Watching Trek in Airdate Order

Although the idea of a built-in climate control taking the place of heavy winter gear was seen in "Spock's Brain," when the landing party beamed down to the glaciated planet and Kirk ordered them to "Set temperatures to 72," which they did by fiddling with some unseen controls on their waists.

Anyway, whenever the idea of the life-support belts showed up, the point is that they weren't actually used in "The Tholian Web," which makes it problematic to intermix the third season and TAS chronologically.

 

Personally I am so used to production order, that watching it in airdate order would just throw me off too much. The little 'back and forth' with the early and later eps mixed in the beginning is part of the charm

 

For the hell of it.

Stardate 1254.4 “The Magicks Of Megas-Tu” (TAS)
Stardate 1312.4 “Where No Man Has Gone Before” (Pilot)
Stardate 1329.8 “Mudd’s Women” (Season 1)
Stardate 1512.2 “The Corbomite Maneuver” (Season 1)
Stardate 1513.1 “The Man Trap” (Season 1)
Stardate 1533.6 “Charlie X” (Season 1)
Stardate 1672.1 “The Enemy Within” (Season 1)
Stardate 1704.2 “The Naked Time” (Season 1)
Stardate 1709.1 “Balance Of Terror” (Season 1)
Stardate 2124.5 “The Squire Of Gothos” (Season 1)
Stardate 2534.0 “Patterns Of Force” (Season 2)
Stardate 2712.4 “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” (Season 1)
Stardate 2713.5 “Miri” (Season 1)
Stardate 2715.1 “Dagger Of The Mind” (Season 1)
Stardate 2817.6 “The Conscience Of The King” (Season 1)
Stardate 2821.5 “The Galileo Seven” (Season 1)
Stardate 2947.3 “Courtmartial” (Season 1)
Stardate 3012.4 “The Menagerie” (Season 1)
Stardate 3018.2 “Catspaw” (Season 2)
Stardate 3025.3 “Shore Leave” (Season 1)
Stardate 3045.6 “Arena” (Season 1)
Stardate 3087.6 “The Alternative Factor” (Season 1)
Stardate 3113.2 “Tomorrow Is Yesterday” (Season 1)
Stardate 3134.0 “The City On The Edge Of Forever” (Season 1)
Stardate 3141.9 “Space Seed” (Season 1)
Stardate 3156.2 “The Return Of The Archons” (Season 1)
Stardate 3183.3 “The Practical Joker” (TAS)
Stardate 3192.1 “A Taste Of Armageddon” (Season 1)
Stardate 3196.1 “The Devil In The Dark” (Season 1)
Stardate 3211.7 “The Gamesters Of Triskelion” (Season 2)
Stardate 3219.8 “Metamorphosis” (Season 2)
Stardate 3287.2 “Operation—Annihilate” (Season 1)
Stardate 3372.7 “Amok Time” (Season 2)
Stardate 3417.3 “This Side Of Paradise” (Season 1)
Stardate 3468.1 “Who Mourns For Adonis?” (Season 2)
Stardate 3478.2 “The Deadly Years” (Season 2)
Stardate 3497.2 “Friday’s Child” (Season 2)
Stardate 3541.9 “The Changeling” (Season 2)
Stardate 3614.9 “Wolf In The Fold” (Season 2)
Stardate 3619.2 “Obsession” (Season 2)
Stardate 3715.9 “The Apple” (Season 2)
Stardate 3842.3 “Journey To Babel” (Season 2)
Stardate 4040.7 “Bread And Circuses” (Season 2)
Stardate 4187.3 “The Slaver Weapon” (TAS)
Stardate 4202.9 “The Doomsday Machine” (Season 2)
Not Specified “Mirror, Mirror” (Season 2)
Stardate 4211.4 “A Private Little War” (Season 2)
Stardate 4307.1 “The Immunity Syndrome” (Season 2)
Stardate 4372.5 “Elaan Of Troyius” (Season 3)
Stardate 4385.3 “Spectre Of The Gun” (Season 3)
Stardate 4513.3 “I, Mudd” (Season 2)
Stardate 4523.3 “The Trouble With Tribbles” (Season 2)
Stardate 4598.0 “A Piece Of The Action” (Season 2)
Stardate 4657.5 “By Any Other Name” (Season 2)
Stardate 4729.4 “The Ultimate Computer” (Season 2)
Stardate 4768.3 “Return To Tomorrow” (Season 2)
Not Specified “The Omega Glory” (Season 2)
Not Specified “Assignment: Earth” (Season 2)
Stardate 4842.6 “The Paradise Syndrome” (Season 3)
Stardate 4978.5 “Mudd’s Passion” (TAS)
Stardate 5027.3 “And The Children Shall Lead” (Season 3)
Stardate 5031.3 “The Enterprise Incident” (Season 3)
Stardate 5121.5 “The Empath” (Season 3)
Stardate 5143.3 “The Survivor” (TAS)
Stardate 5267.2 “Time Trap” (TAS)
Stardate 5275.6 “Albatross” (TAS)
Stardate 5371.3 “One Of Our Planets Is Missing” (TAS)
Stardate 5373.4 “Yesteryear” (TAS)
Stardate 5392.4 “More Tribbles, More Troubles” (TAS)
Stardate 5423.4 “The Mark Of Gideon” (Season 3)
Stardate 5431.4 “Spock’s Brain” (Season 3)
Stardate 5476.3 “For The World Is Hollow And I Have Touched The Sky” (Season 3)
Stardate 5483.7 “The Lorelei Signal” (TAS)
Stardate 5499.9 “The Ambergris Element” (TAS)
Stardate 5501.2 “Eye Of The Beholder” (TAS)
Stardate 5521.3 “Beyond The Farthest Star” (TAS)
Stardate 5554.4 “The Infinite Vulcan” (TAS)
Stardate 5577.3 “The Terratin Incident” (TAS)
Stardate 5591.2 “Once Upon A Planet” (TAS)
Stardate 5630.7 “Is There In Truth No Beauty?” (Season 3)
Stardate 5683.1 “Jihad” (TAS)
Stardate 5693.2 “The Tholian Web” (Season 3)
Not Specified “Day Of The Dove” (Season 3)
Stardate 5710.5 “Wink Of An Eye” (Season 3)
Stardate 5718.3 “Whom Gods Destroy” (Season 3)
Stardate 5725.3 “The Lights Of Zetar” (Season 3)
Stardate 5730.2 “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” (Season 3)
Stardate 5784.2 “Plato’s Stepchildren” (Season 3)
Not Specified “That Which Survives” (Season 3)
Stardate 5818.4 “The Cloud Minders” (Season 3)
Stardate 5832.3 “The Way To Eden” (Season 3)
Stardate 5843.7 “Requiem For Methuselah” (Season 3)
Stardate 5906.4 “The Savage Curtain” (Season 3)
Stardate 5298.5 “Turnabout Intruder” (Season 3)
Stardate 5943.7 “All Our Yesterdays” (Season 3)
Stardate 6063.4 “How Sharper Than A Serpent’s Tooth” (TAS)
Stardate 6334.1 “The Pirates Of Orion” (TAS)
Stardate 6770.3 “The Counter-Clock Incident” (TAS)
Stardate 7403.6 “BEM” (TAS)


