So how did the Cylons come to be? That answer will be explored in the Sci Fi Channel’s TV show Caprica, the prequel to Battlestar Galactica, which ends is fourth season run later this year. After that, producer Ron Moore will be jumping onto Caprica, where we will discover the true history of the Cylons’ creation. The full details of how and why comes courtesy of E! Online, who broke the scoop. According to Kristin, the prequel wasn’t supposed to involve the ancestors of the current cast, but the producers changed their mind and put in the Adama family bloodline, perhaps as a way to anchor the prequel to the current BSG show. As you’d expect from Ron Moore, the sci-fi stuff is just an excuse to explore other ideas.

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The Graystones include father Daniel, a computer genius; mother Amanda, a brilliant surgeon and unfaithful wife; and their daughter, Zoe, who is martyred to her boyfriend’s religious fanaticism—but not before she installs the rudimentary elements of her personality and DNA into a machine, creating a digital twin of herself, Zoe-A.

After the human Zoe’s death, Daniel uses these raw materials, some stolen technology and his own grief to cobble together “a robotic version of his dead daughter.” This robot version, known as Zoe-R, is a Cylonic Eve, the first of her kind. (Dun-dun-dun!)

And in this corner, ladies and gentlemen, meet Grandpapadama! As Adm. Bill Adama once told us, his father, Joseph, was a great attorney of his day, fighting for the civil rights of the Twelve Colonies’ downtrodden and marginalized. But that’s not his whole story: Joseph Adama’s wife and daughter were also killed in that same suicide bombing that took Zoe Graystone’s life.

The two fathers, Daniel Graystone and Joseph Adama, work together on replicating their children in cyborg form, but “Joseph is ethically appalled by the robot version of his dead [daughter], Tamara, and repents his actions.” Those Adamas are all hardass conscience, aren’t they?

Still, the one happy result of the Adama family tragedy is that Joseph and his young son, the 9-year-old Bill, grow closer to each other, and Joseph begins to explain their family’s story to his sad, somber child. But will their bond prepare them for the havoc soon to be wreaked by the rise of the Cylon nation?

Damn. Suicide bombings by religious fanatics? Give this to Ron Moore: the guy doesn’t pull any punches. And if that’s the case, it’ll just end up being way too depressing a show for me, and as with Battlestar Galactica, I’m not sure if I want to be THAT depress while watching my sci-fi.