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Prequels can be a dicey affair. Remember Jar Jar Binks and The Phantom Menace? So as big a "Battlestar Galactica" fan as I was, I was nervous about the SyFy channel's "Caprica," which tells the tale of how the Cyclons that overthrew mankind first came into existence.

Better to be pleasantly surprised rather than deeply disappointed, I figured. Well, pleasantly surprised it is. "Caprica" takes place on the planet the Cyclons will blow to smithereens 59 years later. At the heart of the action are the patriarchs of two families -- the Greystones and the Adamas. The two men bond at first over losing their daughters in a terrorist explosion. Greystone's daughter Zoe had created an avatar program than enabled her to live on in a virtual world. Daddy Greystone captures the avatar, however, and inserts it into a large metal robot he had been developing for a military contract. Ladies and gentlemen, meet your first Cyclon. Adama, meanwhile, is a lawyer with mob ties who takes a dark turn over the pain of losing his wife and child. That leaves him with only his son, a son that will grow up to become leader of the colonial fleet and, yep, the Battlestar Galactica.

I realize how tremendously nerdy and confusing this all sounds, but it's really not. At its heart, "Caprica" is much more a good ol' fashioned family rivalry drama than a sci-fi geekfest. The drama comes from watching Poppas Adama and Greystone, so united in their grief and desire to see their daughters once again, evolve from grieving father buddies to adversaries as their motives change and despair takes divergent paths.

Eric Stoltz as Greystone and Esai Moralas as Adama are excellent playing powerful men that are both flawed in deeply different ways. Knowing how Greystone's creation -- born out of his own flesh and blood -- will evolve and eventually wipe out the entire planet gives "Caprica" a tragic depth that makes this prequel definitely worth watching. It still doesn’t make up for Jar Jar though.