Only 5.3?

Should be 1.0.

This show was made because of a write-in campaign.

And it was made as cheaply as possible.

The 3-part premiere is padded with the time travel nonsense, though kudos to using an old disaster movie from 1974 ("Earthquake") and adding in Cylon fire to turn old B-movie fodder into something that really packs a punch.

Unfortunately, Adama is written very badly (Lorne Greene should have declined; I love him as Adama in the original show but, bless him, the stuff he had to recite makes Adama a total fool and with every scene he's in I only feel bad that he had to endure his character being turned into a moronic stick figure. If this were Star Trek. it's as if Kirk was turned into Picard circa season 5 of TNG in one outing...)

The two "Galacticans" (?!!) are promptly accused of being terrorists on Earth, which only makes Adama look more like an idiot because he keeps sending those two back to Earth...

The less said about the inconsistent superpowers, flying motorbikes, wrist computers, etc, the better.

Human cylons - once again, the story had some serious potential... except the producers decided to turn it into brainless kiddie fodder, complete with Wolfman Jack - FTW! Never mind Scooby Doo and his gang dancing to a cheesy Disney song. What the heck... I'd expect the Galactica crew to come up with something as off-kilter as the bizarre mashing of numerous copyrighted characters and song...

I hope everyone involved was paid a lot because that 2-part underwheming and drawn out non-story, never mind the whole revived series, makes all involved look embarrassing. So much wasted talent. Indeed, the actor who was trapped in the burning building and saving the kid was on a fireman show a few years prior to Galactica 1980... it shows.

The Starbuck finale was fairly impressive, though the Wheel of Fire episode should have been filmed since "The Return on Starbuck" ends on a downbeat note. Given how saccharine the rest of the show was, this ending is inappropriate not because of its tone (which the whole G:1980 show needed far more of) but because it's out of place and effectively shows a favorite character left to die. :(

The show could easily have been a 10, but most of its failure comes down to the suits not wanting to spend money and to dumb it down as much as possible. In doing so, G:1980 strayed from its roots of being action adventure sci-fi and became a generic kiddie romp.