Uh, I'd see stardates as an entirely separate issue.
In TOS, somebody in the production machinery apparently took care to have the stardates increase roughly systematically whenever new episodes were produced. Thus, the production order and stardate order for TOS are almost the same; and while the former may be the "intention" of TOS, the latter actually works better in terms of continuity whenever there's a difference between the two.
However, in the first season of TNG, somebody in the organization apparently either didn't care about the stardates, or perhaps even made a deliberate effort to prevent them from increasing gradually as new episodes emerged. The production order of the episodes is more or less logical: new sets, character traits and plot elements are introduced and then become permanent fixtures of the show, and sometimes a feature disappears (such as Yar dying) and then stays disappeared. The airing order also more or less follows production order. However, at the final rewriting stage of several episodes, stardates were either altered or added to the effect of ruining stardate order. TrekCore shows several non-final scripts for the first season episodes, and those either lack the incriminating stardates, or have more logical stardates than the eventual, aired ones. Why this happened is a big mystery.
Beyond the first season, and thereafter in all the spinoffs, stardates very closely matched production order, and care was also taken to ensure that plot elements were in synch with the procession of stardates. Since TNG and the other spinoffs had a more serial nature than TOS, this was somewhat significant for continuity; in TOS, stardate order is compatible with continuity not only because such care was taken, but also because continuity in that show was a loose concept to begin with.
The airdate vs. production date issue with TNG first season is relatively clear-cut: AFAIK, just two episodes have swapped place in later releases, to do away with the "Tasha's dead, now she's back, now she's finally dead for good" thing. However, apparently the TNG episodes were written in an order that differed greatly from the production order, that is, from the order in which production was completed. Hence "The Big Goodbye" moved around quite a bit, not being ready yet to act as the immediate sequel for "11001001" as intended and originally written.
Perhaps the nonsensically high stardates inserted in late rewrites of episodes such as "The Big Goodbye" are to be faulted to an honest effort to re-position such early-written, late-finished episodes to a slot later in the season - an effort that was made before the final slot was known, and never properly controlled so that a truly matching stardate would have been inserted when the slot did become known?
Timo Saloniemi
