I never watched the show, but what I heard was that it was a separate concept with the BSG "lore" written overtop of the basic concept in order to sell the series.
When I hear stuff like that, it makes me think:
- The underlying concept is weak, and it's being sold on branding alone. Ask yourself: if they stripped out any reference to "Cylons" and simply referred to them as "Arties" (for "artificial humanoids") or whatever, if the family name of one of the families was Jackson instead of Adama, would anyone give a crap?
- The underlying concept is pretty good, but will be dragged down by reliance on "the lore" of the other series. They'll have to compromise this or that to tie things together, and end up not really satisfying anyone.
Most of the time with "after-the-fact" IP associations, I think it's destined for failure. It's not close enough to the established IP to be worth a damn, and it's not good enough on its own to stand on its own two feet.