ON DVD: Caprica (Universal Studios, $26.98)
Are you approaching Caprica, the Battlestar Galactica prequel available today on DVD, with trepidation? We don’t blame you. For one, the 93-minute pilot/movie could be fraktasticly cool, making the wait until the show’s 2010 TV premiere interminable. Or, alternately, it could be a poor imitation of BSG, and you’ve only just recovered from the colossal WTF-athon that was that show’s March finale.
Well, Caprica is a little of both. It teases us with a corrupt, complicated society on the verge of creating some seriously powerful artificial intelligence. But it’s no space odyssey, and doesn’t have the same emotional momentum as Ronald Moore and David Eick’s previous series (but what does, other than a a meteor full of ethical dilemmas and daddy issues, hurtling toward Earth?). Caprica, which takes place 58 years before Battlestar, stars Eric Stoltz (aw, from Some Kind of Wonderful!) as a filthy-rich inventor and Esai Morales (NYPD Blue) as a mob lawyer. A terrorist act brings the two together, but it’s Morales’ Joseph Adams who holds the screen, clumsily adopting an old-worldish religion and facing his bereft son. (Little Willie “Adams” grows up to be—oh, who are we kidding, you’ve figured it out, right?) It’s a promising, if not explosive, tease to the series, and don’t worry: There are plenty of daddy issues to go around.
