While I agree that the final chapter seemed rushed, I would hardly say that the story sucked, or that it was rehashed. Sure, maybe it takes a lot of the premise from The Day the Earth Stood Still, but even so that's not exactly a commonly used premise, especially in this day and age.
And certainly the story was very untypical of a Macross show, yet retaining Macross' main themes of hope, peaceful solutions to conflict, and the idea that mankind will survive.
The series was really too short to develope more than a couple characters, but those that it did, it pulled off decently, if not spectacularly like a longer show such as Macross 7. DD and Nora were never main characters, you might as well complain that Col. Millard from Macross Plus was under developed, or the poachers Dynamite 7.
Overall, I rather liked the story and characters, right up to and including the end. I do, however, agree that it would have been even better had the episode been twice as long, or split into two episodes.
To those still speculating about the origins and purpose of the Bird Human, I can only reccomend you go watch
SDF Macross,
Do You Remember Love? and
Macross 7, all of wich give more insight into the Protoculture.
As for the future of the survivors of Macross Zero...
Spoiler:
This really depends on wich version of the Zentradi bombardment of Earth that future series follow. According to the TV series, there were small pockets of humanity, mainly in undeveloped areas of the world, that survived. The number of survivors was less than a million I believe. According to the movie events, no one on Earth survived, only the people from the Macross.
Before anyone says, "Well, they use the tv series story and the movie visuals for the sequels" I will remind you that this is a simplification. Kawamori has been quoted as saying that the true story of Space War I incorporates story and visual elements from both.
Before anyone points out that Plus takes place a short 30 years after SWI, yet there seems to be plenty of people, not to mention millions of colonists leaving Earth all the time, might I remind you of the Human Emmigration Project that Admiral Global put into effect, using Zentradi cloning technology to clone humans and repopulate the Earth and spread humankind across the galaxy to prevent mankind from ever coming so close to extinction.