Likewise “Caprica,” SyFy’s much-anticipated “Battlestar Galactica” prequel, suffers from the awkward starting block of presenting “the burgeoning technology of artificial intelligence and robotics that will eventually lead to the creation of the Cylons,” but it’s also charged with exploring the same looming questions that “Battlestar” did over the course of its run. This means that, not only does every plot point of “Caprica” feel like a big, obvious explanation for the far more compelling original (“So that’s how the Cylons were created to think for themselves!” “Ah, that’s why the Cylons are monotheistic!”), but the whole thing is stuffed with the worst sorts of flashy but skin-deep characters. Here’s a rebellious teenager with delusions of grandeur, an arrogant, heartbroken father turning to technology to cure his grief, a working-class girl hungering for some way to belong, a nurturing nun who’s also a drug addict.

Feeling dizzy yet? Sure, as with the “Star Wars” prequel, there are plenty of provocative scenes to pull you in, whether it’s a Cylon prototype blowing up smaller robots with merciless efficiency (I don’t recall the Centurions from “Battlestar” being such good shots) or two fathers, Daniel Graystone and Joseph Adama, reunited (in a virtual world) with their poor, dead daughters. We know by now that creators Ronald D. Moore and David Eick are skillful at translating their groovy story ideas into compelling, emotionally wrenching snapshots of anguish or ominous portrayals of arrogance and bluster among the ruling elite. We also know that they’ll weave in heavy-handed commentary on class, race, gender, religion, politics and anything else that might lend this soapy robot circus more intellectual flair and street cred.

On “Battlestar Galactica” these elements usually felt organic, like another smart layer to complement an already full plate of suspense, action and the emotional reverberations and post-traumatic shock befitting the wake of a nuclear holocaust. But on “Caprica,” hearing the same echoes of meaning sort of feels like seeing Yoda fly: It’s cool and everything, but it’s also out of step with our understanding of him. Basically, we want Yoda bickering with R2D2 on swampy Dagoba, not leaping through the air or playing preschool teacher to a bunch of saucer-eyed “younglings.”

And just as we knew the damn younglings were going to get slaughtered the second they ambled adorably into the picture, we recognize early on that Zoe (Alessandra Torresani), with her big, pretty Zooey Deschanel look-alike face and her genius brain and her girly, foot-stomping alienation, is going to use her talents for evil rather than good. She hangs out in a virtual club where people virtually slaughter each other for fun and entertainment, after all. Or are we just prejudiced against the sensationalistic hobbies of this younger generation?

See how everything in “Caprica” reverberates with the most irritatingly primitive social commentary? Maybe this kind of button-pushing — Terrorist teens! Sexy murder/dance club! Criminal underworlds! Thoughtful robots! — was present in the “Battlestar” series, and we were just too distracted by the gigantic spaceships and look-alike robot spies to mind. Maybe it was the weight of the nuclear holocaust, looming at the edges of every frame, that legitimized the soapiness of “Battlestar.” All I know is, now that we’re on Caprica, “58 years before the fall,” i.e., the nuclear attack by the Cylons, the story feels like the worst sort of retread: “Caprica” has few of the charms of the original series, and because it’s a prequel, it doesn’t even further the story. We’re forced to rewind to a time that’s less weighty and less intriguing, yet everyone is walking around talking to each other in the same over-the-top heavy tones that made sense within the claustrophobic confines of “Galactica” but just feel unnecessarily melodramatic here. Not only does every line feel too obvious, but it’s tripped up by clumsy back story. It’s as if we’re being treated to some bullet-pointed character profile where key traits are highlighted, circled and underlined three times.

“You have no idea what it means to build something, or to work hard for anything! It’s all just been handed to you, Zoe!” says Zoe’s mom (Polly Walker).

“We come from a long, proud line of Tauron peasants!” Joseph Adama (Esai Morales) tells his son (Sina Najafi). “You’re named after your grandfather, I ever tell you that? William. He was killed after the Tauron uprising.”

