As Caprica enters the second half of its first season, production of a two-hour pilot episode for a third Battlestar Galactica Series, Blood and Chrome, has been officially announced.

Originally mooted earlier this year as a series of webisodes a la The Resistance, The Face of the Enemy and the Razor Flashbacks, Blood and Chrome will instead get the full works courtesy of SyFy. It's set between Caprica and the rebooted BSG, in the tenth year of the first war with the Cylons, and focuses on a young William Adama (known to us currently as the craggy Edward James Olmos), just out of the Academy, getting his first commission in the Colonial fleet, aboard the brand new Galactica. The pilot sees him undertaking a top secret mission.

The rather low-key and cerebral Caprica (which isn't yet even guaranteed a second season) wrong-footed a lot of fans, but, says exec-producer David Eick, "Blood and Chrome will return us to the authentic, relentless depiction of combat and the agony and ecstasy of human-Cylon war, which was the hallmark of Battlestar Galactica's early seasons, while maintaining the themes of politics, social propaganda, and the timeless question:  what does it mean to be human?"

BSG guru Ron Moore doesn't seem to be directly involved, but series regulars Eick, Michael Taylor, Bradley Thompson and David Weddle (who once wrote a very good book on Sam Peckinpah, don'tcha know) have all had a hand in the new story. No word yet on whether Nico Cortez will get to reprise his Young Adama from the webisodes, but we imagine he's talking extremely earnestly to his agent.