There are two primary Point Problems in fiction:
1) Making No Point at All
2) Using the Moral Sledgehammer

When I was in college, I was required to take a literature class. Since I prefer novels written no earlier than the 1950s, I was less than thrilled to be limited to British Literature or American Literature, neither of which makes it into the 1950s, let alone later. Of the two, American Lit was the more recent option, so I went with that. The professor stated in class one day that all fiction makes a point of some kind. Wanting to get a good grade, I dutifully wrote that down, but in my head I rebelled, thinking of the long, complicated ramblings that people sometimes claim the author intended, even when the author in question has had a chance to state categorically that no, he’d never meant that. It wasn’t until later that I realized there was a middle ground.

The people who get carried away with creating complex messages in relatively simple stories and poems can ruin it for others, but if a story has no point at all, the reader gets to the end and thinks, ‘That’s it? Why did I read/watch this? Who cares?!’ In the case of the second problem, the author’s pet issue can get in the way of the story, beating the reader/viewer over the head until he can’t see the story for all the preaching. Aesop had a tendency to be pedantic like this - if a ten-year-old can watch it and say, “and the moral of the story is…” then you’re being too preachy. Again, the reaction tends to be ‘Why did I bother with this thing?’

At the end of your film, you want the viewer to feel something - patriotism, love, inspiration, anger, etc. If the viewer gets up and says, “Well, that was a waste of an hour and a half,” then you have failed to stir the thoughts and emotions of your audience. If you can’t name the point or theme of your story, you need to rework it until you can figure out what the point is. If you’re preaching too blantantly, you need to back off and work the message in a little more subtly. It usually works better to have a central character stand for the issue you’re promoting - have the protagonist live as an example of your “better way” without filling the dialogue with slogans and catchphrases. The only way to work preaching into a story without thoroughly annoying the audience is if the main character is a preacher.

Battlestar Galactica Paradis by Richard Hatch & Brad Linaweaver

Unfortunately it has very small type, and the publisher seems to have dropped off the web. Not really very well written, it makes no real effort to explain anything from the book that apparently precedes it. The only reasons I knew there was another book before it were 1) baffling references to characters/planets I’d never heard of before, 2) unexplained changes in the characters - some dead and some promoted, and 3) the ad in the back of the book for another title by Richard Hatch and Alan Rodgers, though it didn’t say anything about the sequence of the books. The story is very political, overall, and not very character-oriented; it seems male authors tend to focus on action and strategy to the exclusion of character motivation, even if the author in question started out as an actor. The dialogue tends to be a bit stilted, and while it could be treated as a continuation of the original series, the popularity of the new, completely revamped series makes it unlikely the novel will catch on.