Most of the TAS episodes mix in with Season 3. Two TAS episodes slip into Season 1 and one episode slips into Season 2. There is a moderate mix of seasons near the ends and beginnings of seasons. In this order a couple of episodes would establish Chekov, Arex and M'ress definitely being present relatively early on.

 

Consider that you can (and need to) insert a "decade digit" in front of the four-digit stardates so that the system makes overall sense. Perhaps a "century digit", too, depending on how early the system would have come to use - or how far back it would retroactively go. Now, there's no pressing need to give the same decade digit to all the episodes. Just decide that when TAS features an episode in the 1000 range (like "Magicks"), it's in the 51000s while a TOS episode in the 1000 range (like "Miri") is in the 41000s. And then just add the century digit to distinguish "Miri" from "Heart of Glory" and "Magicks" from "Waltz".

Sure, this trick makes ST:TMP take place fairly late in the game - but that's merely positive, considering that our heroes have aged significantly since we last saw them.

Using the decade digit selectively gets you clear of some of the TAS overlap. The rest, uh, takes additional explaining...

Timo Saloniemi

 

I thought it was a nice throwaway to explain why they weren't so cold on the planet. They only worked so well, though, since Chekov and the security team needed to heat up a rock for more comfort. It was also probably too cold on Alfa 177 to help Sulu in The Enemy Within. Still, those heaters would probably explain how the stranded landing party was able to survive so long in those temperatures with so little insulation. All they had was a thermal blanket, their uniforms and some phasers and the temperature dropped to 117 below.

Kinda bugged me that Kirk not only ordered everyone to turn on the heaters, he actually decided what temperature to use. What if Chekov was too hot at 72 degrees? Personally, I would be just fine at 68. I suppose nobody would know if someone didn't obey him to the letter.

 

Yeah, that might be a tighter focus on what I mean. Those episodes start to build a large, explored, settled galaxy around the characters.

But not only human. Other races figured into it; we were aware of them even though we didn't see that many of them. Green Orion girls; the Saurians who make the brandy; the Thasians who raised Charlie X; the race who made Ruk and Andrea; Balok. Vulcans.

Maybe it makes the most sense to say that the earliest episodes do a nice job of building a Federation around the crew, and that effort slacks off (with some exceptions) after the first dozen or twenty episodes.

 

...That is, when Starbase Six or Benecia Colony becomes just a "storytelling convention" and not a "world-building effort". Unfortunately, that necessarily happens to every such effort eventually; slacking off is built in.

You really have to ramp it up to keep being noticed, and fortunately TOS did it with the gradual expansion of the Vulcan culture. Might have been fun to discover something similar about one of the human crew members, too. Perhaps Scotty could have been part of a fancy cult of some sort, or McCoy could have had family ties to the Independent Confederation of Planets that still was going strong in the southern part of the galaxy, right next to Cheron?

Timo Saloniemi