Production Order or Airdate (1 Viewer)

[david_slater]

Matthew your right on the money!

 

[Dan Rudolph]

That's what i was going to say. Put them in the order they were meant to be in. This is usually production order, but not always. It shoudl be easy enough to figure out by watching the show in most cases.

 

[David Von Pein]

Which is the "Air Date" order ... nearly always.

Who cares what the "Film Date" order is? It's the "Aired" order that should be used always for DVD boxed set, IMO.

As for the comment above re. sometimes shows airing out of the intended order -- WHY would this ever happen? Or even: HOW could this happen? The studio/network controls the order they want them shown, don't they? Seems like a silly error if they ever got "out of intended order".

It seems to me that the "Aired" order is ultimately the correct way to view a series chronologically. Because that is the way they were shown to the public in the first place. Production order is meaningless.

Of course, this argument is really a moot point with me. I very rarely watch any shows in EXACT order of any kind anyway. So, in reality, I couldn't care less (from my viewing standpoint -- Except for "ER", which needs to be viewed in order due to the continuing plot threads running from show to show).

It just seems MUCH more logical to place them onto DVDs in the order they were AIRED in the 1st place.

Putting them in "Production" order, in fact, can ruin the continuity of many shows -- with plot points that make no sense because they weren't intended to be aired in that order.

A good example of this occurred in the "Mad About You" DVD set -- A couch is shown in one episode on the DVD set that they don't even acquire until a few episodes LATER. Making the "Production Order" chronology just plain silly.

 

[Gord Lacey]

In "Andy Richter Controls" the Universe we are introduced to his neighbors a couple of episodes after they first show up. In "Bernie Mac" Season 1 we are introduced to a few characters a couple of episodes after they first showed up. The airing order should have been the same as the production order so the continuity would have been intact. So you can see that each show needs to be looked at and treated differently.

Gord

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

Do you guys really sit around looking up production dates, skipping episodes and swapping discs in and out of your players in order to watch a show in some percieved "perfect" order?

Probably 90% of shows have no significant continuity, by design. And first-run syndie shows still don't air on the same date in different cities, even in the age of videotape and satellite distribution. (Babylon 5, a show with heavy continuity demands - especially in the 3rd and 4th seasons - had episodes air during the same week in most of the U.S., but on different nights depending on the market.)

As a rule I watch in "disc order". This tends to be airdate order, which for 99% of shows is probably the best. (The "Man Trap" thing is just silly. "Where No Man has Gone Before", beign a pilot, is totally out of "continuity" anyway. Sulu was in a different job and uniform, the weapons and costumes were different - and this would be true regardless of what episode followed or preceeded it. Sometimes you just have to suspend disbelief. I think the network made the right decision in first airing an episode featuring what was, in fact, the 1st season cast, first. Why air an episode filled with things that the network and producers agreed needed to be changed before they went to series as your first episode?)

On one of the CSI commentary tracks they mention that the first episode they write and shoot for each season is never intended to air first. They always plan it as show #2 or #3, and use it as a kind of "shakedown cruise" to get the kinks and the cobwebs out of the cast and crew following the long hiatus. If there are any significant problems they'll put another show in the can before they shoot the planned season opener. So watching that show in production order would be a mistake - you'd see the show that picks up threads from the previous season as the 2nd or 3rd episode.

Since the show's producers are generally involved in packaging the DVDs, and since changing the episode order is a trivial matter when assembling the discs, I have to assume that what we've got is what was intended, and I generally don't give the matter a lot of thought beyond that.

Regards,

Joe

 

[Michael Harris]

Nothing is absolute.

The season 1 & 2 set of "Homicide" is a good example. They were not initially broadcast by NBC in the order intended by the producers. You actually had a case alluded to above in ST-TNG where a character disappears for good and then returns the next week. NBC wanted to show what they perceived to be a "strong episode." The release of the box set allowed this error to be repaired. Essential for a show that follows numerous story arcs.

 

[Mike Williams]

Also, on ST:TNG, regarding the two part Spock episode "Unification," Part 2 was actually produced first, so if you watched the episodes in production order, you'd be watching Part 2 before you saw Part 1, and it wouldn't make sense at all.

