periodically won't start

I'm certainly no expert, but it looks like you solved your own problem. It's probably a defect in the mechanism which prevents the starter from starting the car in gear or without the clutch being fully depressed (I'm just guessing). I would suggest you take it to a proper Saturn dealer, they are a good bunch of people and I'm sure they are familiar with the problem having seen hundreds of saturns.

I agree to take it to a Saturn dealer for service, I've had really good service at the one here (Fredericton, NB). I've had them tell me what they suspected when I took it in and when I picked it up they weren't to proud to say it was something completely different. As far as "without the clutch being fully depressed" I don't think that would be it. The OP said the car would turn over but it just wouldn't start. In my 98 SL1 if I don't press the clutch all the way it doesn't turn over at all. This is because if it did turn over the car would jerk when you hit the key. Interesting sidenote, I once saw a guy in an older pickup run out of gas less than a block from a gas station. The attendant wouldn't lend him a gas jug to take to his truck that was in view of the station so he went back to his truck and proceeded to drive it to the station on starter power. It was slow but interesting to watch. He was so mad at the attendant that he only put two dollars worth of gas in and drove another block down the street to another station to finish filling up his truck.

Actually what I meant was something electrical rather than mechanical. Whatever device senses the clutch has not been properly depressed might be faulty, maybe even the ignition switch that does the gas cutoff when the car thinks it's being stolen is faulty (he might just try wiggling the key a bit). Like I say, I'm no expert, but it seems to me that it is one of those hard to deal with intermittant electrical problems. My mechanical expertise ended when I sold my last Volkswagon Beetle (1974 superbeetle) in 1989. With those cars, if something didn't work right, you hit it with a hammer and it worked for another 30,000 miles :-) If you had a wireing problem you just broke out your roll of speaker wire and wired around the problem. These new fangled Saturns are a bit of a mystery to me :-)

I hope he got his starter replaced at that second gas station.

Isn't that something that should be avoided? Bad for the catalytic converter or something....