“Let’s be clear. I don’t like your boss, I don’t like your planet, and I don’t like your people!” a high-level government official practically spits at Joseph Adama.

“Blood for blood!” Sam (Sasha Roiz) says to his brother, Joseph. “It’s the Tauron way!”

“You mean only the gods have power over death? Well, I reject that notion!” says Daniel Graystone (Eric Stoltz), Zoe’s father and the head of the company that’s working on creating the Cylons.

“When did you ever listen? You and Mom, you knew it all!” Zoe’s avatar says to Daniel. “Your arrogance was killing your daughter!”

It was easy to take issue with those who called “Battlestar” foolish: There was so much suspense and action and political intrigue in the mix that a few dippy scenes where Starbuck and Lee made googoo eyes at each other or Six and Baltar debated the meaning of life for the 50th time were tolerable. Somehow the same clunky philosophizing and heartfelt confessions fall flat in “Caprica.” Although the second and third episodes of the prequel are a little more intriguing and less gummed up with melodrama than the pilot, the overall picture is a world apart from the dynamism and intensity of “Battlestar.”

When grieving daddies first try to reunite virtually with their dead daughters, then become enemies, when monotheist nuns hatch eeevil plans and Cylons all but scribble in their diaries about their no-good very-bad days, it’s hard not to wish that we could pick up in the hopelessly cheesy spot we left “Battlestar” instead, with Bill Adama making a happy little Cro-Magnon family on the planet Earth. As Daniel Graystone and Joseph Adama know all too well, sometimes anything is better than trying to recapture the past. 

 ”Virtuality” offers exactly the sort of story that “Galactica” fans will sink their teeth into. As Earth is ravaged by global warming and is rapidly becoming unlivable, a small crew aboard the starship Phaeton begins its 10-year mission to find a habitable planet orbiting a nearby star. Conditions on board the ship are beyond claustrophobic (how Galactican!) after just a few months: Couples bicker, young crew members second-guess themselves, personalities clash, a crew member falls ill, and the commander of the ship begins to lose control. To make matters worse (far worse, in fact), the entire crew is being filmed for a reality show, so they navigate the pressure cooker of ship life knowing that their worst (and most private) moments are being broadcast to viewers back home.

 In order to offer a reprieve from the tireless strain of their mission, crew members are provided with virtual reality devices that allow them to star in their own fantasies. But when some mysterious malevolent force invades this one last respite from the confined drudgery of ship life, interpersonal relations on the Phaeton begin to deteriorate in earnest. We can feel it: Tensions are rising to the point that they’re beginning to endanger everyone on board.

 And then, just when things start to get really interesting, the so-called movie is over. Remember how some of the very best episodes of “Battlestar Galactica” ended with truly breathtaking cliffhangers? Well, “Virtuality” is just like that, only it’s not a series, it’s a stand-alone movie. Guess you’ll have to wait forever to find out what happens next!

 But the fact that there are no real answers to the mysteries set up here is only the tip of the iceberg. We’re presented with stories and characters that are quite clearly meant to be explored over the course of a season, which makes the whole thing feel, very palpably, like an utter waste of time. Essentially, “Virtuality” is a two-hour-long teaser, an extended trip to a really excellent strip bar that ends with a cold shower. Unless you’re a masochist, the flash of credits will make your heart sink.

 Of course, many die-hard “Galactica” fans will be interested in watching in order to advocate that the series get picked up by Fox. And it’s true, as a pilot, “Virtuality” is fantastic. Why wasn’t it picked up in the first place? Cool tricks, heavy drama, clever dialogue, twists and turns — what more could you want from a space soap, anyway?

 Maybe the real question is, why torture us with what might have been? Why air a two-hour pilot that only works as a pilot, with a cliffhanger ending that’s sure to piss off more than a few casual viewers thinking they just tuned in for, well, for an actual movie, with an actual ending? Those who watch without realizing that “Virtuality” is a pilot (that was never conceived as anything but a pilot) will think that they’ve suffered through a TV movie with serious art film delusions of grandeur — in a bad way.

