Saturday is my day to catch up with Caprica (on Hulu), but I haven’t been writing about it here. This isn’t to say I’m not into the show anymore — I am.

The U-87 Cylon rips off its own arm, by Daniel Graystone's command, in "There Is Another Sky."

Rather, I’m not usually sure that I have much to say to you beyond recommending composer Bear McCreary’s weekly reports. His entry on the episode, “Gravedancing,” is especially great, blending source music and score as it does (with a free song, “Was Love,” there for the downloading), but be sure to check out the two newer entries, as well: “There Is Another Sky” and “Know Thy Enemy.” Always fascinating to get a look behind the scenes with Bear — and I hardly know anything about music. What I do know is characterization and world-building, and McCreary’s music is all about both.

Beyond that, I’ve simply been savoring the show, hoping that it’s slow burn turns into more of a boil. I’ve been sipping it across my palate, trying to appreciate it for both its bitterness and its burgeoning sweetness, and hoping or a second bottle.

In the three episodes since we last talked, we’ve seen Graystone employee Philomon dance with the U-87 Cylon body (in the episode “Gravedancing”) in a scene that balanced right on the edge of the ridiculous, but won the episode, in my opinion, by showing us something not easily forgotten or categorized. Is that scene of the lonely robotics technician sweet or sad? It requires us to buy into the show in a way we maybe haven’t, but it trusts us, and I like that a lot.

This zodiac hides a vault in the game New Cap City ("There Is Another Sky").

Then the episode “There Is Another Sky” gave us a new Gattaca-meets-The-Matrix-via-EVE-Online view of the virtual-reality landscape where the plugged-in play. This episode had it all: it furthered the ongoing storyline of the series while also giving us a nice, complete tale of Tamara Adama’s virtual journey from overwhelmed digital avatar in denial… to a ruthless player of the cutthroat game where she now resides as an electronic ghost of herself. It was weird, dark, and sometimes right on the edge of believability, but again it trusted us to buy into the universe it created — a universe that it expanded considerably this week.

This last episode, “Know Thy Enemy,” was a slow pressure-cooker with some effective nightmare sequences, some winning inter-character tension, and (finally) some more contact between Joseph Adama and Daniel Graystone. What stood out to me, most of all, was the episode’s opening sequence at a Caprica museum displaying ancient artworks from Kobol, the legendary Home of the Gods.

Bill Reid's "Raven and the First Men" in a scene from "Know Thy Enemy."

The central work in this scene’s background exhibit is artist Bill Reid’s Raven and the First Men, a sculpture on display at the anthropology museum of the University of British Columbia. It depicts a Haida creation myth: Raven discovering and freeing mankind, which was stuck inside a clam shell. (Raven later freed womankind so that men and women would interact and amuse him.)

Caprica, of course, is shot in Vancouver, British Columbia, so when the story calls for a museum fund-raising event featuring works that could stand in for ancient artifacts of distant Kobol — the now-abandoned planet where humanity supposedly originated — the BC anthro museum is a fine choice. Check out this post on the Caprican blog about the Art Treasures of Kobol exhibit, which Daniel Graystone and his wife apparently attend in “Know Thy Enemy,” including the great commentary left on the piece (in character!).

My wife, an anthropologist who was this close to attending the University of British Columbia for its Northwest American Indian works, describes artist Bill Reid as “the guy if you wanted a modern totem pole.” And now his work is playing a role as ancient art on an alien planet, appreciated by our remote ancestors, one-hundred-thousand years in the past. Caprica once again recasts our own history as something recurring and timeless, saying that we are no so far removed from the ancient alien astronauts we once were and may once be again.

What does Reid’s sculpture mean to the Capricans, one wonders? Whatever the answer to that, it’s a marvelous choice for this scene, wherein two tech-company magnates vie over the truth about a device that will reveal a new species (Graystone told his board of directors that it could be a race of servants). Daniel Graystone is a kind of Raven — a lying Trickster who stole a precious oyster from his rival so he could create a new race of beings that would serve and amuse him. Will Graystone steal another shell to create the second half of his servitor race of robots? We’ll see.

Caprica City at night, as seen from the Graystone boardroom ("There Is Another Sky").

I’m left wondering, more happily, how artifacts of Kobol came to be on the planet Caprica. Just how did humanity flee that distant place, and how much did they know about where they were going? How do the Twelve Colonies view the world, knowing that their history begins on another planet — and possibly believing that they are the handcrafted children of a precursor race of fallible gods?

All at once, with this show, we are given a complicated view of humanity that asks us to wonder about our past and our future. The people of Caprica, with their gallery exhibits and dances and black ties, seem very much like us. The people of Caprica, with their alien gods and robot servants and scattered colonial identities, seem fascinatingly different. Their art is familiar, their ways are familiar, but they keep right on surprising us, just as we surprise ourselves.

So, yes, I’m still watching Caprica.