To be fair it's not like you knew how many they had to start. I liked how BSG had an up-to-date population count in nearly every episode.

Not really. Over the course of the show they show a plausible number of crewmen (can't remember the exact number, but it was around the size of the stated crew count for the In Intrepid class).

Also, only a tiny number of people died in the first episode (I think only seven), and somehow it was almost the entire command staff, which seems really implausible.