The reference to Lost is not arbitrary, of course, as its showrunner, Damon Lindelof, was also one of Prometheus’s writers. It’s pretty obvious halfway through the movie that he and others are simply drawing on Lost’s playbook—throw out a few interesting characters, a few promising narrative possibilities, and a whole lot of messy gaps. Then, wait until later to figure out what it all “means” (or hope the fans do it for you). This is why some turned on Battlestar Galactica in later seasons—when it started to think about “meaning,” when it shifted from tight sci-fi action to broad intro-level philosophy, some got turned off. Prometheus, meanwhile, is a collection of several possibly good story beginnings instead of one truly great finished one.

So, half-baked babble or post-television cinema? I’m inclined to say the former, if for no other reason than the fact that no one involved with Prometheus will ever actually have to back up its unfulfilled potential. I don’t see three or four more movies coming out of this—the kind of epic narrative canvas that would begin to deepen this film’s easy ambiguity. The degree to which one likes the new film seems in rough proportion to the degree to which you are drawing on the kind of post-network television narratives like BSG and Lost as your point of reference, or whether or not you are approaching it from the standpoint of the Alien franchise it’s so disingenuously aping.

What’s most frustrating is how Prometheus is trying to have it both ways in relation to the larger brand. The film instantly became an elite A-list project once Scott attached himself to it, which not only returned the legendary auteur to his early sci-fi roots, but also ensured a certain expectation of big budget polish in a franchise reduced to B-level junk like the Alien vs. Predator series. But, early on in the film’s production, there was clearly a mixed message at work in its paratextuality—Scott and company seemed to be going awkwardly out of their way to say it’s not an Alien film.

Yet, it’s absolutely part of the Alien franchise—explicitly existing within the same universe, filled with identical characters and iconography, and structured in obvious and subtle ways just like the original 1979 film. And, has anyone else noted that the premise—archeologists on Earth find clues in the ice that point towards an alien intelligence, causing dying rich guys from the same family to pursue a larger meaning to life—is exactly the same premise as the one in the much-maligned Alien vs. Predator (2004)?

At the time, I read the Alien ambivalence as fanboy contempt, but also auteurist pride—Scott didn’t want to admit he was retreating to well-worn territory, the site of one of his two greatest accomplishments. Although I didn’t feel this way, the decision to return to Alien could be read as creatively lazy, or worse, desperate, especially in the “Event Film” era where all of the old school is doing elaborate CGI blockbusters now. So I read the not-Alien Alien messages as a careful negotiation of that.

Now that Prometheus is out, I think all that white noise about not trying to be an Alien film was more to inoculate it from all forms of criticism. I’ve repeatedly read in the last few days some variation on the “it’s trying to be something else (or more)” defense—but that’s not the issue people have with Prometheus. It’s pretty clear that, like many recent reboots (such as Star Trek), Prometheus is more interested in creating its own new world under the veil of a pre-sold brand, than in doing anything insightful with what’s already there.

The oft-circulated idea that it’s not an Alien film, or that it’s taking on grander ideas (as though the two are mutually exclusive) becomes an attempt to hide the obvious—that Prometheus is just another mediocre big-budget summer genre exercise. And I think the problem people have with this post-televisual film is that it doesn’t know what it does want to be.

This is why I was shocked to receive a reminder about this Antenna post I’d promised about the mid-season return of Caprica and then to have asked myself, “oh, is that tonight?”  Sure, I’ve been busy.  But I’ve been busy before, and Battlestar viewing was always something I met with great anticipation.  Whether separated by hours or days, viewed “live” or in DVD marathons, the space between episodes was consistently filled with excitement and build up, causing my internal clock to keep a constant countdown until my next Battlestar appointment.  That clock, apparently, has ceased to run for Caprica.

I don’t think it’s because Caprica is a bad show, necessarily.  Sure, this mid-season premiere could have been better.  The previous cliffhanger left the fates of Amanda and Zoe in the air, and this episode teased at their deaths without directly confronting them: an obvious fake-out confirmed by the last minute reveal of their survival.  Joseph Adama’s seemingly complete embrace of  a criminal lifestyle (rather than tenuously negotiating it as a lawyer) makes him a far less interesting character in my eyes.  And the Gemenese clergy costumes looked too much borrowed from a Vulcan monastery to match Caprica’s more grounded textural palette.  But there was a lot of great stuff going on too.  The virtual representation of a terror attack at a Caprica Buccaneers game was not only chilling, but also gave needed meaning to Clarice’s long-promised “apotheosis,” granting her character new purpose and heft.  Seeing that Tomas Vergis had taken over Daniel Greystone’s company between episodes to put the Cylons into production advanced the well-played personal and corporate conflict between the two tycoons, all while generating a sense of inevitable dread.  It’s not clear how this conflict will resolve, but Battlestar fans know the stakes involve an army of robots destined to wipe out both sides.  The whole premise of the series, and its greatest strength, is anticipation of certain societal ruin.

But I can’t have an internal, step-by-step countdown to robotic apocalypse if I have no idea when the next appointment in the countdown will be.  At the unresolved moments between episodes and seasons when I should be feeling the most tension and anticipation, I actually feel the least, because I have no idea when or if that resolution might be coming.  Despite the series having premiered in January, SyFy only aired the first half of the season and then waited several months until the summer to announce a return date.  That return date was then slated for January 2011, and only last month bumped up to this week.  I can’t help but feel my anticipation of this return would have been stronger if I’d seen the previous cliffhanger with some sense of how long I’d be waiting, so that I could invest in its dramatic tension on those terms with a target for resolution in mind.  I can look forward to next week’s episode a little bit more, perhaps, and the week after that, but since SyFy hasn’t committed to a second season yet (and likely won’t by the end of the season), I fear I’ll reach another impasses when I’m asked to sustain anticipation and excitement indefinitely.  Yes, this kind of scheduling did occur on occasion with Battlestar too—but it seems that SyFy has institutionalized the temporal uncertainty once necessitated by the writer’s strike.

That institutionalized uncertainty has stopped my ticking clock.  Despite having a real fondness for the series and being part of the built-in, loyal audience it needs to survive on SyFy, I find this uncertain wait makes Caprica increasingly difficult for me to anticipate.