked in his neighborhood but....I gotta admit it. I've not read either Snow Crash or Diamond Age. My Stephenson exposure has been Cryptonomicon and the Baroque Cycle....all of which I very much love.

This computer sheet business suggests that the post Cylon War Colonials are in a dark age. They really have moved backwards technologically even though they may have moved forwards socially with the Federating of the Colonies and, (we can hope) a general raising of the typical level of equality and liberty throughout the twelve worlds and their moons etc.

punchface