I have a soft spot for the original Battlestar Galactica TV series. I freely admit it. The special effects were not the best, the less said about the functionality of the Viper fighters the better, but some of the stories had a lot more below the surface than first seemed. TheOtherSean quoted Baltar’s lines over at Peter Grant’s place on Sunday, and I heard them as above.
I also played a piano arrangement of the following for a recital one year.
OK, so the show was “Mormons in Space,” according to some, and owed way too much to the ancient astronaut theories of Erick van Dannekin et al. I had a little crush on Loren Green/ Commander Adama, I admit it. My family would watch Battlestar, and Buck Rogers, as well as Star Trek re-runs. Of the three, Battlestar had the most depth to it, as best I recall. I’m almost afraid to watch too many episodes, lest the shine of memory wear off. But at the time I loved it, and it was up there with Star Wars in terms of what the neighborhood kids LARPed (before we knew to call it LARPing).
The two episodes with Count Iblis especially stick, as do the episodes with the Battlestar Pegasus, because of the characters. That’s what made the show neat – the characters. They made sense. Captain Kirk and Spock didn’t always make as much sense in my kid’s world, but I could sympathize with the people searching for a home.
I have not seen the new Battlestar. Once I learned how the series ended, ick, no. Grey goo ahoy! There was always hope in the original Battlestar, and I can still imagine that they managed to find, if not our Earth, then a place of refuge where they’d make a new home and be welcome and prosper, wiser and better for their suffering. And not by chucking technology and joining the noble savages, sort of. Although, the soundtrack from the new series is fantastic for creepy, did-you-hear-that?-Don’t-open-the-door! writing music.
And spell-check? Battlestar is not a typo for Barista or Batista. đŸ˜›
Cat Rotator's Quarterly 
There was a series where they did arrive at earth in the 80’s. Remember seeing a few episodes and it tanked badly. Lot of reasons. Watched the first two seasons of the reboot before I “walled” it and never went back to anything in that universe. And like you it was a great choice.
The only halfway decent episode of the followup series was when they showed what happened to Starbuck.
In my opinion, the new mini series was good, but the series that followed it wasn’t; I watched the first several episodes but then I moved to somewhere without cable and didn’t keep up with it.
I found the beginning of the prequel series Caprica to be interesting for it’s portrayal of a high tech near future multi-theistic world where mon-theists are seen as at least crazy and probably terrorists. it also portrayed a different set of moral values than we expect.
I enjoyed most of the first season but then it went off the rails.
I still consider ’33’, the premier episode of the series, the finest military sci-fi to ever appear on television and possibly any screen.
I was a kid when the original Battlestar Galactica aired. I remember it fondly. I even have the pilot movie on DVD, and the soundtrack on my iPod. One or another of the two-hour episodes turns up now and then on rerun channels, and it’s clearly a product of the 70s… but all things considered, it hasn’t aged too badly.
I watched the pilot miniseries for the reboot, and that was enough. I had a bad feeling when they turned Baltar from a traitor into a mere jerk, and a worse feeling when they made Tigh an alcoholic… by the time they got to the idea of “sleeper Cylons” I could see that it was going to be all “who’s the Cylon” head games, no real villains, and no chance for real drama. I never watched an episode of the series. From what I’ve heard about it, I don’t regret that choice at all.