I think it depends on the show. With ST:TNG, clearly the aired order is best, while with ST:TOS, the production order is a must.

 

[Kevin Grey]

It depends on the series, but sure I do. Its not really much in the way of significant effort. I just find a site that lists all the shows in the proper order and see if it matches with the DVDs.

 

[Jeff Jacobson]

On one of the Transformers season 2 DVD sets, the Combaticons show up before they are created. The people making the DVDs don't always know what they are doing.

 

[Nelson Au]

Re: Star Trek's Where No Man has Gone Before and The Man Trap.

As I understand it, the The Network chose The Man Trap first because it had a monster in it. Plain and simple.

As for airing a pilot of a series such as Where No Man Has Gone Before, I'm not sure it's a regular practice back in those days when television was still relatively young. Perhaps Desilu at the time wanted to amortize the cost of such an expensive series and air it. My guess as to why it's there.

Although I have seen the pilot for Get Smart and it's a rarity to see it. It's the only episode in black and white and Max drives a Bentley.

 

[MatthewLouwrens]

I haven't seen Firefly yet, but as I understand it, the pilot episode was the last story actually aired. The episode intended to by Joss Whedon to introduce the story and characters was only seen when the show was cancelled and everyone knew what was going on. They did this because they felt that the pilot episode wasn't what they were expecting, and they wanted a more conventional story to set the show up. The show is presented in intended order, starting with the pilot, on the DVD. I have no idea whether this correlates exactly with production order.

 

[Dan Rudolph]

In Buffy season 3, thanks to the Littleton shooting, episodes 20 and 22 eended up being delayed to the end of the summer whereas 21 was shown as scheduled.

 

[MatthewLouwrens]

Great example. Here in NZ, the VHS tapes of Buffy still have Earshot as the last episode of season 3, even though it really makes no sense continuity wise.

 

[Yee-Ming]

Sometimes things go really haywire. Bab 5 must be a prime example, where JMS has stated that aired order was not his preference, and a list of his preferred viewing order appears on the various resources. I'm not sure off hand if the DVD sets now follow his preferred order, but given his significant input into them, shouldn't they be?

Crusade was released here on VCD, in what appears to be production order. JMS's stated preferred viewing order is of course completely way off, IIRC out of 13 eps, you're supposed to start with #9, #10 and #11, cut back to #1 to #4, and jump around a bit. Apparently the uniforms change back and forth when you watch it that way, but the story makes more sense. Allegedly -- I STILL haven't watched it :b

 

[Kevin Grey]

The DVD's are in airdate order, not the preferred order.

"Preferred order" is a bit of a misnomer in this case- originally intended order would be better. JMS agreed with the reasoning for switching the episodes (and it was even at his behest sometimes) and only allowed it in cases where continuity really wouldn't be effected. I'm a stickler for these things so I did watch it in preferred order, and I can see where it is a bit of an improvement, but I doubt anyone would ever notice if they didn't know otherwise.

 

[Wiseguy]

In the final episode of the third season of The Odd Couple Felix and Oscar get new furniture for the apartment, including the very noticeable white couch ("Take My Furniture, Please"). For whatever reason, an episode filmed 20 episodes earlier was held over to the last of the third season. Naturally, this episode featured the old furniture. So we go from new furniture to old furniture back to new furniture for the fourth season.

And people are still arguing about the Star Trek order. Obviously, it should be "The Cage" first, "Where No Man Has Gone Before" second. The only order that makes sense.

 

[Jack P]

Trek needs to be production order IMO to also account for the proper sequence of episodes with Grace Lee Whitney and also with Season 2 you should see "Catspaw" and "Who Mourns For Adonias" before "Amok Time" so we get Chekov and his Monkees wig out of way. And in Season 3 "Elaan of Troyius" needs to be seen before "Enterprise Incident" to get us properly introduced to the new Klingon ship design. In airdate order, we see the Romulans using the Klingon design before we see the Klingons actually using it!

