Continuity mistake: The Galactica can retract her launch bay pods into the hull. She is shown doing it just before her first FTL jump. The instant before she jumps, the pods are suddenly shown in the extended position again.
Revealing mistake: After Dualla shoots herself, Gaeta hobbles back into the room. While the effects people made sure his real lower leg was erased from view behind his upper leg, they forgot to remove the shadow of the lower leg being cast upon the steel floor. The shot then changes away and returns to find the shadow has now been fixed the second time we see it.
Battlestar Galactica (2003 Miniseries) - Part 2 - S1-E2
Continuity mistake: When Adama orders the landing pods retracted before an FTL jump during the final battle, we are shown a shot of the interior of the landing bay as the entrance quickly narrows due to the retraction (2:44:13-2:44:20). At the rate of closure, the entrance would be fully sealed within the next 10 seconds. But a full minute later (2:45:21), we see the landing pods are fully extended again. Then at 2:46:04 we see from above that the pods have reached their fully-retracted position (and the entrances are now sealed), but at 2:46:12, they are still closing and Starbuck and Apollo safely enter before the entrance is sealed. (02:44:00)
Battlestar Galactica (2003 Miniseries) - Part 2 - S1-E2
Continuity mistake: In the last battle scene in the miniseries, above Ragnar, all the civilian ships Jump away and Commander Adama orders all the vipers to land inside Galactica's landing bay. At one point, Dualla reports that two vipers are still out in the fight - Starbuck and Apollo. When Starbuck pushes her viper and Apollo's towards the landing bay, there's a shot of one of the basestars firing a missile, which hits Galactica. In this scene, we can see (and hear) 3 vipers, one of which is firing at a Cylon raider in the distance. They couldn't be Starbuck or Apollo, since Starbuck's viper and Apollo's were joined together and the mystery vipers are not, nor are they any of the other pilots, since only Starbuck and Apollo's vipers were still out, as Dualla has stated.
Continuity mistake: At the beginning of the episode it shows a view of the CIC when there is supposed to be 30-40 seconds left until the 33 minutes is up, but as the camera pans out the timer in CIC is blinking "00:00:00". (00:02:30)
Continuity mistake: When Chief Tyrol finds Jammer, Socinus and Cally at the still, they are standing in that order with Socinus behind and between the other two. The shot cuts to the chief dumping out the booze. Then it cuts back to the trio. Now their positions have changed. Now Socinus is on the left, Jammer on the right with Cally behind and between the guys. (00:08:20)
Continuity mistake: During the bar fight, when the gun falls out of the assassin's briefcase it has a supressor on it. When he picks it up the supressor is gone. (00:20:50)
Continuity mistake: Helo has been on Cylon-occupied Caprica for 47 days. Why is his haircut exactly the same as when he was stranded?
Kobol's Last Gleaming (1) - S1-E14
Continuity mistake: When Starbuck is testing the captured Cylon Raider she is first wearing the orange reflective jumpsuit the mechanics often wear in the hanger bay. A few seconds later she is wearing the OD utilities uniform that she will be seen wearing on Caprica. (00:41:00)
Kobol's Last Gleaming (2) - S1-E15
Visible crew/equipment: In the scene where Starbuck attempts to retrieve Apollo's arrow, a crewman in a red tee shirt and dark vest can be seen standing just behind and to the right of the display case as she is shooting out the glass.
Kobol's Last Gleaming (2) - S1-E15
Continuity mistake: Season 1 Episode 13 "Kobol's Last Gleaming Pt 2" Apollo leads a strike force to capture Colonial One and arrest President Roslin. We see his vipers and raptors approaching Colonial One, all alone a little way from the fleet. A few scenes later, (before Apollo's force reaches it) Boomer launches in a raptor and as it leaves the bay, we see Colonial One in it's normal position off Galactica's port bow.
