[Eric Paddon]

Okay, it's time for me to now outline in more specific detail some of the changes that I personally decided to make the storyline of Saga when I wrote my adaptation story that's linked in this thread. Some of these elements have been alluded to already but this is more or less the official rundown as I saw it (and again, this was just my subjective approach to the material).

#1-Foreshadowing MOTRS with Ortega-Charybdis. This point has already been discussed with Kester. To add to it, I had a scene of Baltar and Charybdis arriving on their home planet and finding it destroyed, realizing only then that the Cylons have gone back on their word. This required eliminating the scene in the actual episode where Baltar is seen talking to a centurion on the surface of Caprica, because it just wouldn't structurally fit to see Baltar doing this and not realizing by this point that he's been doublecrossed (The dialogue of this scene was transferred to a scene between Imperious Leader and a subordinate).

#2-I decided that I didn't like the idea of only Adama having the sense to take some action before the attack began, and decided for the purpose of this story have one extra battlestar temporarily survive the battle long enough for its commander to be rescued and play a part in the rest of the story before killing him off. I decided to take the Battlestar Columbia for this purpose because it allowed me to (1) have a specific ship to account for in terms of where the surviving vipers come from, since it's mentioned that not all come from the Galactica and (2) it allowed me to account for the survival of Cadet Cree, who in GOIPZ tries to resist interrogation by saying he's from the Columbia. It also freed me up to make some needed changes to LPOTG that I will mention in that thread.

Having the Commander (whom I give the name Fairfax) survive for the length of the story also gave me an opportunity to make the dramatic ending a bit more plausible and to also make Apollo and Starbuck seem just a trifle less "perfect" as has sometimes been criticized of them. I decided that at the end, it would be this commander who leads Apollo and Starbuck into the attempt to destroy the baseship with the phony messages about multiple squadrons (not to worry, I kept Starbuck's request about Purple and Orange!) and that ultimately the Commander makes a suicide hit on the baseship to keep it from achieving escape velocity once the deception is discovered at the last minute. This way, a bit of extra "realism" is added by having a character who might be set up as an important one over the course of the series, dying a dramatic death instead. Also, it always struck me as slightly out of character for Apollo to suddenly defy his Father's advice about not taking on the baseship and take such a risk, but if he were following the lead of someone with a great deal of seniority that would be more in character for Apollo.

#3-I decided to bring back a subplot cut from the final version of the episode but in a different way, namely the "Serina's dying" subplot. Clearly, this was the reason why Serina felt the need to seek out Apollo as a possible substitute father for Boxey, but without it, it always seemed a bit abrupt for the two of them to suddenly come together. But since it wouldn't make sense to bring it back the way it was first written (lest you lose LPOTG in the process), I decided to do it this way. At the time Serina seeks Apollo out, she thinks she's dying, but she really isn't *the result of a phony diagnosis by a crooked doctor), and later when she realizes she isn't it frees her up to be more open about her new attraction to Apollo, and provide some plausibility for them eventually marrying very soon. Likewise, to explain further Apollo's receptiveness to Serina, I thought it would be plausible to suggest that Apollo was familiar with Serina as a public personality and had always had some kind of crush on her.

#4-Another element of foreshadowing is to give some plausibility to Cassiopeia later becoming a med-tech, so I added some dialogue when she has her arm fixed about being aware of medical equipment and having had training in medicine at one time before she decided to become a socialator.

There are other minor things too in the final version that I'm happy to comment on if anyone points them out (and wishes to disagree or challenge with their own take of how the episode might work better), but overall those are the only major changes I made to the existing story itself and feeling in the end that by and large, Saga is the kind of episode where the structure remains quite good and requires at most some fine-tuning (unlike some other episodes that I think could use more of a major overhaul in their retelling!)