I got to a point where I got sick of the ongoing government-conspiracy-aliens-where-is-Fox's-sister-we're-never-really-going-to-learn-the-answer-to-any-questions episodes. I like the monster of the week episodes so much better.
Production Order vs. Airing Order
- Thread starter Damian
- Start date
The exact same problem nearly ruined CASTLE, the Nathan Fillion show. It was strong as a romantic comedy, like REMINGTON STEELE or MOONLIGHTING. They did those eps very well. But then they started doing "Who killed Beckett's mother?" as a recurring theme, with Beckett morphing from a stylish NYPD detective (realistic but for her $800 Louboutin heels on the job) into an invincible, female James Bond-Ninja-Wonder Woman type. The conspiracy-murder-grievance storyline was a huge downer and her super-hero transformation was absurd.
A good thing about "old television," the purely episodic shows like Star Trek TOS, was that if you liked your premise, you could keep your premise. When Nimoy's fan mail started coming in, they didn't monkey with the character and turn Spock into a one-man weekly galaxy saver, or send him on long story arcs about depressing, horrible things.
Last edited:
Sorry about that. It was the first poll I actually created (I usually forget to add one in and I don't think you can add one after the fact). But I've done that myself, just pick an episode I want to watch. Every so often I get the urge to watch the entire series though and I figure it's easier to watch them in order.
When I first got the remastered DVD's I did give airing order a try. I didn't care for it as much, particularly in the early part of the series. Later on it probably doesn't matter a whole lot I guess. Part of it I guess is I've watched Star Trek numerous times over the years in production order so airdate order felt wrong. Now I have the Blu-Ray's and decided to watch those in production order.
I like Production Order; there's a definite evolution of the characters and relationships (less so after S1 but still present).
The ever changing sets on board ship make a lot more sense that way too!
Yeah, that was the other thing. Certainly with Where No Man....and even The Corbomite Maneuver, it seemed to me that Spock and Kirk were still in the early stages of their friendship. It just seemed to flow better to me.
And in a way it makes some sense. While Star Trek was by no means serialized, it was filmed in production order. It seems reasonable that it would flow better in that order as a result, at least overall. The show and characters would grow as each episode was filmed.
I prefer production order, especially in the first season where it just makes more sense (e.g. Kirk's complaint about Rand in "The Corbomite Maneuver" makes more sense if she's new than if they've already had a bunch of episodes together), and where you can see the real-world process of the writers making up the universe as they go along. I've never seen a reason to favor airdate order, because the airing order wasn't based on any story considerations and was fairly arbitrary -- it was a mix of which episodes the network wanted to lead with (e.g. season 1 started with an Outer Limits-style monster episode because that's what the network expected science fiction to be, and seasons 2 & 3 started with Spock-centric episodes because he was the breakout star) and which episodes took more or less time to complete the effects for. It may not make much difference, but there's nothing about airdate order that materially improves things; it's just a pointless appeal to nostalgia, which makes no sense because the majority of viewers alive today never saw it in first run anyway.
It's weird how the preference has shifted, though. When I was a kid, the syndicated episodes seemed to be run in arbitrary order; at least; I remember seeing a Chekov episode only a little while after seeing my first episode, "The Corbomite Maneuver" (and my 5-year-old self was scandalized that they'd give a character an unreal, ridiculous name like "Mister Check-off"). The Blish adaptations were in seemingly random order. The first major reference books -- The Making of Star Trek, The World of Star Trek, and the Star Trek Concordance -- all listed the episodes in broadcast order. But then in 1979, Allan Asherman's The Star Trek Compendium listed them in production order for the first time, and listed "The Cage" as a separate episode from "The Menagerie" for the first time (the pilot had actually been renamed "The Menagerie" by the time it was filmed, so "The Cage" was only unofficially used to differentiate it until it was codified by the home video release). The syndication package also got re-released in production order at some point, and for the next couple of decades, every reference text and home video release used production order as well, so it became the accepted default order. Even the re-release of the Blish adaptations in a three-volume set, one thick paperback for each season, reprinted them in production order (aside from Blish's "The Menagerie" actually just adapting "The Cage"). So it was weird when the Blu-Ray release suddenly reverted to broadcast order and lots of people seemed to jump on the bandwagon for that. Where had this desire for airdate order come from after a whole generation had grown up knowing only production order?
