While we await formal confirmation of a broadcast date for what could be the final ever Battlestar Galactica TV movie, The Plan (which is arriving on DVD in the US in October), the SciFi Channel (and we appreciate that sooner or later we'll have to bend and use its ridiculous new name, but today is not that day) has confirmed that prequel series Caprica will begin its maiden run in January.

We've already had a television movie for Caprica to get things started, but the full first season proper is now scheduled to make its US bow on 22nd January, with a double-length premiere episode. The show will, from that point, then settle into a Friday at 10pm slot, an evening that's proving to be a graveyard position for television science fiction.

The pilot was well received, and the series, set decades before the attack on the colonies in Battlestar Galactica, stars Eric Stoltz and Esai Morales.

Prequel stories haven't been doing so well for us of late (Star Trek aside), so we're hoping that the BSG geniuses can make a compelling series out of a show whose ultimate destination we'll know before one frame of footage has been shown. In theory, anyway.

Caprica will, nonetheless, make its bow on 22nd January 2010, and then we can all begin making up our minds for ourselves...