The Imperfections of Memory

"The Imperfections of Memory" An episode of the Caprica Series
Episode No.	Season 1, Episode 7
Writer(s)	Matthew B. Roberts
Story by
Director	Wayne Rose
Assistant Director
Special guest(s)
Production No.	107
Nielsen Rating	0.4
US airdate	March 12, 2010
CAN airdate
UK airdate
DVD release
Population	{{{population}}} survivors
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Know Thy Enemy	The Imperfections of Memory	Ghosts in the Machine
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To obtain Zoe's avatar, Clarice Willow carries on her friendship with Amanda Graystone, who is beginning to see visions of her dead brother. Heracles guides Joseph Adama through the hazards of New Cap City. The Zoe avatar and Lacy Rand continue their efforts to get the U-87 to Gemenon. Daniel Graystone is pressured by Tomas Vergis to sell the Caprica Buccaneers to fund his company's work on the meta-cognitive processor.

Summary

Teaser

• From a hazy first-person point of view, someone in bare feet and a hospital gown is chasing after a young man through a hospital corridor. In her bed, Amanda Graystone suddenly wakes. She goes into her purse and retrieves an envelope from the Delphi Convalescent Institute.
• Clarice Willow is woken by one of her husbands, Olaf Willow. Olaf and Nestor have finished reviewing the information stolen from Daniel Graystone's computer, and found that the Zoe avatar had been downloaded from the computer. Clarice believes that Daniel knows where it is now. She decides to meet Amanda at the memorial to the Maglev bombing victims, and to give her some emotional support.
• Workers are collecting personal items from the memorial, relocating them to a permanent shelter at Apollo Park. Amanda grows indignant, telling one of the workers that these items cannot be moved. Clarice joins her. As the workers withdraw in frustration, Amanda spots the young man from her dream in the crowd. She snaps a picture before being whisked away by Clarice. In Amanda's car, she confesses to Clarice that she saw "someone"--her deceased brother Darius.
• Zoe calls Lacy Rand and insists that they meet immediately in the VIP room of the V-Club. She tells Lacy that Clarice accessed Daniel's computer. Lacy needs more time to prepare delivery of the U-87 to Gemenon. Zoe grows angry wth Lacy for letting her down again--and Lacy quickly corrects her by saying she has never let her, the avatar, down.
• In an alleyway behind a restaurant, Tad Thorean is working when he is ordered to tell a man in a suit not to loiter. The man turns around--Joseph Adama pushes Thorean back into the alleyway and demands to be taken into New Cap City to find his daughter, Tamara. Thorean relents, and the two of them don holobands and enter V-world.

Act 1

• Amanda experiences another vision of chasing her brother through a hospital corridor, never catching him. In her living room, she uses a window tile to view blurry photographs taken with her cellphone at the memorial site. None of them show any sign of Darius.
• Thorean, now in the New Cap City persona of Heracles, leads Joseph through an underground tunnel. He is unsure that Tamara stayed in New Cap City, but Joseph is certain that she did, trusting that she would stay in one place until found. They pause, and Heracles warns Joseph that no amount of hacking or disguise can circumvent New Cap City's cardinal rule: if a person is killed in the game, they are permanently barred from it for life. Explosions and gunfire from above stop them from going up to street level.
• Amanda is browsing through the stalls of street vendors when she hears a car crash. She runs toward the crash and offers to help, but another doctor reaches the victim first. When she turns away, she spots Darius. She chases after him with no luck, until she runs into a dead end in a parking garage. Next to her, she notices a poster advertising the Caprica City Museum of Contemporary Art, featuring a painting of a covered bridge in a forest. She takes the poster. Before leaving, she gives herself a dose of prescription pills.
• Clarice wraps a ribbon around a pricey bottle of liquor. Olaf tells her that their wife Desiree will be upset with the expense. Clarice counters that because Amanda is Zoe's mother and because she sees people who are not there, Clarice must listen to her for the word of God.
• Heracles and Joseph carefully emerge from a subway stairway onto the daytime streets of New Cap City. A bomb goes off near them. Joseph wonders why they cannot just fly to their destination instead of walking. For a moment, Heracles humors him, then calls him an idiot for not realizing that New Cap City is a non-fantasy game--in other words, if people cannot fly under their own power in the real world, it is impossible here, too. An airship fires a round near them, and they proceed as cautiously as possible. Three helicopter-like aircraft that had been escorting the airship move in the same direction as Joseph and Heracles.