It's weird how the preference has shifted, though. When I was a kid, the syndicated episodes seemed to be run in arbitrary order; at least; I remember seeing a Chekov episode only a little while after seeing my first episode, "The Corbomite Maneuver" (and my 5-year-old self was scandalized that they'd give a character an unreal, ridiculous name like "Mister Check-off"). The Blish adaptations were in seemingly random order. The first major reference books -- The Making of Star Trek, The World of Star Trek, and the Star Trek Concordance -- all listed the episodes in broadcast order. But then in 1979, Allan Asherman's The Star Trek Compendium listed them in production order for the first time, and listed "The Cage" as a separate episode from "The Menagerie" for the first time (the pilot had actually been renamed "The Menagerie" by the time it was filmed, so "The Cage" was only unofficially used to differentiate it until it was codified by the home video release). The syndication package also got re-released in production order at some point, and for the next couple of decades, every reference text and home video release used production order as well, so it became the accepted default order. Even the re-release of the Blish adaptations in a three-volume set, one thick paperback for each season, reprinted them in production order (aside from Blish's "The Menagerie" actually just adapting "The Cage"). So it was weird when the Blu-Ray release suddenly reverted to broadcast order and lots of people seemed to jump on the bandwagon for that. Where had this desire for airdate order come from after a whole generation had grown up knowing only production order?
I have to be honest I wasn't sure what people would prefer. So far no one has come in to say they preferred airdate order (of course 15 people is hardly representative, but still). It's either production order, or just random. It was basically how I was brought up as a fan I guess you can say. It was sometime later when I found out "The Man Trap" was the first aired episode. My first reference book was the Compendium and that was generally the order I thought of Star Trek in.
The only reason I can think of that the Blu-Ray (and initial DVD release of the remastered episodes) was released in airdate order is because the spinoffs were in airdate order. Maybe they wanted to be consistent with the other series.
It almost sounds like CBS would have been better off putting them in production order. Though at the very least I wish they had at least numbered the episodes on the discs--I believe the remastered-DVD's at least put the production number on so if you wanted to watch it in order it was easier. I remember maybe the first 10 to 12 episodes in order, but then my memory sort of fades on the proper order after that and I need a list.
Certainly when it comes to the original series watching them in order isn't as necessary as say watching Enterprise or Discovery in order. But the original series still seems to have a better flow to watching it in order. There was little to no carryover in storylines from one episode to the next, and episodes rarely referenced prior episodes. But the character development and as Mytran noted even the ship design just seemed to be more natural in that order.
The one time I watched it in airdate order it just felt like random episodes put together. As Christopher noted things like Kirks reaction to Rand in "The Corbomite Maneuver" make a lot more sense. In airdate order "The Corbomite Maneuver" was pretty late in the game and viewers were probably wondering why Kirk all of a sudden didn't like having a female yeoman.
Whereas in production order each episode felt in a small way like part of a greater whole.
Which, if so, was a poor and uninformed decision. The other shows mostly had specific reasons for airing episodes out of production order, e.g. the fact that "Unification"'s two parts had to be filmed in reverse order to accommodate Nimoy's schedule. So in those cases, airdate order makes more story sense. But in TOS, the airdate order was arbitrary and not based on story considerations.
I'm also wondering if other shows being released over the years led to the decision. When Star Trek was first released on VHS it was pretty revolutionary. But now tons of shows are released on DVD/Blu-Ray and I believe most of them are in airdate order. Maybe CBS felt Star Trek would have been an anomaly if they didn't release that also in airdate order. Maybe they wanted to be like everyone else.
It's a poor reason, I agree. But it seems to be the trend with other shows. It just seems with other shows the airdate order seems to flow pretty well. Not as much with Star Trek. I think I read somewhere, for instance, that NBC aired "The Corbomite Maneuver" pretty late because it was a ship based episode and they wanted to air several planet based first (or at least partially planet based episodes) to get the audience acclimated. I'm not sure why a ship based episode would be an issue for a space based show, but
. And what you say about "The Man Trap" sounds about right. I never saw that specifically as a reason but it makes sense (though had they aired it as the 6th episode it probably would have been aired around Halloween which would have been more fitting ).Oh and I also read that they didn't want to air Where No Man Has Gone Before first because they felt it was too 'expository'. I never understood that. It would have been the first episode aired, why would it being too 'expository' be a problem for the premiere episode?
