BDH is mostly designed to allow the GM of a Serenity game to bring the character creation rules in line with “Cortex 2.1″ as I call it: the core Cortex rules set.

i agree a lot of the GM material seems a bit incidental, save for the improved rules for spacecraft combat. Overall, I thought it was a good buy for people running the Serenity game, but not necessary — it you have the Galactica rules (Cortex 2.0, as I call it), or the core book (C2.1) you could have done these conversions prior to BDH (as I did…)