 But then, maybe Fox is airing “Virtuality” to motivate “Galactica” fans to do all the marketing work for them. When asked if Fox will pick up the show, Moore told IESB.net, “I think they want to see what the reaction is going to be … Right now, it doesn’t look like it’s going to series, but if enough people watched and got excited about it, anything is possible.” Is this all just a savvy publicity scheme? Do Fox executives already love this series in secret, and they’re just setting us up to believe that an outpouring of fan support forced them to add it to their schedule? Or has an increasingly manipulative world of viral marketing rendered us hopelessly paranoid?

 Ultimately, airing “Virtuality” will either look like a smart publicity maneuver or a really bad programming choice, depending on how many viewers rally behind the cause. As usual, Fox will let the fans decide.

In an unconventional launch strategy, SyFy has just released the one-and-a-half-hour pilot episode of the show on DVD and digital download (the actual series won’t premiere on television until 2010). Described by blogs as “‘Dallas’ in space,” “Caprica” is, indeed, a very different beast from its mother series. Planet-bound, slow-paced and with hardly any action scenes, the series is primarily a melodrama about two families on the planet Caprica (one of the 12 home planets of the human race in the “Battlestar” universe) as they overcome a personal tragedy. It also, of more interest to science fiction fans, tells the story of the birth of the Cylons, the race of robots who, as we learned in “Battlestar,” eventually become hell-bent on destroying all human life.

The pilot takes place 58 years before the Cylon attacks that kick off “Battlestar,” and begins, promisingly enough, in a raucous nightclub. It’s a provocative scene: In one room, people shoot each other for sport; elsewhere, an orgy takes place in a red-lit room; on a stage, a knife-wielding giant executes a young woman by stabbing her in the head. Meanwhile, a teenage girl, accompanied by her two friends, watches the goings-on from the club’s balcony. The setup raises the intriguing prospect of Caprica as a Gomorrah-slash-’90s-rave planet on the verge of retribution.

Not so fast. In the pilot’s first big disappointment, the club turns out to be a virtual one. The teenage girl is Zoe Graystone (Alessandra Toreson), the daughter of a biotechnology magnate named Daniel Graystone (Eric Stoltz), and she’s accessing the holographic club through a sunglasses-like apparatus in her school’s bathroom.

The real Caprica, as it turns out, is nowhere near as interesting as the opening suggests, though Zoe, at least, is a bit of a delinquent. Not only does she hang out at the virtual orgy-and-knifing club during school hours, she’s fallen in with a monotheistic cult. And thanks to her school-time holographic excursion, she gets herself grounded by her mother, Amanda Graystone (Paula Malcomson, “Deadwood’s” Trixie). So, as rebellious Caprican teenagers tend to do, Zoe decides to run away to another planet with her two monotheistic friends. The plan ends in tragedy when the train whisking her toward Gemenon is destroyed by a suicide bombing.

In the weeks following Zoe’s death, Graystone discovers that his daughter had been busy creating a remarkably detailed holographic copy of herself — a breakthrough in artificial intelligence and a project that, he hopes, may allow him to resurrect his daughter in robotic form. He is aided in his resurrection plans by another grief-stricken father, Joseph Adama (Esai Morales), a lawyer who is himself eager to digitally revive the daughter and wife that he lost in the same train explosion. As “Battlestar” fans know, Adama is the father of Bill Adama, eventual commander of the Battlestar Galactica.

As premises go, “Caprica’s” dead teenager uploaded into battle robot is a promising one (“Terminator” meets “Freaky Friday”?), but the pilot lacks the dramatic heft of its predecessor. It doesn’t have the same sense of scale or tragedy as “Battlestar” and feels considerably more generic, both dramatically and stylistically. The drama builds slowly, and scenes unfold without much, if any, tension. What little tension it has owes to viewers’ knowledge of what will happen 58 years later. There are no hostage crises or food shortages to resolve, since the show’s main concern is the emotional state of its two families. In fact, robot subplot and holographic excursions aside, there really isn’t much that’s science fiction-y about “Caprica.”