Could be. There were some shows where syndicating them in production order was a bad idea -- like in M*A*S*H, where the episode where Col. Potter arrives and BJ is already there was filmed before the 2-parter about BJ's arrival. It was always annoying seeing those episodes air out of order in reruns, so there was probably pressure to release them in the correct airdate order on home video. Cases like that may have helped create the impression that airdate order should always be preferred, but it's a folly to confuse specific cases with general cases. Sometimes the original airdate order got things wrong, because an episode was delayed from where it was supposed to be. It should be case-by-case. But just as the syndicators just blindly went by production number even when it didn't make story sense, maybe the home video distributors these days just blindly go by release order rather than make the extra effort to decide what's best in each case. Humans are usually more prone to flip from one extreme to the opposite extreme rather than trying to find a healthy balance between them.
Maybe they meant it was too talky, too focused on discussing and explaining what was happening to the ship and to Mitchell. Which is odd, since it was written in part to be more action-oriented than "The Cage" had been.
I don't know, but perhaps it's related to the increase since then in serial dramas, under which air date order is expected to be the correct order.
That could be. I was taking it to mean introductory, but talky is another possibility. It would at least make more sense (after all, if it was because it was introductory, you'd think that would be ideal for a series premiere).
Personally I found it to have a nice balance of talk and action. The talky points felt appropriate for a pilot episode. Even in "The Corbomite Maneuver" there were some points that seemed to be introducing us to the characters, some of which were new in that case. Both episodes had an early mission feel to them, like the characters were still getting used to each other. Where with "The Man Trap" it felt much more like they've been around for a while.
I wonder if when people saw "Where No Man Has Gone Before" with it's different sets and characters thought they were overhauling the show already--I imagine people probably didn't realize at the time it was a pilot episode. Only to find out the next week everything was back to 'normal'. I wonder if it was confusing to people at the time.
Not a big difference but probably airdate order generally. The only times airdate order seems incorrect or less correct, aside from WNMHGB obviously, is that Kirk and McCoy seem pretty new to each other in "The Corbomite Maneuver" and McCoy and Spock likewise in "The Conscience of the King" (the latter instance pretty inconsistent in either order).
"Amok Time" does make a much better starting episode to Season 2 than "Catspaw" (while "Spock's Brain" should probably just be skipped).
Edit: I think airdate order tends to push stronger season 1 episodes a bit later on (particularly "Balance of Terror" and "Court Martial") and stronger season 2 episodes earlier ("Amok Time", "The Changeling", "Mirror, Mirror", "Journey to Babel") and both effects are nice. "The Naked Time" and its presentation of Kirk (and the whole crew acting differently) should probably also be watched before examining his evil side in "The Enemy Within".
"Amok Time" does make a much better starting episode to Season 2 than "Catspaw" (while "Spock's Brain" should probably just be skipped).
Edit: I think airdate order tends to push stronger season 1 episodes a bit later on (particularly "Balance of Terror" and "Court Martial") and stronger season 2 episodes earlier ("Amok Time", "The Changeling", "Mirror, Mirror", "Journey to Babel") and both effects are nice. "The Naked Time" and its presentation of Kirk (and the whole crew acting differently) should probably also be watched before examining his evil side in "The Enemy Within".
Last edited:
At the time, it was not unusual for shows to be aired out of production order, so it probably wasn't unusual to see that kind of early inconsistency between episodes. Viewers who noticed it at all probably took it in stride.
Also, keep in mind that they didn't have huge HDTVs back then. Many would've been watching on small screens, often in black-and-white, and since they were getting over-the-air broadcast signals, there was often static and distortion in the picture, and you had to experiment with moving the antenna around to get decent reception. Not to mention that the electron beams in the CRTs often went out of sync (at least on cheap or old TVs like my family had), and you had to manually adjust the vertical hold knob to keep the image steady rather than scrolling/flipping up or down the screen, or adjust the horizontal hold knob to keep it from smearing out left-to-right. You were lucky if you could even see the actors' faces and hear their dialogue clearly. The kind of subtle differences in set and costume detail that we obsess over today would've been hard for many viewers to see at all. Sometimes I forget how spoiled we are by modern TVs where you don't have to wrestle with the set to get a good picture and sound out of it.
