I was thinking I'd rather be used as a living incubator for a human-Cylon hybrid than watch last Friday's premiere of Caprica—the prequel of sorts to Battlestar Galactica. After the exhausting rollercoaster of Battlestar, which swooped from the heartbreak of the pilot movie to the sheer crappiness of mid-Season 2 to the brilliant-yet-frustrating finale, I just wasn’t sure I could go there again—especially knowing that no matter what happens in Caprica, it’s going to result in the near-destruction of the human race that begins Battlestar Galactica. Talk about a spoiler alert.

But like being caught in the tractor beam of a Cylon Tartarus Class Destroyer, there I was, pulled along for another love-hate ride. My reward? The pilot was complex, involving, and exciting. If you're thinking about jumping on board, here's what you're in for...

Frankenstein and Family
Instead of another BSG-style “Exodus” in space, Caprica is a planet-bound Frankenstein tale. Caprica’s herr doctor is Daniel Graystone, played by the sympathetic, yet chilly, Eric Stoltz. Its monster is the re-creation of Graystone’s 16-year-old daughter, Zoe, killed in a terrorist attack. Conveniently, Zoe had already built her own digital twin before she died. Graystone’s goal: To transplant the digital Zoe from her shadowy virtual world into a Cylon (Cybernetic Life Form Nodes) body.

Like Mary Shelley’s original Dr. Frankenstein, Graystone is clearly setting himself up for destruction through his own arrogance. Told that it’s wrong for humans to appropriate the power of life and death from the gods, Graystone replied, “I don’t accept that.” Generations of TV and movie history promise us that no good will come of that attitude—although it sure can make for good TV.

The Big Questions
Like BSG, Caprica is all about good and evil, and how to know the difference. On planet Caprica, the monotheistic underground is challenging the polytheistic majority with a disturbing new claim on a single truth. An anti-terrorist agent critiqued monotheism as an ”absolutist view of the universe” in which right and wrong are “determined solely by a single, all-knowing, all-powerful being whose judgment cannot be questioned, and in whose name the most horrendous of acts can be sanctioned without appeal.” This is not Real Housewives, kids.