Act 2

• Clarice arrives at the Graystone Estate with a gift--a bottle of Scorpion Marsh Genuine Ambrosia. As they drink their way through the bottle, Amanda tells Clarice about the incident with the car crash and the poster, and shows the poster to Clarice. She was in the car with Darius when he died, so she knows that the bridge in the poster is where it occurred. She admits that the trauma of the accident was so great that she was given drugs.
• The Caprica mediasphere: a commercial for V-Match, the Rhetoric news show discussing the plummet in Graystone Industries stock value, the Caprica Shopping Network selling a limited edition of the Graystone OS-9 holoband, with all proceeds going to the Graystone Children's Fund.
• In Daniel's private booth at Atlas Arena, Tomas Vergis interrupts Daniel and Cyrus Xander as they talk and watch a Caprica Buccaneers match. He tells them that the stolen meta-cognitive processor actually never worked, and again he insists that Daniel sell him the C-Bucs.
• On a playground, Lacy and Keon Gatwick talk about Barnabas Greeley's refusal to help her. Keon tells her that Greeley refuses to help someone outside Soldiers of the One, so she decides to join STO. Keon is resistant, but Lacy kisses him.
• Daniel and Xander argue about Vergis' claim. Daniel believes that Vergis is betraying some advantage that they can use against him, but Xander does not see it--he only knows that Graystone Industries is overextended, and that sale of the C-Bucs is the only viable financial option. Daniel angrily refuses to sell, and leaves.
• At the Graystone Estate lab, Philomon enters V-world; once he is in, Zoe-A follows him. In V-world, they are both flying early model Vipers. Zoe tries to operate her Viper, but quickly clips Philomon, sending her plane burning and spinning out of control toward the sea.
• In New Cap City, Heracles and Joseph try to flee a renewed attack from the dirigible and its fighters. Joseph hesitates, exposing Heracles. A fighter catches him in the street, killing him. Joseph disconnects. Back in the alleyway, Thorean curses Joseph and tells him that he is now on his own.

Act 3

• Zoe's crashed Viper lies in shallow coastal waters. Philomon walks down a hillside, catching up with a dripping wet Zoe, who is removing her parachute. They begin talking about how V-world is overused as an escape from life, when it should be used as a place to extend life, in generative ways that are random and more natural. They kiss for a while, until Zoe seems to brainstorm about the benefits of generative programming, and the need to let a robot out into the world to explore and learn. Something in Philomon sparks. He thanks her, and they kiss again.
• Daniel comes home and talks with Amanda. In the midst of their conversation, he notices the ambrosia bottle on the counter. She squirms a little. Daniel asks further, wondering if he should be jealous. Coyly she answers, "Maybe," but offers no further details. He accepts it casually, then walks away. Flustered, Amanda takes another dose of her medicine and calls Clarice to suggest a night out. Clarice suggests that Amanda join her at the Dive Bar.
• Daniel walks downstairs into the lab and spots Philomon using a holoband, kissing the air. Daniel plays a few loud notes on a piano and jolts him back into the real world. He reminds his young assistant about their impending deadline and the need to focus. Philomon pauses, then sounds out his theory about the MCP being partially analog, generative, and therefore impossible to simply copy like a digital program. However, he has no evidence of this, and Daniel dismisses him for the evening. As soon as Philomon leaves, however, Daniel starts to consider the possibility of a generative system.

Act 4

• At home, Joseph re-enters New Cap City. Once he reaches street level, he starts calling out Tamara's name. He fails to notice a woman behind him. A few moments later, she comes up behind him and puts a knife to his throat. She releases him, and introduces herself as Emmanuelle. She is already familiar with his quest to find Tamara-A, through Thorean himself, and she offers to guide Joseph through New Cap City, for a price.
• Amanda and Clarice smoke pipes of "purple," quickly growing sluggish and giddy. Amanda produces the Delphi Convalescent Institute donation letter, and tells Clarice about her two and a half years there for her "trouble coping with reality," which began a whole three years after Darius' death.

Act 5

• Clarice does not believe Amanda at first, but then she shows her sympathy. Amanda had been experiencing hallucinations of her dead brother so frequently that she abandoned college and many other things in her life. She still feels guilt for not telling Darius everything that should have been said while he was alive. Clarice takes the initiative and says that God, singular, loves her, and that trusting Him will enable her to escape her pain. Amanda seems not to understand, and asks which god she means.
• In the lab, Daniel continues to consider the notion of generative process. The Graystones' dog, Caesar, tries to engage the U-87 in a game of fetch. Zoe-A tries to shoo the dog away, but he whimpers and barks for attention. Daniel walks over to the U-87, and examines it closely. "Zoe," he whispers.

Notes

• The Delphi Convalescent Institute appears to be the same location the Cylons use as a farm after the Fall, and where Kara Thrace and other women are kept prisoner. Indeed, in The Farm, Simon states that the building was formerly a mental hospital.

