A few months ago, the recently re-branded Syfy Channel released the pilot mini-movie of the Battlestar Galactica prequel series Caprica and now, in anticipation of the show's premiere on January 22nd, an extended cut of the pilot is currently being hosted on Hulu and on Syfy's own streaming site. With a number of new shows launching in January and February of 2010, now would be a good time to see if Caprica has what it takes to give BSG junkies a reason to tune in.

Televised science fiction has taken a decidedly fatalistic bent as of late. Many shows from Flashforward to the remake of V base much of their drama on the inevitable. The problem with this model is that there's no precedent to suggest it actually works. Caprica will always have to compete with the fact that the majority of its viewers are likely aware of how things are going to turn out. For example, at least two of the major characters, Joseph and William Adams (or Adama), have absolutely zero chance of being in any real danger for the duration of the series because the latter is at the center of every other series in the franchise and we learned enough about the former during the most recent iteration of Battlestar Galactica to know how he lives out the duration of his life.

On top of the fates of the Adama clan, we know that two wars are on the horizon and that the first one is at least one decade away, so the suspense on Caprica is going to have to come from some element that still seems important despite how things ultimately turn out. It's hard to imagine anything at all on this series seeming important when it all gets nuked sixty years down the line. In fact, the last couple episodes of BSG said so much, depicting the personal dramas of its central characters before the fall as being dismissively mundane.

At best, Caprica might be able to pull off a kind of Paradise Lost vibe, telling its viewers a story they've already heard in a way that sheds new light on familiar circumstances and maybe even engendering some sympathy for the devil along the way. So far, the only part of Caprica that's really all that interesting is the crime/racism drama surrounding the way Capricans relate to other colonists, especially Taurons like the famous Adama family. The pilot invests way too much energy into the teen troubles of Zoe Graystone, the radical monotheist daughter of a famous industrialist who builds the very first Cylon. When she's not being prissy with her mother, Zoe spends her time building lifelike artificial personalities and befriending junior terrorists. When one of her God-loving buddies blows up a train, killing her and half of Joseph Adama's family, it sets the events in motion that will one day result in the destruction of the colonies.

Currently the best part of Caprica are its male leads, Esai Morales and Eric Stoltz, who play Joseph Adama and Daniel Graystone respectively. Morales inhabits the stoic, principled rage of the Adama name rather well and Stoltz handles Graystone's reckless arrogance with just enough sympathy to make the character work. So far I'm not thrilled with Polly Walker's secretly radical headmistress, which says more about the writing of the character than about Walker's performance. I dunno, maybe I just can't look at her without seeing Atia from Rome.

I'm not ready to write off Caprica just yet because Ron Moore's writers have made more of even less material than this, but a lot is going to have to happen to make this prequel work. The cast is going to have to expand and include actors who occupy the same tier as not only the best performers on this show, but the show from which this concept was born. Battlestar Galactica was a stunning ensemble piece. Caprica won't survive if it can't replicate that density of talent.