In one scene in the second episode of Caprica, Amanda Graystone holds a book that belonged to her daughter, called The Physics of Religion and Spirituality. The fact that she’s holding it at a memorial for the victims of a terrorist attack, while mourning her daughter, Zoe, is more than a little ironic.

We’ll start with the fact that the book was given to Amanda by the mother of Zoe’s boyfriend Ben, who strapped explosives to his chest and blew up the train in the name of one true god, killing Zoe and many others. When Amanda finds a religious symbol amongst the book and some photos, she is convinced that Zoe was part of the plot to bomb the train (she wasn’t, although she shared some of the religious views that led to it).

The second, and weightier, reason for the irony is that Zoe isn’t necessarily dead, and it’s her study of physics and technology that saved her, or at least a mix of her real self, her avatar from a virtual world inhabited by her and many of her fellow teenagers (accessible through a holoband, one of her father’s creations), and a robot soldier body (which her father also created).

Caprica mixes technology and psychology in a way that would make Isaac Asimov proud. Much of “Rebirth” is shown through Zoe’s point of view from inside the Cylon prototype. No one except her friend Lacy knows she’s in there, so she is poked and prodded and violated like a broken down Ford Tempo. When the prodding is happening, we see the Cylon body. But then we see Zoe, in her human body, reacting to her treatment.

There is a bit of comedy that goes along with Zoe’s “condition.” She doesn’t realize her own strength or weight, and crushes a bed when she sits down as she would when she was entirely human. But what is she now? Her flesh and blood, human identity was obliterated with the train, and now she’s seen by some as a monster and by some, including one young scientist assistant of Daniel’s who is working on the Zoe robot, as a work of art. If in the future, more Cylons are created from Zoe’s prototype, it will go a long way toward explaining their animosity toward humans.

But the psychology lesson doesn’t end there. In “Rebirth,” we get to see Amanda realize she never really knew Zoe beyond their constant sparring. We get to see gangster Sam Adama take his nephew William, son of Joseph Adama, for a walk while William is skipping school, teaching him about getting away with crime and how to manipulate others through guilt (“It’s all about control and power”).

There are also nods to group psychology, when Lacy visits Sister Clarice Willow’s family, and when William rejects the traditional Tauron meal his grandmother has made, hoping for a couple of hamburgers later on (happy to know that hamburgers survived in the colonies).

It’s clear that Caprica is in no hurry to reveal everything it has in store (something I wondered aloud about in the review of the premiere), and there were a few surprises right up to the very end of the show. “Rebirth” introduced a few smaller characters that could wind up being key to the plot now or ten episodes from now, effectively planting seeds. Zoe’s transformation will be especially interesting to watch, considering the possible implications for the Cylons 50 years in the future on Battlestar Galactica.

So far, Caprica is a frakking good drama.

Watch each & every episodes of “Caprica” here

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