Caprica: "The future of humanity begins with a choice."

If a title as abnormal as “Caprica” isn’t enough to attract your attention to SyFy’s newest series, then its promotional images of a half naked teenage girl certainly will. The highly anticipated prequel to Battlestar Galactica has finally reached primetime, and anyone expecting the same vast, post-apocalyptic, predominantly male setting of its predecessor is entirely mistaken.

Set 58 years before the events of the original series, this new interpretation revolves around the life—or lack thereof—of Zoey Graystone, an ambitious teenager whose journey begins on one of the distant twelve colonies in space, called “Caprica.” Immediately viewers are thrust into a world gripped with success, pleasure, and intensity, a product of which is the virtual world created by “holobands,” a device that enables its users to construct their own realities. These realities can be described as gruesome at best, involving hedonistic sacrificial rites and lewd sexual acts that go way beyond the capacity of your average modern-day PlayStation. Society is fixated on the madness involved in the holobands, consumed with obsession. Foreseeing the imminent chaos and wars that will eventually set the foundation for “Galactica,” Zoey, the daughter of the holoband’s creators, secretly uses the technology to literally clone herself into a separate virtual person, trapped within the holoband’s reality. Within the first twenty minutes of the pilot she sets out to another colony, presumably to carry out whatever plans she had to fix this wayward society with her clone, when unexpected disaster strikes, killing Zoey and an entire train full of people.

It is with this initiating event that the plot really begins to intrigue its viewers. First is the mystery of what Zoey ever planned to do with her technology in the first place. Immediately after is the uncertain fate of her trapped counterpart. This is the grab, the main concern that captivates the show’s audience as the action unravels: what necessarily constitutes life? While Zoey is irreversibly dead, can her copy ever fully replace her and her role in other peoples’ lives? And if this technology can truly revive her, does this justify bringing other people back from the dead as well? At the end of the pilot these unthinkable decisions are left in Zoey’s fathers’ hands, just a few of the many deep-seated issues the series explores even within the first forty minutes of its air.

To put it in perspective, this show is a lot like “Gossip Girl” with a brain. It has all the gimmicks and glamour of sleek design, brilliant skylines, and fast-paced action that hook its modern young adult audience, but also manages to hit on issues that transcend the supposed galaxies between us and the world of Caprica. Besides the concern involving the meaning of life, the show also explores the complexity of issues in race and religion. Across the twelve colonies exists discrimination that parallels the extremist views people still hold against each other today. In particular are the frequent remarks made about Taurons, inhabitants of one of the other eleven colonies, claiming that they are “dirt-eaters” and that “deceit is in their DNA”. Themes of discrimination are also prevalent in religion. The colony of Caprica believes in the existence of multiple gods, and the people are so fully invested in these beliefs that those few who practice monotheism are considered amoral and a terrorist threat. While this is hardly a situation we have ever encountered, the religious prosecution is also identifiable and relatable in a modern context.

While it seems that this sort of ethical and informational overload might deter its young audience, never fear, for these issues are made plenty more digestible when presented with ethereally beautiful girls in school uniforms and hunky researchers with dark, mysterious pasts. The other great appeal of this new series is that viewers can enjoy it with or without any prior knowledge of the series. Whereas “Galactica” was mainly aimed at a male audience, the director, Ronald D. Moore, claims that, “Everything in ‘Caprica’ was designed specifically not to repeat what we had done in ‘Galactica’.” By incorporating family drama and politics and good old-fashioned teenage angst, the show hooks plenty of new viewers, while at the same time staying true to its roots. Fans of the old series will be satisfied by getting to see the future Commander Adama of “Galactica” as a preteen, and watching the dark past “Galactica” references unfold as the colonies inevitably go to war.

While “Caprica” is certainly an unconventional take on a series that had previously been represented as straggling survivors in deep space, its intense, captivating pilot episode proves that it can hold its own in television, whether the viewers associate with its parent series or not. This show will leave a lasting impression that compels its viewers to tune in every week, Fridays at nine o’clock on the SyFy channel.