Well, I finally got around to doing an adaptation of this episode which will appear at galacticafanfic.com real soon, and as it turned out fixing this episode from its many flaws proved to be much easier than I expected.
#1-The first thing that needs to be done in fixing this episode is restoring the SOL beings to the level of grandeur and mystery they evoked in WOTG. In EIT they come across as too-cutesy run of the mill superbeings who are played too much for laughs in the form of Edward Mulhare's John. I found that the way to do this is first, have John be totally dead serious in his conversations with Apollo, and also clear up the matter of why the SOL beings seem so frustratingly unhelpful throughout much of the episode. It has to come back to the fact that the SOL beings, as they established in WOTG, value the principle of free will, and thus their role can only be to "point the way" for those to do the things they will need to do for themselves. So thus, John can send Apollo to Terra, and drop him a few helpful pointers to clear up confusion but it's Apollo to figure out what has to be done. And John has to tell Apollo bluntly these are the restrictions he operates under, and that way we won't have the annoying spectacle of Apollo constantly calling out to John for help and making everyone around him think he's a nut.
#2-Apollo has to improvise a lot better than he does in this episode where he never shows any flair for acting out the charade of being Charlie Watts. As a trained warrior, Apollo should at the very least have gotten some kind of basic counterintelligence training that would have told him how he could improvise if need be in a tight spot, and he just gives it no effort that makes you think he's a pro at this kind of thing. So this time, I have Apollo try to bluff his way a lot more effectively, and above all have him realize that he can not try the "I look like CHarlie but I'm really someone from another galaxy talking to someone who you can't see!" cop out he ultimately resorts to, because in a plausible world he would have been sized for a straitjacket with that story. The key to getting Apollo comfortable with improvising the role of Watts is that in the GFE adaptation, I had established Watts as the man who had helped Michael and Sarah escape from Lunar Seven, and so Michael would have mentioned his name to Apollo, and thus Apollo could draw from what he learned then as his key to improvising.
#3-Starbuck could not possibly have had the fuel to get all the way to Terra on his own, especially if the SOL beings had to get Apollo that far with their help and the Galactica had to use their top speed. So I had Starbuck stop on one of the destroyed satellite colonies to look for more fuel, and this sequed up to another important change.
#4-Bringing in the real Charlie Watts into the story. They didn't play up this angle well at all, especially since by the time Apollo has "revealed" himself, the Terrans should be asking just what happened to the real Charlie, and also the fact that when Apollo is addressing the Presidium he would still be looking like Charlie to everyone else, especially the President who had the real Charlie imprisoned on Lunar One, and who would immediately notice something odd from his standpoint. How do you bring him in? John said Charlie had just escaped from Lunar One, so when Starbuck lands there to refuel himself, he encounters the real Charlie who forces Starbuck to take him to Terra so he can report the details of his mission. This way, Starbuck can more plausibly be led to where Apollo and the others are being held prisoner. And when John appears to Starbuck, he is doing this for the express purpose of allowing Starbuck and Charlie to see Apollo as he really is, or otherwise, Starbuck and Charlie would be wandering in to see Apollo looking like Charlie. Naturally, this can provide an amusing moment when Brenda, Maxwell and Stone are suddenly seeing two Charlies.
#5-In the Presidium speech, the real Charlie speaks first to report on what he observed of Alliance conduct, and this allows him to introduce Apollo first as one who knows the details of what happened on Paradeen, and then for Apollo to tell the story of what happened to Colonial Civilization.
#6-I felt that the Galactica's strange ability to destroy all of the Alliance missiles was best explained by having them use not weaponry of their own but a mundane feature of the ship like her tractor beam for towing vehicles, then when dispersed on a wide beam would cause the primitive missiles to overload and blow up.
#7-Apollo learns from John that he can not be told just what the connection between Terra and the Thirteenth Tribe, if one exists, is. This has to be kept purposefully vague so any fanfic writer can create their own theory. The important thing is that in the GFE adaptation, I had them already discover that Terra wasn't Earth itself, so that way that factor became a non-issue early on.
#8-An epilogue where Adama tells the Council why he thinks it best that the Fleet not settle on Terra. And with the Council humiliated and chastened by the events of Baltar's Escape, they are at that point willing to go along.
#9-And also, it's important to settle the matter of what happened to Leiter. The Alliance Supreme Commandant has sued for peace because he thinks the Nationalists have a great shield against any kind of attack. Leiter though, would be the one to know that in fact the Nationalists have no such weapon. But alas, Leiter has no tangible proof to offer because he chose to kill the Nomen at the end of the BE adaptation and jettison their bodies into space. Nonetheless, Leiter is still alive and well at the end of EIT and in a position to boost his political stock in the Alliance because he does know the general truth. Not that it can help the Alliance with any reason for restarting the war since the situation now is one where the balance of power is in the Nationalists favor as the Galactica intervention destroyed the Alliance's missile arsenal but the Nationalists still have theirs intact because they were destroyed before the automatic launch systems for their missilies kicked in. (Apollo knows that the Nationalists would never be bloodthirsty enough to use their own weapons in a sneak attack, because that is what sets them apart from the Alliance, but he knows it can be a powerful weapon diplomatically in getting terms favorable to them).
And having done all this, at long last, I can lessen some of the instinctive distaste I have for this episode as it first aired!
