The question was why BSG was good, but BSG 1980 was crap. The second "old" series, not the Moore one.

I contend that the premise was horrible.

I mean... this line right here (from the wiki): "After an initial, epic time travel adventure to Nazi Germany in the 1940s (to stop rebel Galactican Commander Xavier, trying to change the future to improve Earth's technology level), the three friends devise ways to help Earth's scientists and outwit the Cylons in the present day."

Yeah...

Most shows have a rocky time surviving the cheesy "Nazi spacemen" shtick (see the various moments in Star Trek), and this show opened with it. Yikes.

Do you contend that the original Trek over used the Nazi theme? Idk. Your point is not clear to me; at the same time, I would assert that Trek presented many different social issues throughout  history. Roman/American Imperialism, Racial tension, Environmental Issues etc. The Nazis angle only reflects one facet of that brilliant series. "Nazi Spaceman," imo..could easily be substituted as Machiavellian A-hole. Slap whatever oppressed ethnic label you will--it usually boiled down to strong v. the weak. It seems to me that the Nazis were able to capitalize on the fear of the masses to motivate the public---not that anything like that is happening or ever has happened  in the US;)

The significant thing about being the mouse, is that none of your actions, none of your brave acts of courage and heroism, none of your cunning plans or anything you do matters. I'm sitting here watching the people on the Battlestar Galacta doing all these things, but it is all made meaningless because the Cylons are a million steps ahead of them and dancing the hoochie coochie while making a total mockery of the humans pointless efforts.

I don't know if you have ever seen the series Dark Skies? I was spewing towards the end of that series after thoroughly enjoying it for so long! Because they turned around towards the end and turned all of the main characters adventures in the entire series into complete and utter pointlessness. I don't like that!

Edit: oh yea, and the humans victories are bottle fed to them by their overlords

Re Larson's original BSG (not 1980), the project wasn't entirely without some efforts at the kind of SF social thinking that made the original Trek so good for so many viewers. True, there was crass reaching for the family audience with that horrible robot dog and the annoying little boy. But there were little background touches like the polytheism that Moore paid much more attention to and the legitimate work role for the 'socialators' (geisha). They also tried to work the female combat pilot thing, albeit they were light-millennia behind Moore's version of Starbuck.

I tried watching the 1980 show when it was broadcast, but it just seemed like someone had hired a bunch of folks who were running CHiPs and forced them to pretend they could do sci-fi. The acting and dialog were so awful that I hardly had a chance to loathe the crappy plot lines before I gave up on it. In retrospect, the thing seems entirely driven by money decisions, including Lorne Greene's retirement fund. Hope the pay packet was worth putting such felgercarb on record for his fans.

All was money decisions :

"Because letter writing campaigns in favor of restoring canceled television programs were uncommon in 1979, it prompted ABC to re-think their reasons for canceling the show. After some deliberation, they contacted Glen Larson to see about reviving the series, albeit in some modified and less-expensive format."

"This would allow them to weed out many supporting characters who were now considered superfluous - Colonel Tigh, Athena, Cassiopea, Boxey, etc. - which would bring down production costs."

In 1999, there was a good project for restart the Galactica show, based on the end of the 1978 show and having several of the original actor... a trailer was released... can be see at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQNk6VMg9xs ... First episode was already filmed ( 40 minutes, never released )... fan have like very much the trailer but Universal have refuse it since they was already busy with a other project, the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica  from Ronald D Moore...

WOW! That trailer was 1000% better than the whole BSG series with Eddie Olmos.

I like him and his version of Adama very much. But the series was as crappy as can be. Except for the ending with Baltar and Six watching the japanese robot, saying it's gonna happen all over again...

The new series should've went with more battles and survival & less with tha-DRAMA. 

The budget didn't allow for more battles. I thought the drama was rather immersive. I have to say that the latest BSG probably beat out the last 3 star wars movies as far as space battles go. Of course to compare you would need to compile every BSG battle separate from its 42min drama precursor. 

Amen. Listen to the pod casts of the new BSG and you know they wrote it on the fly. I liked the new BSG but Starbucks story made no sense at all.

She is the harbinger of death. They must not follow her.

Her ship is crushed and she dies in The Maelstrom.

She shows back up in a gleaming new viper.

They find her crashed ship on Cylon Earth and her dead body and that is the signal that lead the fleet to "Earth"

Ron Moore not knowing how to tie all that crap up then has her disappear in thin air and then is really proud of how he brought the story together.

None of that makes any sense at all.  I liked the series but the continuity was lacking.

Okay the Starbuck thing was a little ridiculous. There was a moment at the end of every episode where they stopped the real story and played their special what will happen to Starbuck music. Then they spewed out some random hokey just to what convince everyone that they should watch the next episode. It got a little annoying. I have been watching for 3 years and you think I need some Lost hook at the end to remind me to watch next week? 

Then at the end of it all they simply said, "Angels saved her." Great...