Unfortunately, “Caprica” doesn’t make for tremendously engaging melodrama either, largely because it doesn’t have any characters as immediately riveting as Katee Sackhoff’s Starbuck or Mary McDonnell’s President Roslin. Eric Stoltz brings quiet soulfulness to his grieving father, but Esai Morales feels wooden and stilted as Adama, and the rest of the ensemble (especially, it has to be said, the child actors) aren’t a particularly inspiring bunch. As for the show’s visuals — unlike “Battlestar,” “Caprica” is filmed largely with fixed shots (no hand-held cameras), which robs it of much of its flair and immediacy. Its clean urban setting feels antiseptic and cold and a bit dull. Judging by the pilot, the planet Caprica is Vancouver with a fancier train system.

In the spirit of “Battlestar,” “Caprica” also references a number of real-world topical issues: Adama is a member of a disliked immigrant group called the Tauron, and during their investigation of the bombing, the authorities become suspicious of a certain religious minority. But while “Battlestar’s” space-bound setting was strange and destabilizing enough to make its political allusions seem fresh — one of the joys of the series was seeing it fragment and rearrange issues like abortion and terrorism to make provocative arguments — in “Caprica,” they merely feel awkward. It’s obvious that Tauron is a stand-in for Mexico (there’s even a subplot about Tauronese gangs) and monotheism a replacement for Islam — but there’s nothing new to be learned here by renaming things.

When the show premieres on television next year it could take off in some interesting and unexpected directions. The show’s writing is fairly strong (one of the debut episode’s co-writers, Jane Espenson, was responsible for many of “Battlestar’s” best shows), and SyFy clearly has a lot of faith in creator Ronald Moore. But given the high expectations that “Battlestar” fans have for the series, and the tepidness of this initial offering, I wonder how many will come back to find out what happens in 2010.

This year’s half-season began in an existential funk, with humanity’s remnants and their cylon allies poleaxed by the discovery that Earth, the planet they’d spent the whole series chasing, had been rendered a smoldering, toxic wasteland by its previous residents — who, to add insult to injury as far as the humans were concerned, turned out to be cylon skin jobs. You had to sympathize with the show’s writers: No narrative twist could equal the end of Season 2, in which Baltar was elected president, the refugees foolishly settled on New Caprica, and suddenly it was a year later and cylon centurions were striding through the bedraggled little settlement in a scene that was a frank citation of the Nazis marching into Paris. After you’ve dared to flip the premise of your show entirely, what can you do next to upend your audience’s expectations? Allowing the characters to find their ultimate goal and then making it really, really suck was pretty much the only card left to play.

And then where do you go? There was way too much wallowing, weeping and ‘splaining in this season, but things did briefly return to form in the two-episode mutiny arc. That was “Battlestar” at its best: the “good guys” (Roslin and Adama) were compromised by their semi-dictatorial high-handedness while their antagonist, Tom Zarek, was conversely doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. As for his co-conspirator, Felix Gaeta, would he have been driven so relentlessly to the brink if not for a maddeningly shoddy prosthesis and the humiliation of staggering around the Galactica like Captain Ahab without a whale? That peg leg was like the proverbial nail for want of which the war was lost. Exquisitely played by Alessandro Juliani, Gaeta has long been one of the series’ most intriguing minor figures, a man who disastrously combined the best of intentions with the worst possible judgment of character.

Then again, the true colors of Tom Zarek were difficult for anyone but Roslin and Adama to discern — until, that is, he finally went Stalin and massacred the Quorum. “Battlestar Galactica” made itself distinctive with moments just like that one, drawing its events and dilemmas from 20th-century history rather than the moral simplicities of space opera. When Roslin’s swearing-in echoed LBJ’s, when she and Adama hovered on the brink of fixing the election, when Starbuck tortured Leoben and the human insurgency resorted to suicide bombings to resist cylon rule, the show became electrifying, frank about the predicaments of the present in a way that a TV drama about the present could never be.

