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.
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 ★