[Eric Paddon]

Some new thoughts about this episode.

Production wise this episode was mostly filmed after GOIPZ and before LPOTG and when they began filming it, two things hadn't happened yet. (1) The successful effort to get Jane Seymour back for one more episode and (2) The decision to retain John Colicos as Baltar.

From a logical standpoint, if you just assume that Jane Seymour had put her foot down and refused to come back then "Saga" would have aired with her dying scenes intact. Then, we would have seen GOIPZ air in its originally conceived version in which it would be Imperious Leader, not Baltar, for all the scenes on the Cylon basestar. GOIPZ has the feel of "second shot" as well in that a deleted scene has Apollo specifically reference the death of Zac and his mother to Adama. Cassiopeia doesn't appear at all because at this point they may not have even decided to have her character live in Saga either.

If you had Saga first (with Serina dead), then GOIPZ, then "Long Patrol" would have been set up neatly to become the next show in order.

1-The whole beginning about them "entering a new galaxy/star system" has the whole feel of a "first regular episode".

2-Cassiopeia is still clearly a socialator and is not a med-tech. A deleted scene has her identifying herself still as a socialator and there is also deleted footage of when she arrives on the Bridge dressed in her low-cut red outfit and is making her way over to see Athena, every male Bridge crewman stops to gawk at her. It is probably the most un-PC moment they filmed! But once LPOTG aired first with Cassiopeia as a med-tech, they had to cut these moments that blatantly state she's still a socialator in order to maintain continuity. Taken in the revised continuity we can envision perhaps that Cassie, while no longer a socialator, still at this point likes to wear one of her old dresses when "off-duty".

3-Adama's somewhat off-hand reference about Earth at the end of the episode and the "ancient legends" works a lot better if by this point they *haven't* visited Kobol yet for more definitive clues about Earth's location/existence. Had Jane Seymour not come back as Serina I'm sure we still would have had a "Kobol" visit with a different script.

4-The one scene of Baltar and Lucifer consists entirely of footage from the LPOTG shoot with dubbed dialogue. This also happened with the final Baltar-Lucifer scene in Pt. 2 of GOIPZ to cover the changes that had taken place since the original shoot.

5-The prominence of Athena and the "space Casanova" juggling of her and Cassiopeia by Starbuck is also a clue to how early in the going this was shot since Athena's importance in the show would soon go down dramatically.

As for an earlier point as to why the daylight confrontation scene between Starbuck and Robber was then reshot as a night one, I see it as a simple case of Larson and the production team realizing the initial shot in the daytime just wasn't effective. Much like how "Lost Warrior" and "Magnificent Warriors" are all shot in night settings and look more effective than if they'd been done in daylight. It may have cost a lot to reshoot but it was more effective ultimately.