Writing Intriguing Sci-fi Premises (part 1)

This weekend my wife and I decided to try a new TV series we found on Netflix called “The 100.” (small spoilers...) The premise intrigued us both, especially once we got into the first episode. Earth was devastated by nuclear war, and some fled to a giant orbiting space station. Years later, the teenage delinquents that were in prison on this station are sent down to earth to determine if it is liveable again. The thing that I found really interesting, though, was the situation on the space station. The population was too large and the ruling officials knew that the only way they could survive was to reduce the population, hence sending the 100 teenagers down to the surface. Even that only bought them 1 more month. What was really intriguing, though, was the excessively legalistic standards that had developed on the station: even the slightest infraction was punished severely, quickly landing teenagers in jail while adults were “floated” from the airlock into space. I hadn't bought into the premise at the beginning when the mother wanted her teenage daughter to be among those sent down to earth, but when it soon became clear that the tyrannical society that existed on the space station was likely to end lives over law-breaking just to buy more time for everyone else, it was easy to understand why a mother would want her child to get out of there, even if it meant heading down to a dangerous unknown on a radiation-soaked earth. All this got me thinking about the method of writing an intriguing premise for sci-fi stories...