It wasn’t just that “Battlestar Galactica” dealt with “issues” — “Star Trek” did that, in its own pat, right-thinking liberal way. It wasn’t even that the series was “dark,” in the callow sub-noir fashion of a Zack Snyder movie. What “Battlestar Galactica” showed us over and over again was just how hard it is for real, complicated and contradictory people to find their way in a universe that offers them one impossible choice after another. It refused to provide any easy or obvious solutions. Should Roslin and Adama have fixed that election? If they hadn’t, then the Baltar presidency, the settling of New Caprica and the cylon occupation would never have happened. Hundreds of lives would have been saved. You can understand how the two of them must have lost their faith in democracy and ethical rectitude as the result of the New Caprica debacle. But from that loss of faith, the slow creep toward despotism began. By the end of the series last night, the political legitimacy of the Adama and Roslin regime had almost withered away.

Adama was always the series’ most conventional figure, the old-fashioned, admirable leader-hero that American popular culture typically insists upon. This also made him the least interesting character psychologically, but he was essential all the same; the rest of the survivors needed him as a fixed point, a star to steer by. Understandably enough, in moving their convention-busting story through its endgame, the show’s creators decided to attack that final redoubt of certainty by dismantling Adama himself along with his ship. His best friend was a cylon, Earth was a bust, the woman he loved was dying and even the Galactica itself was crumbling — talk about piling it on! Adama hit the sauce, prowled the corridors peering at cracks with a hunted expression (to the extent that Edward James Olmos exhibits any expression), and spent a lot of time sprawled on the floor, crying. This tactic backfired, making much of the final season feeling labored and maudlin. Take away Adama’s strength, and there didn’t seem to be much left to the guy. There’s something to be said for never getting a glimpse behind a revered leader’s facade.

Friday night’s finale, at least, provided an Adama who’d snapped out of it. The first half of the two-hour conclusion offered a hearty serving of something else the creators of “Battlestar Galactica” supposedly didn’t care about: action. The last-ditch assault on the cylon’s colony by ramming it with the rattletrap Galactica was thrilling and gorgeous, providing a final showcase for the centurions, surely the scariest monsters on television. Then came 40 minutes of speeches about lessons learned and the need to “break the cycle,” the naiveté of which did indeed feel like a break — from the knowing, worldly stoicism that made “Battlestar Galactica” so refreshing to begin with. The last flash of that sensibility came when the corpse of poor Racetrack got knocked against the wrong button and wound up nuking Cavil’s cylons to Kingdom Come just as everyone had decided to get along for a change.

Then we got to Earth, and saw one scene after another of people standing in green fields saying, “But what will you do now?” (And how preposterous was the idea of the survivors splitting up and forsaking all technology to go native? The first case of strep throat would have made short work of that vow.) Laura Roslin died with the heart-rending dignity that Mary McDonnell never failed to bring to the finest role of her career, and most of the other actors (James Callis, Katee Sackhoff, Tricia Helfer, Grace Park, Aaron Douglas, Tahmoh Penikett) got a final chance to remind us of just how good they are. The initially puzzling flashbacks to the pre-attack days on Caprica turned out to depict the key decisions that led all of the series’ characters to the Galactica, and ultimately to the founding of a new human race.

It was the opposite of David Chase’s famous non-ending for “The Sopranos,” and it demonstrated that tying up every loose end also has its pitfalls. Granted, it can’t be easy to cap off a serialized drama this avidly followed. On one hand, the audience craves resolution, answers to all the mysteries and prophecies and visions; on the other, “Battlestar Galactica” isn’t “Lost,” a comic-book epic in which the puzzles and their solutions are the main point.

