In both versions of Battlestar Galactica, the crew of the mighty warship hailed from a planet named Caprica--which was one of twelve colony planets that were settled by humans from the planet Kobol (of course, there was a legend which told of a thirteenth colony named earth, but that’s a whole other story). In the revived BSG, Caprica was the capital planet of the twelve worlds--an affluent, highly technologically sophisticated culture that was the envy of the other worlds. Yet since the storyline of BSG concerned itself with life after the Cylons launched their devastating attack on the twelve worlds, we never really saw Caprica except in the first few minutes of the pilot, and in tantalizing flashbacks. The Caprica after the attacks was a radioactively-charred wasteland, along with its sister planets.

But several months after BSG ended its run on the Sci-Fi Channel (or should that be Sy-Fy? Or have upper management at that network finally come to their senses regarding that silly name change?), the behind the scenes creative personnel of the BSG revival produced Caprica, a prequel movie. Taking place some sixty years before the events of BSG, Caprica shows the planet and people at the height of their full glory--and it also shows the very beginning of the devastating conflict that is to come. Eric Stoltz stars as Daniel Graystone, the patriarch of the Graystone clan, which consists of his wife, Amanda (Paula Malcomson) and sixteen year old daughter Zoë (Alessandra Toreson).

Stoltz is a solid actor who does a great job at playing a genuinely decent man who’s caught between a rock and a hard place. His computer firm is struggling to make a prototype battle robot work, without any success, and just when he thinks it can’t get any worse, it does. Zoë is killed in an explosion aboard a train. Attending a press conference held by the authorities regarding the investigation into the explosion--which turns out to be the work of terrorists--Daniel meets another man who lost loved ones in the explosion, Joe Adama. Esai Morales brilliantly plays Adama--the father of the Galactica’s commander William Adama--with the same inflection and mannerisms as actor Edward James Olmos, which gives fans of BSG the feeling they’ve really traveled back in time and visited the old man’s old man.

It turns out that Zoë, who was a computer genius just like her dad, may not be quite dead after all. When Daniel discovers that Zoë created an avatar of herself that exists in cyberspace, he moves heaven and earth to bring her back to the physical world. A charge was leveled that Caprica would be more of a soap opera than BSG, and if your definition of good science fiction is strictly military SF, then Caprica may well feel like a soap opera to you. But if you keep an open mind, then this can be an engaging story. It’s very well written and produced, complete with the same production values that BSG enjoyed, and with its own marvelous cast. It’s basically a pilot, which means there’s no real ending, but thankfully the Sci-Fi Channel has already approved this to go into production as a series, which won’t air until 2010. But the Caprica DVD gives us an advance look at what we can expect, and so far, I’m impressed. --SF

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