Release the gorey-Miniseries cut!

Ronald D. Moore: But yeah, you can say strip it down to these dark premises and wonder if audiences are going to follow you there. That's a legitimate question - a question the Network asked us over and over again the first season. They were very concerned about how dark the show was. They literally thought that no one would watch the series after the first episode, 33. There was a point where they didn't want us to air 33 as the first episode.
Moore: They were, like, so scared of it. That was a whole big fight, and they eventually backed down, but there was a brief period where they talked about not airing them in order. They did one of the infamous controlled tests of the Miniseries just before the Mini went on the air — like four weeks before we aired or something, one of those marketing testing focus group things. They watched the series. It was one of the worst rated ever.
Moore: The company that did it sent back this cover page report that just said, "Nobody likes any of these characters; we see no reason this should ever become a series; there's no identification with any of it; it's too dark, it's too scary."
And the Network- all the blood drained from their face when they heard that, because it was too late. Fortunately, it was too late. The show was done, locked, "in the can". I think we edited back- we cut out a couple more shots of gore here and there to throw them a bone, but it was way too late in the process to make any serious adjustments. It went to air with this sense of fatalism on the part of the Network that- "Well, we're boned here: they're going to hate it, it's too dark." Then they were shocked when the numbers were so good. It really shocked them. It made them reevaluate.

Source:

• Wired: Read an Extended Version of Wired's Interview With Ron Moore (May 18, 2008) (archive.today) (web.archive.org)

It's chilling how close BSG might have come to being mutilated into a failure by SciFi (SyFy) - just like Firefly was by Fox.

And now I want to see the original cut of the Miniseries!