What made “Battlestar Galactica” great was the uncertainty of its characters’ condition; were they part of a divine plan, or pinging randomly around an empty universe? Was there a reason to be good, to be selfless, or was it every man for himself? How much of our better nature should we be willing to sacrifice in order to survive? How can we tell where our loyalties lie? They didn’t know. We don’t know. They were racing around in a spaceship fleeing killer robots, yes, but the ambiguity of their circumstances made them so much more like us than 99 percent of the people on television. It made them seem so real. When they got their answers, they became finally and irrevocably fictional.

But you weren’t alone, sugar plum. We were all there. We all liked the same crap, and then we didn’t like the stuff that came after that. And then we got fat and our hair started falling out and our backs started to hurt and we didn’t like anything at all anymore.

Misunderestimating the apocalypse

OK, fine, I never liked the Dead, not really. And these days, I do enjoy some things, like really good mattresses, and extremely comfortable shoes, and pie. But you know what I’m not sure I love anymore? “Battlestar Galactica.”

Sweet gods on high, I know! Pure blasphemy! What can I do, though? It’s like when you’re 7 years old and you go to see “Star Wars” in the theater, and there’s an evil guy and a princess (a princess!) and robots and planets with three suns. Suddenly, the whole world feels like it belongs to you! And then you wait three years for the Empire to strike back, and when it does? You’re 10 years old and you’re in love with Han Solo and you’re transformed into an “Empire”-loving zombie overnight, you go back to see that movie again and again and again and you save your money to buy action figures and Landspeeders and Millennium Falcons and AT-AT Walkers and you’re just so happy to be a fan.

And “Return of the Jedi” is pretty good, or at least OK, but then you get much older, and the prequels come out. They’re just horrid, horrendous, hideous, unthinkable, leaden, stupid, bloodless, laughable, frightening, downright bad, even when you’re really high and you’re at an awesome theater with a great sound system and you go with crazed former fans like yourself. After the second prequel, you walk out wanting to kick George Lucas in the teeth and tell him to wake up, finally, and take a long, hard look at that old, fat guy in the mirror and ask himself, “Did I fail?” Because it’s obvious that he never asks himself that, and that is where he fails! Can’t he try a little harder to get the magic back?

I can only guess that Ronald D. Moore, the creator of “Battlestar Galactica” (10 p.m. Fridays on SciFi), has reached some similar flabby, self-satisfied state. I can only assume that he’s still soaring from that brilliant scene where Edward James Olmos smashed the model ship into little bits at the end of the third season, because this past Friday, “Battlestar” came back for its final 10 episodes, and it was one melodramatic ship-smashing moment after another. Every single scene, we had heavy-handed tripe and no nuance and totally nail-on-the-head, obvious dialogue. Didn’t Olmos actually grit his teeth and growl at Col. Tigh in one scene?

(Warning: Below is a recap of Friday night’s premiere of the last season of “Battlestar Galactica.” If you didn’t see it, don’t read this.)

Look, I feel bad, because I’ve loved this series for a long time. Not so long ago, I was a true fan, fully and completely immersed in the little Galactican universe, happy to go along with whatever crazy tangent or soapy twist the show’s writers cared to dream up. But Friday’s premiere went beyond disappointing. It just wasn’t good.

We open on a ravaged planet Earth, nothing but wreckage and black pebbles and broken, leafless branches as far as the eye can see. It looks cold, too, and windy. But this still has to be better than New Caprica, right? It’s better than the post-apocalyptic landscape of, say, “WALL-E” or “Heroes,” right?

Nope, apparently Earth was nuked 2,000 years ago, and now it’s uninhabitable.

Dee, in particular, is really disappointed about Earth sucking. Why do we care how Dee feels? Isn’t she sort of a minor character? Wait, is Dee going to die in this episode?

Everyone else stumbles around alone, looking for clues about what happened here. They’re shocked, depressed, confused. President Laura Roslin (Mary McDonnell) returns to the mothership, where a sea of expectant faces awaits her. She can’t stand to tell them the truth, that Earth is a blackened shell of its former self, that she led them all on a wild goose chase. She doesn’t say a word, and leaves everyone shouting questions as she’s ushered out. Hmm. Are we supposed to imagine that a leader as polished as the one she’s become would leave everyone hanging like that, no matter how crushed she was? I don’t buy it. Yes, that’s a very dramatic choice, but sometimes you have to choose the more difficult path: Imagine Roslin trying like crazy to put a positive spin on this. That would’ve been even more painful and resonant and dramatically interesting than her silent treatment.