OTOH, "Battlestar Galactica" has to be viewed in airdate order because they shot two episodes ("Gun On Ice Planet Zero" and "Long Patrol" before they were able to get Jane Seymour back to do "Lost Planet Of The Gods" which aired second. There were a couple reshoots on the other two episodes to firmly ground them in a post-LPOTG continuity even though they were clearly shot much sooner)

 

[JohnHopper]

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The Wild Wild West should be watched in the production order, especially season 1​

because there used to be 5 producers hence 5 leanings.​

 

[ScottRE]

Trek needs to be production order IMO to also account for the proper sequence of episodes with Grace Lee Whitney and also with Season 2 you should see "Catspaw" and "Who Mourns For Adonias" before "Amok Time" so we get Chekov and his Monkees wig out of way. And in Season 3 "Elaan of Troyius" needs to be seen before "Enterprise Incident" to get us properly introduced to the new Klingon ship design. In airdate order, we see the Romulans using the Klingon design before we see the Klingons actually using it!

OTOH, "Battlestar Galactica" has to be viewed in airdate order because they shot two episodes ("Gun On Ice Planet Zero" and "Long Patrol" before they were able to get Jane Seymour back to do "Lost Planet Of The Gods" which aired second. There were a couple reshoots on the other two episodes to firmly ground them in a post-LPOTG continuity even though they were clearly shot much sooner)

Dang, there was a long gap between posts in this thread!

I don't think it matters all that much if you watch original Star Trek in airdate or production order. It's not a serial. Only a couple of episodes mention anything that happened previously and usually those are usually a season or so apart. I don't think we'd need to keep them in production order to account for wigs or Grace Lee Whitney's tenure on the series. Everyone but Shatner and Nimoy were in and out of the series that first season, so of Rand pops in an out, it doesn't make any difference. Even De Kelley missed a few. It really only matters if you're doing a binge of the series and want to smooth out some rough edges in the very early episodes because Spock was developing. But once we're past, say, The Enemy Within, it doesn't matter in the slightest in any meaningful way. When I watched them in daily syndication, I paid absolutely no attention to order. I just wanted to know what episode was coming up next. However, I know that if the effects were done on time, Roddenberry wanted The Corbomite Maneuver to be run first. It wasn't a planet show, so NBC wouldn't have picked it, so Gene would have settled for second. But it fell all the way back to 10th. The network did have some reasons to hold back episodes. For example, The Enemy Within raised eyebrows because of the attempted rape scene by the duplicate of the series hero. They didn't want to lead with that, so they pushed it back a couple of weeks, but with The Corbomite Maneuver being so far behind, they just needed to run a show. That's actually the reason why Where No Man Has Gone Before even aired. NBC had no intention of running it at all, according to Herb Solow. It didn't represent the series format and cast. But they had to run something...

Space:1999 actually works best if you change a few early episodes around to account for the moon being so far away from Earth. Otherwise, nope, it doesn't matter.

The Prisoner? Arrival is first, have Free For All second because No. 6 is still pretty primal and finding his feet, have The General come before A,B & C to account for Colin Gordon's No. 2 returning with an ulcer and have Once Upon a Time be followed by Fall Out. That's it. If you do that series in production order, you'll ruin the flow: Once Upon a Time was shot just following The Chimes of Big Ben - months before Fall Out.

For the most part, I watch TV shows in no order at all. I pick an episode I'm in the mood for. But most shows in TV history were designed to be played in any order. Lost in Space is only bound by an order after the 5th episode because of the cliffhangers. Same with The Time Tunnel. Voyage? Just keep the black and white episodes together (however, the pilot episode does need to be run first). Land of the Giants, though... THAT series was designed to be watched in production order for roughly the first half of the first season. The episodes evolved the concept and characters but ABC jumbled the order and it makes no sense.

I Spy's pilot episode was awful. It was bumped down to around the 13th to air. Instead, NBC put on So Long, Patrick Henry written by Culp and focusing on Cosby and it was the best choice. Sometimes pilots aren't the strongest episode.

In the final analysis, watch them in whatever order you wish. But unless you know for sure what the production order is (and you can't always just go by production numbers) and feel like swapping out discs a lot, I'd just stick with airdate.

 

[ScottRE]

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The Wild Wild West should be watched in the production order, especially season 1​

because there used to be 5 producers hence 5 leanings.​

But the airdate order makes sense because the Collier Young "Westerns" weren't a good example of the series, and grouping them in at once may have lost viewers. And even I, knowing the backstory, would prefer to have regular westerns broken up in the run rather than having a batch of them.