Analysis

• It seems clear now that Zoe-A is deliberately seducing, rather than simply courting, Philomon, with her goal evidently being to use him as a means to escape Graystone's lab. However, Lacy's question regarding Philomon's attractiveness indicates she thinks that's not the only reason Zoe is approaching the roboticist.
• Zoe-A and Lacy clearly differ on whether the latter has disappointed the former yet, underlining some tensions between the two. Lacy indicates she hasn't, because that Zoe-A isn't Zoe and so her sudden refusal to board the maglev doesn't count. Zoe-A, however, seems to believe that she really is Zoe, if only in personality, an idea well in line with Sister Clarice's theory of apotheosis. On the other hand, had Lacy not refused to board the maglev, she would be dead and unable to help Zoe-A.
• During the drug binge at the Dive, Clarice let her monotheism slip, as noted by Amanda Graystone who questioned which god she was talking about when she said "God." It is unclear if Amanda suspects Sister Clarice's true allegiances, but it is clear that Clarice is in danger of breaking her cover.
• While an interesting theory and one that would theoretically explain why the MCP has not yet been successfully copied, Zoe-A's explanation to Philomon about letting a program "grow" rather than building seemingly contradicts several points. Notably, of course, is Zoe-A's very existence--Zoe-A is repeatedly described to be a perfect copy of Zoe Graystone, rather than simply an imitation or look-alike. In this case, making an identical copy of her shouldn't be impossible, which Zoe-A's statements and later Philomon's reiterations of such to Daniel seem to imply. A possible explanation exists in the Significant Eight, in which each individual of a particular model line are all theoretically one personality, but who in practice tend to act very differently (particularly the Sixes). Zoe-A might also mean some kind of controlled growth that is distinct from a line by line copy, as Daniel has been attempting.

Questions

• Is there any weight to Clarice's theory that God is speaking to her through Amanda and Zoe? Could this be evidence of a higher power at work, just as the Messengers influence events during and after the Fall?
• Following on from this question, could there be a connection between Amanda's visions of her brother and the apparitions that appear to people in the Fleet sixty years later?
• Does Clarice's belief that a person seeing others who aren't there is evidence of divine intervention indicate that she has read about prior appearances of the Messengers?
• How will Daniel go about testing his theory that Zoe-A is in the U-87? (Answer)
• Is Zoe-A a "perfect" copy of Zoe Graystone, as both she and Daniel seem to believe? Or is there an underlying difference, as Lacy seems to? Similarly, is Tamara-A a perfect copy of Tamara Adama?
• Is there any attraction at all on Zoe-A's part towards Philomon or is she simply using him to escape?
• Will Philomon's proposed method (based on Zoe-A's suggestion) of AI development work in solving the MCP problem? (Answer)
• Is Amanda genuinely attracted to Clarice (or vice versa)? If so, will either of them act on this?
• Is the V-World a precursor to, or in any way related to Cylon Projection?

Official Statements

• Leah Gibson on playing Emmanuelle and bossing around Joseph Adama (Esai Morales):

Well that was the best part of playing Emmanuelle! That, and the boots of course. (giggles) Esai and I hit it off right away, from the first day we met on set—we have always had a really wonderful rapport with one another. He was kind and incredibly warm, and so very much fun to play around with. And there is nothing more satisfying than playing the role of a strong, empowered female, who gets to kick the butts of minion men! Esai was full of advice and opinions until the camera started rolling, and then it was me kicking him into gear!

Noteworthy Dialogue

• Amanda and Clarice are smoking in the Dive, discussing Amanda's visions.

Amanda: Do you remember that old saying? "All this has happened before, and all this will happen again"?

• Graffiti in New Cap City accompanied by a simple human face:

THIS IS NOT ME, IT'S JUST MY BODY VEHICLE.

Guest Stars

• John Pyper-Ferguson as Tomas Vergis
• Alex Arsenault as Philomon
• Leah Gibson as Emmanuelle
• Hiro Kanagawa as Cyrus Xander
• Liam Sproule as Keon Gatwick
• Feguins Toussaint as Bodyguard Sean
• Panou as Olaf Willow
• Richard Harmon as Tad Thorean/"Heracles"
• Chris Shields as Louie
• Jesse Haddock and Johnston Gray as Darius
• Rif Hutton as Rhetoric Host #1
• Paul Pape as Rhetoric Host #2
• Steve Elliot as Doctor
• Sean Campbell as Construction Worker
• Hannah as Caesar the Dog
• Jim Thomson as Serge (voice, uncredited)

Caprica definition: a monotheistic terrorist organization in existence for more than a decade prior to 58 BCH (^{(CAP: "Pilot")}, et al).

Re-imagined Series definition: a type of alcoholic beverage, see: ambrosia

Caprica definition: hardware used by Dr. Daniel Graystone in the integration of the sentient AI that Zoe Graystone created into the U-87, see: MCP (CAP: Pilot).