Immediately after that, we find out that all of the bones on Earth are Cylons. “The thirteenth tribe, a tribe of Cylons, came to this planet and called it Earth!” says Col. Tigh, suddenly recovered from his angry, baffled state and an expert on history to boot. This notion depresses Roslin and Adama even more.

Back on Earth, Chief Tyrol has a flashback, and realizes that he was there when Earth was nuked. Hold on, is this “Heroes” or “Battlestar”? I’m getting confused. Samuel Anders says he was there, too, and he played that awesome song that’s been echoing through the four recently discovered Cylons’ heads — you know, “All Along the Watchtower”? I guess this means that Anders is the Cylon version of Bob Dylan. Tory says they were all there, watching Anders sing that song. Oh sweet Jesus, suddenly I feel like I’m at a Burning Man reunion.

Meanwhile, Kara Thrace is wandering around and discovers a piece of her ship. How could she have been there? Then she finds her own dead body. Nooo! “What am I?” she screams at Leoben. Um, you’re probably a Cylon, right? Weren’t we looking for one final Cylon?

Boy, are things happening fast! What are they going to fill up the next nine episodes with, anyway?

Dee baby-sits Hera. Is Dee going to kidnap or kill Hera? Lee Adama asks Dee to meet him for a drink. Is Dee going to die before she can have a drink with him? Is Dee going to die right after they have a drink?

“There were some good times for us, weren’t there, on Pegasus?” Lee Adama asks. Do we care about Dee? Are we supposed to care about her for a second, because she’s obviously about to die?

Roslin blames herself for this. She even pushes her lover boy Bill Adama away as she’s burning her book of prophecies. Kara Thrace, in turn, burns her own corpse. Dee seems happy, then puts a pistol to her head and blows her own brains out. Bill Adama responds by getting drunk and daring Col. Tigh to blow his brains out for him, so he doesn’t have to do it himself.

Ugh. Even though all of this makes sense, even though they’re all devastated and confused and their entire reason for living has vanished into thin air, everything feels rushed and overblown. We need these revelations to come less quickly, so that they feel a little more weighty and important.

And we don’t care about Dee! Come on. We never did. That’s like having a Storm Trooper and a random Ewok both die in a gun battle. Who cares? If you want someone to reflect the fact that morale on Galactica couldn’t possibly get any lower, at least give us a little time to see that play itself out. Let’s have a few substantive conversations, instead of this fast-motion brooding and anger. There’s nothing smart or suspenseful happening in this episode, it’s just a bunch of old, familiar characters, milling around, looking discouraged and saying exactly what you’d expect them to say.

A big part of the problem these days is that Cylons are suddenly cooperating with humans. I liked this turn of events at first, but the usual, nerve-rattling standoffs and suspenseful interactions are a thing of the past. How do you build suspense when everyone’s mumbling and staring into the distance together, Cylons and humans alike?

But even if this episode were a little more hopeful — “Maybe we can rebuild here anyway!” –­ only to have things fall to pieces in the next episode, that would be better.

And the last scene? With Tigh cut off practically mid-sentence by the rolling credits? I don’t know. What does everyone else think? I’m just flummoxed by how bad this premiere was, I really am. When I think of how smart and intense “Battlestar Galactica” used to be! You could always count on finales and premieres to be mind-blowing!

When the colonists sifted through the ashes of what was once paradise and asked, “What happened here?” I found myself asking the same thing. What happened here?

I liked their early stuff the best.

Next week: Toni Collette sparkles in Showtime’s “United States of Tara” while the indie rock misfits of HBO’s “Flight of Conchords” return for an encore.