Plot hole: Gaeta and Tigh both reference the fact that the Galactica crew computes the changes in stellar drift for FTL jumps and then sends out the info to the rest of the fleet for their use. However, when they fail to rendezvous with the fleet after the emergency jump, Gaeta realizes a mistake has been made and says that Galactica's info is out of date. This creates a major plot hole because if Galactica sends out the new info to the fleet, Galactica would always have the most up to date info for FTL jumps. The crew would be able to solve the lost fleet crisis by simply reloading the last coordinates that Galactica sent out and jumping there where the fleet would be waiting for them. There would be no need to go back to the previous coordinates and recompute the jump.
Continuity mistake: When the box of explosive rounds is opened, the six rounds keep changing position. Sometimes they are nearly laid on a row, whilst in other shots they appear scattered randomly in the box.
Other mistake: In the CIC, Tigh challenges Apollo and asks why he isn't in the brig. Shortly after Apollo begins to explain the plan for the search and rescue of the Raptor downed on Kobol. He refers to it as "Raptor 3" when it is Raptor 1 they are looking for. Raptor 3 was destroyed when they first jumped to Kobol, Raptor 2 escaped back to Galactica, and 1 fell to Kobol. The Raptor on Kobol is referred to as Raptor 1 throughout the rest of the episode and on preceding episodes.
Other mistake: After she is sprung from prison and sneaks off the Galactica, President Roslin makes an appeal to the fleet to follow her ship to find the servant of the gods with the arrow of Apollo on Kobol. She is presumably speaking about Starbuck. But Starbuck was sent to and retrieved the arrow of Apollo from a museum on Caprica.
Home: Part 2 - S2-E7
Continuity mistake: Lee Adama is a captain, and is addressed as captain, yet he wears the rank insignia of a major on his collar - three chevrons rather than two. This is obvious without pausing when he meets his father in the woods midway through the episode as there is a revealing closeup. (Note: timecode is from the Blu-Ray release). (00:22:30)
Visible crew/equipment: Early on during a fight between Helo and the chief, you can see two cameramen to the left of the screen. (00:07:10)
Continuity mistake: When the President is lying on the couch, she starts coughing and covers her mouth with her right hand, however, as Adama hands over a glass of water she is now covering her mouth with her left hand.
Epiphanies - S2-E13
Factual error: Early in the episode a damaged Viper makes its way back to Galactica with its port-side gun trailing smoke as if in an atmosphere. But in a vacuum, the smoke wouldn't trail. It would build upon itself much the way shaving foam does when slowly leaking from a damaged can, unless the ship changed course and/or speed and then the smoke would appear to do the opposite - ship turns right, smoke moves off to the left because it remains on its original course regardless of what the ship does. The gun is not propelling the smoke rearward. The ammo inside is simply burning. (00:05:15)
Epiphanies - S2-E13
Continuity mistake: Episode 2-13, 'Epiphanies': When Baltar is led by the wrist along a corridor by Number Six, two crewmen pass Baltar on his left, headed the other way. The shot from behind Baltar places the crewmen immediately to Baltar's left when the shot is cut to a shot looking in the opposite direction as Baltar approaches the camera and the crewmen are now far behind Baltar, instantly. He is speaking continuously before and after this shot change, so there is no 'time passage' between the shots.
Answer: The original BSG has something of a complex version history. Several versions exist, but the rationale behind what you're referring to is as follows. BSG, before anything else, was a TV series - the 'pilot episode' was a three-part tale called "Saga of a Star World". In that three-parter, a last-minute alteration to the script meant that Baltar was ultimately spared execution, because Glen A. Larson, the series producer, decided that he liked the Baltar character enough to keep him around for the rest of the series. The theatrical version, which was edited down from the three-parter and was shown in some countries before the US TV broadcast, lost quite a number of scenes, including the one where Baltar is spared. The real continuity of the series can only be found in the TV version - the movies, all of which were created by editing together existing episodes, miss out scenes leading to such apparent continuity errors.
Tailkinker ★