Canonical episode order for the Litverse?

[Doctorossi]

Hi all,

Apologies if this info is somewhere obvious but I've still failed to find it...

I just started the first Vanguard novel and the inter-episodic setting has me wondering... is there an official TOS episode order (production, airdate or something else) for the novels or do authors have the *ahem* authority to choose for themselves as their needs require?

 

[David Mack]

I tend to rely on The Star Trek Chronology unless a particular event or episode's placement is suggested to be different by a preponderance of canon or canon-derived evidence.

 

[Doctorossi]

I tend to rely on The Star Trek Chronology unless a particular event or episode's placement is suggested to be different by a preponderance of canon or canon-derived evidence.

Thanks, David. You're not aware of any universal editorial mandate, though?

 

[David Mack]

Not in the 20+ years I've been writing novels for Star Trek, no.

 

[ryan123450]

Not official at all, but I have my version of the 5YM based on the preponderance of evidence from the Litverse. Mostly production order, but a few episodes have been reordered based on references in the novels.

https://startreklitverse.com/the-five-year-mission--month-by-month.php

 

[F. King Daniel]

Diane Carey got away with putting "The Wounded" before "Best of Both Worlds" in Ship of the Line, they're not too fussed.

 

[The Wormhole]

IIRC, these days most everyone seems to assume airdate order is how things happened, with a few notable exceptions. IE, WNMHGB obviously takes place before all other TOS episodes aside from The Cage as opposed to being Kirk's third televised adventure.

 

[Christopher]

IIRC, these days most everyone seems to assume airdate order is how things happened, with a few notable exceptions. IE, WNMHGB obviously takes place before all other TOS episodes aside from The Cage as opposed to being Kirk's third televised adventure.

On the contrary -- I've always assumed production order for TOS in my books, and I know other authors have as well, including the Vanguard authors. The Star Trek Chronology used production order, and in my experience, Paramount/CBS has always preferred that the novelists follow the STC's version of things (even when it doesn't make sense, like the inexplicable dating choices for ST II-V), unless superseded by later canon.

Some of the early novels had eccentric takes on episode order. For instance, Michael Jan Friedman's debut novel Double, Double was meant to take place immediately after "What Are Little Girls Made Of?," or at least very soon after it, but Chekov is in the novel, and IIRC it references some things from the third season. Similarly, Web of the Romulans is immediately before "Tomorrow is Yesterday" but has Chekov and third-season references in it. In the early days, syndication packages weren't always in a fixed order, so I guess some people grew up with a flexible view of the story order. By the '80s, though, production order was standard for syndication airings, reference books, and home video releases, which is why it was so strange to me when the first DVD box set reverted to broadcast order, and even stranger that that's somehow come to be seen as the default these days.

 

[The Wormhole]

By the '80s, though, production order was standard for syndication airings, reference books, and home video releases, which is why it was so strange to me when the first DVD box set reverted to broadcast order, and even stranger that that's somehow come to be seen as the default these days.

Interestingly enough, in Canada (at least on Space/CTV Sci-fi since 2002) TOS re-runs have been done in airdate order. Indeed, I remember once someone asked them about that on their website and they said their policy with all TV shows was to go with broadcast order to avoid situations where production order generates anomalies like with TNG where Symbiosis was filmed after Skin of Evil, or Part 2 of Unification was filmed before Part 1, which I understand can be problematic with some American syndication runs have actually run those episodes in production order.

 

[Christopher]

Interestingly enough, in Canada (at least on Space/CTV Sci-fi since 2002) TOS re-runs have been done in airdate order. Indeed, I remember once someone asked them about that on their website and they said their policy with all TV shows was to go with broadcast order to avoid situations where production order generates anomalies like with TNG where Symbiosis was filmed after Skin of Evil, or Part 2 of Unification was filmed before Part 1, which I understand can be problematic with some American syndication runs have actually run those episodes in production order.

But that was never a problem for TOS, since the only episodes where the order matters are the two parts of "The Menagerie," and those were produced and aired in the same order. I can see the argument for favoring broadcast order for the later shows, or for something like M*A*S*H (where reruns in production order had B.J. already present for Col. Potter's debut before the episode where B.J. debuted), but for TOS, production order creates no problems and has some advantages. I don't see why it should matter what other shows do, because TOS is not other shows.

 

[Sci]

On the contrary -- I've always assumed production order for TOS in my books, and I know other authors have as well, including the Vanguard authors. The Star Trek Chronology used production order, and in my experience, Paramount/CBS has always preferred that the novelists follow the STC's version of things (even when it doesn't make sense, like the inexplicable dating choices for ST II-V), unless superseded by later canon.

