On Being Blog

Taking the Pulse of Caprica
Colleen Scheck, senior producer

Are you watching Caprica? We’ve heard from many of you who were Battlestar Galactica (BSG) fans — including our host — so I’m guessing some of you are tuning in to this prequel series. If so, you may be interested in the comments of Diane Winston, who was part of our program “TV and Parables of Our Time.” Along with three other religion and culture observers, Winston is contributing to a new weekly feature devoted to delving into “deep exegesis” of Caprica:

“We loved BSG because in the post-9/11 moment, it captured our consternation and confusion. Why do they hate us? Can we justify torture? What makes us human? When can we stop fighting? Moreover, it lodged these questions in the space between human passion and species survival, mediating the religious quest for meaning with the political will to win.

Caprica, going back to how this came to be, meets us in the present. This is what we face, too: religious extremism, economic inequality, anti-immigrant fervor, a military increasingly dependent upon drones, the lure of the virtual worlds, and the comfort of slick surfaces. Like BSG, Caprica asks, “What makes us human?” But this time, the answers seem a lot closer to home.”