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When one looks in the box, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the cat.

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On Caprica, Zoe Graystone has become infinitely more compelling now that she exists only as an avatar. While we recognize Daniel and Amanda Graystone’s pain having lost their only daughter, we can’t help but be more fascinated by Avatar Zoe, who experiences life for the first time, despite memories that tell her otherwise, in the body of a seven-foot robot. Zoe is a well-written character and benefits from an intelligent performance by Alessandra Torresani. However, both the writers of Caprica and Ms. Torresani owe a great debt to another jewel in the science-fiction television crown.

I refer, of course, to Small Wonder.

Caprica wasn’t the first sci-fi show to center around a family with a robot daughter, and there are several similarities between it and its 1980s predecessor. Both shows have a redhead dad and a blonde mom. Both shows have a redhead best friend who snoops around the family’s home when no one’s around (I’m lookin’ at you, Harriet and Lacy!). Even Jamie, the son on Small Wonder, bears a striking resemblance to Serge, the Graystone’s house robot on Caprica, in that they both exist for the sole purpose of helping to hide the robot daughter’s existence while simultaneously throwing up punch lines for Dad.

Sure, Caprica is a powerful sci-fi family drama that sparks intelligent conversation.  However, in many ways, Small Wonder has Caprica beat. For example, Small Wonder explains the fact that they have a new, brunette daughter by telling people she’s adopted. No such explanation from the Graystones. Come on, Caprica! How do a redhead dad and a blonde mom make a brunette kid? It’s called science, people! SCIENCE.**

But ultimately, it comes down to the robot daughters themselves. Honestly, if I were a kid right now, I wouldn’t want to be Avatar Zoe. Sure she’s smart and built like a war machine. But she can’t even sit on a bed without it breaking! Vicki, the robot daughter on Small Wonder, was just as strong as Avatar Zoe without the lumbering, seven-foot frame. She was fantastic, and made of plastic. She could grab cans from across the room by turning on magnets in her hands. She got to wear a pretty red dress with a frakking pinafore on it! And then, there was the voice. OH, the voice.

Check out the majesty for yourself!  Here’s a CLIP FROM THE FIRST EPISODE OF SMALL WONDER.

In the years during which Small Wonder aired, I spent countless hours of my girlhood with a blank stare on my face walking slowly around the apartment and talk-ing-like-a-ro-bot much to the annoyance delight of my family. Other little girls wanted to be princesses. I wanted to be a robot. I wanted to be Vicki.

So, here’s to Vicki Lawson: pioneer, inspiration, robot daughter. Avatar Zoe, you have big Mary Janes to fill.

** I will feel real dumb if it turns out that the Graystones did adopt Zoe.

The next episode of Caprica airs tonight on SyFy at 9:00pm!

SMALL WONDER Season 1 is now available on DVD from Shout! Factory.


Teresa Jusino was born on the same day that Skylab fell. Coincidence? She doesn’t think so. She is a contributor to PinkRaygun.com, a webzine examining geekery from a feminine perspective. Her work has also been seen on PopMatters.com, on the sadly-defunct literary site CentralBooking.com, edited by Kevin Smokler, and in the Elmont Life community newspaper. She is currently writing a web series for Pareidolia Films called The Pack, which is set to debut Summer 2010! Get Twitterpated with Teresa, Follow The Pack or visit her at The Teresa Jusino Experience.

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Teresa Jusino

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Teresa Jusino was born the day Skylab fell. Coincidence? She doesn't think so. A native New Yorker, Jusino has been telling stories since she was three years old, and she wrote a picture book in crayon in nursery school. However, nursery school also found her playing the angel Gabriel in a Christmas pageant, and so her competing love of performing existed from an early age. Her two great loves competed all the way through early adulthood. She attended NYU's Tisch School of the Arts where she majored in Drama and English Literature, after which she focused on acting, performing in countless plays and musicals in and around New York City, as well as short films, feature length independent films, and the one time she got to play an FBI agent in a PBS thing, which she thought was really cool, because she got to wear sunglasses and a dark suit and look badass. Eventually, producing was thrown into the mix. For four years, she was a company member and associate producer for a theater company called Stone Soup Theater Arts. She also produced a musical in which she also performed at Theater For the New City called Emergency Contraception: The Musical! by Sara Cooper, during which she ended every performance covered in fake blood. Don't ask. After eight years of acting, Jusino decided that she missed her first love – writing – and in 2008 decided to devote herself wholly to that pursuit. She has since brought her "feminist brown person" perspective to pop culture criticism at such diverse sites as Tor.com, ChinaShop Magazine, PopMatters, Newsarama, Pink Raygun, as well as her own blog, The Teresa Jusino Experience (teresajusino.wordpress.com), and her Tumblr for feminist criticism, The Gender Blender (tumblwithteresa.tumblr.com). She is also the editor of a Caprica fan fiction site called Beginning of Line (beginningofline.weebly.com), because dammit, that was a good show, and if SyFy won't tell any more of those characters' stories, she'll do it herself. Her travel-writer alter ego is Geek Girl Traveler, and her travel articles can be followed at ChinaShop while she herself can be followed on Twitter (@teresajusino). Her essay, "Why Joss is More Important Than His 'Verse" can be found in the book Whedonistas: A Celebration of the Worlds of Joss Whedon By the Women Who Love Them (Mad Norwegian Press). In addition to her non-fiction, Jusino is also a writer of fiction. Her short story, December, was published in Issue #24 of the sci-fi literary journal, Crossed Genres. A writer of both prose and film/television scripts, she relocated to Los Angeles in September 2011 to give the whole television thing a whirl. She'll let you know how that goes just as soon as she stops writing bios about herself in the third person.
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