A reader offers this interesting assessment of the original Galactica vs. the new:
I think it worth mentioning that the original (and in my view the one, true and only) Battlestar Galactica was perhaps the most unambiguously right-wing show on TV at the time, perhaps even since. Parts of it might as well have been written by the Committee on the Present Danger.
Consider:The heroes were all military hard-liners: the Colonies are destroyed because they listened to the peaceniks instead of Adama. The peaceniks were all either naïve dupes (President Adar), decadent hedonists (Sire Uri) or outright traitors (Baltar). This continued even after the destruction of the colonies, as dopey civilian leaders still thought they could make peace with the Cylons or other implacable opponents.
“Terra” (an ersatz Earth found later in the show’s run) made the Cold War parallel even more explicit, as the “Eastern Alliance” launches a surprise nuclear first strike just as the President of the Nationalists (the good guys) was about to announce a disarmament treaty. Apollo gives a peace-through-strength speech that is probably the most Reaganite declamation ever given by a fictional character on TV.
The story was based on Mormon theology and history and was chock full of Biblical allusions and parallels. (http://www.michaellorenzen.com/galactica.html)
Couples actually got married (or talked about getting married) and forming families, in contrast to the new series’ humping nympho-Cylons.
That may all be true. But you really have to be a sentimentalist about the past to argue that the original was better than the remake. The original was exceedingly lame, whereas the remake is one of the best television series ever made. Which is another reason why it doesn’t make sense to judge pop culture by its politics.