Bad ending to a crummy series
Go with your first impressions.
That was the lesson I learned from watching BSG from the beginning. It started with a civilisation that had faster-than-light spacecraft, massively powerful AIs, what seemed to be a mature and stable society (although based on the subjugation and exploitation of intelligent machines). Yet, the people still wore spectacles, depended on field-telephones on their versions of Enterprise and required 1980's (there's the clue) style video cameras to film their political system, that hadn't evolved from the 19th-century. Now I realise that all this was merely a framework to hang a story on, but it grated. If the writers can't even get the basic science to be consistent, what hope is there for the story they wish to tell? The answer, as we find out 4 years later is none, at all.
Add into the mix a load of mystic nonsense about "arrows", that "point" the way to earth. A robotic adversary that turns out to be human - right down to the genetic level and you can see the basic premise falling apart right on the screen, every yawn-worthy time it's on. I gave up on watching this junk years ago - although I admit to watching an episode here-or-there, just to see if it got any better - it didn't.
The newsgroups were all a-flurry when the "heroes" (whoops, here comes another turkey) landed on what they thought was earth. I duly gave it another chance to be good - FAIL. It turned out to be the Planet of the Apes set. Boy, did I laugh!
But worse was to come. The finale (here comes the spoiler, unless you're reading this on Wednesday) was a collection of messianic nonsense in the first half and (as others have pointed out) a complete rip of HHGTTG in the second half - even to the point of closing on an iconic piece of music: I was half expecting Louis Armstrong, I must admit. We now hear that the writers are saying that it wasn't about science fiction, it was about the people. Well, fine: it goes from being a space opera to a soap opera. This sounds so much like a back-pedalling rationaliastion, that I can't help thinking they didn't really have much of a clue where they were going - other than the basic idea of ripping the original 1970's series.
So, my first impressions were that it was bad. It didn't reconcile the science (oh, here's another one: why do their manned (gimme a break, 1940's/WW2 much?) fighters suffer from multipath distortion on their radio transmissions - they couldn't possibly be using A.M.) with the concept. The story meandered for years and eventually went out with a bang, then a whimper. Nothing I saw during it's entire run changed my mind from the first impressions. The only real contribution it made was to give us all FRAK.