Glad to see at least one airdate vote, even if I'm more on the other side.
True enough. I guess it was still early enough to not really noticed some of the character changes.
I have an old tube TV in my basement I think I got in the 80s and have a VCR connected to it. Despite getting the Blu-rays, I decided I'll never get rid of my 1st edition VHS videos of the original series and sometimes I'll watch them when I'm working down in my basement. Back when I first got them in the late 80's/early 90's I thought they were the greatest thing. At least there was no static and the sound was pretty good. But now that I've seen them on Blu-Ray you really notice the lack of definition of just the old VHS videos on an old tube TV. I can only imagine what they looked live over the air. Even when I watched them on TV it was usually with cable so I didn't have to worry about the antenna.
However, that does remind me of my very early days watching the original series. Our townhouse complex didn't get cable until several months after we moved in (it was a new complex at the time). I lived in South Jersey, in the Philadelphia market. Now at that time no Phila stations carried Star Trek. The closest was WPIX-Channel 11 in NY. If I pointed my antenna the right way I could get a fair reception. It was overlayed with static, but clear enough to see it at least. Of course they played Star Trek at midnight so I had some late nights
To be honest, I'm probably overstating the bad picture issue. I recall that as a kid, I did eventually start to notice that "Where No Man" was weirdly different from the other episodes in the uniforms and the shape of the viewscreen and such, and it was a while before I understood why.
I have to make a confession, I didn't know there was an order when I was watching them in syndication and fell in love with the show. I just watched them, no matter which one(s) were on. As I've posted many times, 1 channel had it on at 11:30pm and another 12:30am so M-F it was a double header so even if one of those stations bothered with an order it was not inline with the other station. (WPIX 11 and WPHL 17 were the stations, btw)
I definitely noticed in The Menagerie. Though I thought they had just changed the set and costumes for what I thought were newly filmed "flashback" material. I probably thought it was Jeff Hunter in the wheelchair, too.
Production Order for me. As others have said, you can see the series take shape & develop as it did while they were shooting it. And it makes much more sense from a character development standpoint.
As far as why the season sets of The Original Series are released in airdate order, I would imagine that's because it's just the standard. With very few exceptions (such as Crusade and, I think, Firefly which were jumbled by their respective networks and made little sense), TV shows are presented in the order in which they were aired. I Spy was mixed until they did season sets. Same with Twilight Zone. The original TOS DVD volumes were the two episode released in production order. But once season sets became the norm, air date order was the standard for just about everyone.
Shows like Space:1999 and UFO are in production order because the UK didn't run them in any sensible fashion (holding back episodes of UFO for YEARS) and leaving the airing order completely up to the individual syndicated stations. Other ITC series, which were made for worldwide distribution, are the same way, as is The Avengers for the most part.
But as I look at my wall of TV series DVDs and Blu Rays, about 99% of them are in airdate order. Since TOS was not serialized, there's really no reason to have expected season sets to be any different.
However, UK releases of shows like Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and Land of the Giants are in production order, which, for Giants anyway, makes since. The first half of the opening season wasn't serialized, but it was evolving and gradually introduced concepts over the weeks, which became meaningless in the original ABS airdate order.
Shows like Space:1999 and UFO are in production order because the UK didn't run them in any sensible fashion (holding back episodes of UFO for YEARS) and leaving the airing order completely up to the individual syndicated stations. Other ITC series, which were made for worldwide distribution, are the same way, as is The Avengers for the most part.
But as I look at my wall of TV series DVDs and Blu Rays, about 99% of them are in airdate order. Since TOS was not serialized, there's really no reason to have expected season sets to be any different.
However, UK releases of shows like Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and Land of the Giants are in production order, which, for Giants anyway, makes since. The first half of the opening season wasn't serialized, but it was evolving and gradually introduced concepts over the weeks, which became meaningless in the original ABS airdate order.
Similar threads
- Poll
