I have been watching the original 1978
Battlestar Galactica, and its follow-up,
Galactica 1980. I only have an episode and a half to go of the latter (the second-last episode seems to be broken halfway through, so I wasn't able to watch the end).
Battlestar Galactica starts off being literally
Star Wars, but gets consistently better throughout its first (and only) season. The latter half is mostly good, particularly after Sheba joins the
Galactica. On the whole, it feels like a cross between
Star Trek (the original series) and
Star Wars, and is much recommended. The overarching plot concerns a group of spacefaring humans from a distant galaxy who are all but extinct after a terrible war, and seek to find their distant cousins on Earth. The series ends with
them receiving a transmission of the Apollo 11 moon landing.
Then they made the absolutely terrible decision to bring it back two years later, set an unspecified number of decades after the original, after they have found Earth. They dropped most of the original cast, and replaced them with completely unmemorable characters who don't seem to have any personality beyond making markjokes at every opportunity. None of the characters have clear motives for their actions, and the story is told by narrating everything that's about to happen before it actually does. What little isn't foretold is filled in with sci-fi cliches, so the entirety of every episode after the narration is completely pointless.
Oh, and did I mention that
the main plot of the series involves a renegade Galactican who travels back in time with the intention of messing with history, yet there are never any visible effects of his actions in the present? How about the fact that
Earth gravity is weaker than Galactican gravity, leading to the absolutely hilarious scenes where the protagonists escape law enforcement by leaping into the treetops? Oh, and one of them
"accidentally" robs a bank because he thinks pulling out a laser pistol and pointing it at someone holding a bag full of money is a completely innocent gesture. I could go on, but I think I've made my point.
I'll leave you with one of the more memorable scenes from
Galactica 1980: