I think I enjoyed it more than you did, but in general I agree with your points. Especially about the slow pacing. The ending was particularly slow-paced, the climactic battle was something like 30 minutes before the end of the episode.

On the other hand, even with the slow pacing, I thought it flowed really well. It had a lot of really good points, and was (to me) enjoyable to watch and well worth turning into a full blown series if they have the budget.

(By the way: I, too, had to actually go out to scifi.com and poke around to discover that yes, there really was only two episodes. They didn't make it clear at all.)

Some of the good points:

- I think it was well acted, well written, and well directed. Not emmy-quality, mind you, but decent enough for a series. Certainly a lot better than much of the dreck that's out there.

- I really liked how they paid homage to the old Japanese sci-fi movies in the space scenes. (To wit: Deliberate depth-of-field tricks, sudden fast zooms and pans, "handheld" feel to the camera movement, etc.)

- I really liked the zero-G and zero-atmosphere realism of the weapons and craft. The spaceships might be shaped like airplanes, but they still need reaction control thrusters to turn. I liked the "asteroids"-style sliding and turning of the craft.

- No ray guns. Conventional missiles and bullets. Yay!

- I thought the ways they chose to retell the old Galactica story was nice. I liked all the changes they made to each of the characters, such as the development of Baltar. And Starbuck just kicks ass, I don't know what the purists are complaining about.

Bad points:

- Everything surrounding the strained relationship between Apollo and Daddy seemed forced. That was the one place where the writing/acting/directing gestalt didn't work.

- Oh, Cylons are now played by people. Oh goody, they don't have to budget a lot on robot costumes and effects. Come on, how expensive can it be to put a guy in a chrome suit? And anyway, the whole "enemy spy looks like one of us" thing has SO been done.

- If they do make it into a series, it has all the potential to suck just as badly as the original series did.