'Caprica' DVD will tide 'Battlestar' fans over

These are not easy times for "Battlestar Galactica" fans.

We're going through withdrawal. Other than, maybe, get a life, what do we do on Friday nights now that "Galactica" has ended?

And ended spectacularly, might I add.

It's a stop-gap measure, but you can spend at least one Friday night watching the DVD release of "Caprica" — the prequel to "Galactica" that will debut as a weekly series sometime in 2010.

(The cable network, which by then will have renamed itself Syfy, has ordered 20 hours for the first season. That's the two-hour pilot that's already out on DVD, plus 18 one-hour episodes.)

Somewhat to my surprise, the "Caprica" pilot/DVD is good. Very good. Astonishingly good.

Despite my affection for — OK, obsession with — "Battlestar Galactica," I was highly skeptical before getting a look at "Caprica."

(Embarrassing admission: I have not been able to bring myself to delete the "Galactica" finale from my DVR. And I still watch bits of it from time to time.)

But in general, I'm not a fan of prequels.

At the risk of setting off an argument, I'm not a fan of the three "Star Wars" prequels. For me, it was laughable to try to build any suspense when we all knew how it was going to turn out.

(What? You mean that nice young Annakin Skywalker is going to turn into the nasty ol' Darth Vader. I'm shocked, I tell you. Shocked.)

And, given that "Caprica" is set half a century before "Battlestar Galactica" began, we know what's going to happen. Frankly, I expected to sit there after every episode and say, "And then everybody dies in 50 years when the Cylons attack."

Not so much, as it turns out.

Set on the planet Caprica — one of the 12 colonies of which we've heard so much — "Caprica" is very much not an outer space show. There's talk of the other colonies and space flight, but we don't see any of it in the DVD.

As the series begins, two seemingly good men lose family members in a terrorist bombing. Prominent attorney Joseph Adama (Esai Morales) — the father of young William (Sina Najafi, who's going to grow up to command the Galactica) — loses both his wife and teenage daughter; wealthy businessman/scientist Daniel Graystone (Eric Stoltz) loses his teenage daughter. The two bond over their shared loss, quickly becoming close friends.

Graystone, however, thinks he's found a way to get his daughter back. Maybe he can upload her personality into a little invention his company is working on — cybernetic life-form node, or Cylon.

That bare-bones explanation doesn't do the pilot/DVD justice. It's a subtle and intriguing drama that manages to build suspense despite the fact that we pretty much know what's going to happen.