^That reminds me of the deleted scene where Qui-gon slices the probe apart. It could fire on them first, so that Qui-gon isn’t seen as a cold-blooded droid murderer 😉 In all seriousness, your idea would make the podrace both more and less interesting from a plot standpoint. It seems silly to have the crew hang around just to free a slave while there’s an invasion in progress. On the other hand, making the podrace the epicenter of a Sith attack does make it more interesting.
I had an idea yesterday which would also need some effects work, about the giant reactor room in which the Jedi fight, which was originally supposed to be the planetary shield. It occurs to me that the room feels like the Death Star, with beams in it that look like a massive version of the Gungan shields, so what if Palpatine had stolen the shield tech from the Gungans and developed an enormously powerful ion cannon in secret?
There are several problems with the movie which could be fixed with this single idea. Why do the Nemoidians want to invade Naboo? Sidious gives them info about this ion cannon, which aside from being hugely valuable from a R&D standpoint is also what will protect them on Naboo from any external threat. When Sidious sends Maul to Naboo, it is to use the ion cannon to take out the Nemoidians after he has no need of the invasion. He is, after all, the Senator from Naboo.
That is why Maul is hanging out near the generator room at the time. During the lightsaber fight, he mentally flips a switch on the control panel beside him, and a closeup shows the ion cannon targeting the droid control ship. The Jedi don’t notice this of course. As they fight towards the bottomless shaft, the shield grid closes as a precaution as the ion beam fires out of the bottomless pit and strikes near the Control ship. Anakin is knocked off course and spins toward the landing bay, which is momentarily unshielded as the ion beam wreaks havoc with the battle. Then Anakin nukes the landing bay, it begins to blow up, and as the shield grid closes for a second time the second ion beam lances out and takes out the control ship’s power again, allowing Anakin to escape.
The glowing ball at the end of the film signifies the return of this technology to the Gungans, healing their feud. Of course, Palpatine continues scheming of even more powerful superweapons…