Warning: Rant to ensue imminently.

This week marked the sudden demise of SyFy’s series Caprica, a spinoff prequel to Battlestar Galactica that starred Eric Stoltz as the troubled scientist who first created Cylons. It would have been nice to know that the end of the show was nigh. I wasn’t prepared for this particular apocalypse.

The series has exited with a whimper and not a bang; when I checked in August about the channel’s plans for airing the show’s second season, the word on the street was that it would return in January 2011. However, with very little fanfare, the network announced on September 9 that the show would return on October 5 on a different night of the week, meaning that hundreds of thousands of diehard fans, myself included, simply missed the first half of Caprica‘s second season. Not surprisingly, the sophomore season’s ratings were abysmal, and the series’ cancellation was announced almost immediately, with the five remaining episodes scheduled to air beginning this past Tuesday, January 4.

Then when I tuned in on Tuesday (at 6 p.m. . . . who airs a prime time TV show at 6 p.m.?), I discovered that SyFy’s program planning was even worse than I had thought. The channel was airing ALL of the five remaining episodes back to back in a single marathon.

If I’d known it was the end, I would have thrown a party, or at least a wake.

It’s a shoddy way for SyFy to treat one of its most courageous and unconventional programs. If its revival of Battlestar Galactica was dark, then Caprica was outright noir, no longer merely playing at the edges of humanity’s flirtations with evil. Like Battlestar Galactica, Caprica began with a seismic conflict–a religiously motivated terrorist attack. In fact, Caprica’s premiere was actually less apocalyptic than BSG‘s, which opened with a full-fledged nuclear holocaust. But Caprica began to show its true colors almost immediately, daring to delve into the tangled ruthlessness of ordinary people as it investigated the creation of the Cylons, that race unleashed upon humanity by humanity itself.

One of the problems with Caprica is that it has been so difficult to find a human character to root for. They are all so flawed, so lost. Unlike BSG, the prequel has no clearly discernible moral center, no great leader to emulate, and no end goal in sight. It’s not surprising that viewers lost interest, even though the program offered great food for thought and excellent performances. SyFy didn’t give it any time at all to gel.

And here’s the final insult: SyFy replaced Caprica in its coveted Friday lineup with WWE Smackdown, a wrestling extravaganza that is a far cry from science fiction. Wrestling? Unless it’s an alien vs. a Cyclops, it’s tough to see the science fiction angle. Every fan is now saying: What the frak?