Ok, I've seen the pilot featuring the three original castaways of Bunny, Ginger and the Professor. Now did Shwartz order a reshoot of many of their scenes but with the replacements (for example, the scene when Gilligan thinks he sees a boat and that they're saved and the boat he sees turns out to be the Minnow, the closeup of the Minnow and Castaways n that scene was reshot, I think, with the replacements). Now to my confusion. If they could replace the scene I described above why could they not replace the shot where Skipper wakes up and realizes they're stranded on a desert island, also using the replacements? Also, in Joey Greene's Unnofficial Gilligan's Island Handbook he says Schwartz wanted the pilot ep to be the first aired ep. BUt the pilot features the original castaways. So did Schwartz redo a lot of scenes with the replacements now and edit the whole thing into a whole new first episode? I take it these redone scenes were the shots of Gilligan smiling and telling replacement Ginger and Maryann (subbing for Bunny) that things couldn't be worse and the shot of Gilligan dropping firewood on the transmitter. These scenes were eventually put into the Christmas ep but were there more of these replacement actor scenes? In the original pilot there was a scene when Giligan tries to help the Profesor. Was this scene reshot with the replacement Profeesor and just never aired? In short does this all mean there was a whole complete ep showing the new group of castaways getting stranded, Gilligan losing the transmitter, him telling Maryann and Ginger things couldn't be worse, Gilligan finding the transmittewr, then breaking it with firewood aND OTHER SCENES (NEER SHOWN). If so does anyone think this other "first story" should be put into the firt season DVD in all it's coherency asnd completeness?

I don't know the answers. You'll also notice that on Two on a Raft (the televised first episode), when the skipper wakes up, the head sleeping behind him is one of the original(pilot) cast. They probably assumed that noboby would notice. At the time, nobody would notice, especially having never seen the other characters yet .