Some of the early novels had eccentric takes on episode order. For instance, Michael Jan Friedman's debut novel Double, Double was meant to take place immediately after "What Are Little Girls Made Of?," or at least very soon after it, but Chekov is in the novel, and IIRC it references some things from the third season. Similarly, Web of the Romulans is immediately before "Tomorrow is Yesterday" but has Chekov and third-season references in it. In the early days, syndication packages weren't always in a fixed order, so I guess some people grew up with a flexible view of the story order. By the '80s, though, production order was standard for syndication airings, reference books, and home video releases, which is why it was so strange to me when the first DVD box set reverted to broadcast order, and even stranger that that's somehow come to be seen as the default these days.

But that was never a problem for TOS, since the only episodes where the order matters are the two parts of "The Menagerie," and those were produced and aired in the same order. I can see the argument for favoring broadcast order for the later shows, or for something like M*A*S*H (where reruns in production order had B.J. already present for Col. Potter's debut before the episode where B.J. debuted), but for TOS, production order creates no problems and has some advantages. I don't see why it should matter what other shows do, because TOS is not other shows.

Well, I would argue that any collection of a series of installments should in principle follow the order of publication, no matter whether or not the order of publication matches with the chronological order of the installments. So I'm perfectly fine with the idea that the TOS episodes in the box set and on the streaming services are in airdate order while also not accepting airdate order as chronological order.

 

[Christopher]

Well, I would argue that any collection of a series of installments should in principle follow the order of publication, no matter whether or not the order of publication matches with the chronological order of the installments.

Except that's not logical for older TV shows, where broadcast order was often arbitrary and chosen for reasons that had nothing to do with internal continuity or story logic, and thus often worked against those things. There is no principle that should be blindly and rigidly applied in every case without exception. The world isn't made of uniform principles, it's made of individual cases that broad principles only approximate and oversimplify. The only fair and sensible thing is to judge each case by its own needs.

So I'm perfectly fine with the idea that the TOS episodes in the box set and on the streaming services are in airdate order while also not accepting airdate order as chronological order.

I stand by the position that that only works for TNG and after, not for TOS. They come from different eras of television and it's invalid to apply the same blanket standard to both of them.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

I've heard rumors that "The Man Trap" was chosen for the premiere because it looked, at least to the nice folks making those decisions at NBC, like a stereotypical "monster show," with a stereotypical monster. (I note that the first episode I saw all the way through was "The Devil in the Dark," a very unstereotypical "monster show," in which the real monsters were the humans who hadn't even considered the possibility that the silicon nodules they were destroying were Horta eggs, and the mother Horta turned out to be very willing to forgive the miners for acting out of ignorance, once they stopped.)

And of course, it is a matter of public record that TAS debuted with "Yesteryear" (instead of "Beyond the Farthest Star") in the Los Angeles market because George Takei was running for public office in that market, and "Yesteryear" was the first episode without Sulu.

I stand by the position that that only works for TNG and after, not for TOS.

And not even for the first few weeks of TNG, where some episodes were delayed in post-production.

Personally, I applaud the decision to put the TOS VHS release in production order, and deplore the decision to put the TOS Remastered DVD sets in broadcast order.

 

[Sci]

Except that's not logical for older TV shows, where broadcast order was often arbitrary and chosen for reasons that had nothing to do with internal continuity or story logic, and thus often worked against those things.

Is the goal of the home video collection to serve internal continuity or story logic, or is the goal to faithfully represent the series as it was first experienced by the audience? If the former, it makes sense to go by chronological order; if the latter, it makes sense to go by airdate.

 

[Christopher]

I've heard rumors that "The Man Trap" was chosen for the premiere because it looked, at least to the nice folks making those decisions at NBC, like a stereotypical "monster show," with a stereotypical monster.

Yes. Their perception of science fiction was shaped by '50s monster movies and The Outer Limits, which was required by similar network attitudes to include a monster in every episode. "The Man Trap" was the best fit for their expectations.

And both seasons 2 & 3 opened with Spock episodes because Spock was the breakout character of the show.

Personally, I applaud the decision to put the TOS VHS release in production order, and deplore the decision to put the TOS Remastered DVD sets in broadcast order.

As I said, throughout the '80s and '90s, production order was the standard in virtually every context -- syndication packages, home video releases, reference books and lists, and of course the Star Trek Chronology. It wasn't until the first box set releases in 2004 that they reverted to airdate order, after a quarter-century or more of production order being the default.

Is the goal of the home video collection to serve internal continuity or story logic, or is the goal to faithfully represent the series as it was first experienced by the audience? If the former, it makes sense to go by chronological order; if the latter, it makes sense to go by airdate.

The former, of course. If a series was released in an order that didn't fit its internal continuity, then why would anyone want to be forced to live with that less-than-ideal presentation just because it's the way their parents or grandparents had to experience it? If you get a second chance to do something, the goal is to correct past mistakes, not perpetuate them. It's a silly affectation to try to replicate the "first experience," which nobody can actually do since the context is not the same. What matters is the best experience in the here and now.

I mean, hell, the original experience of watching things on commercial TV has historically been full of annoyances -- commercials, announcers' voiceovers, obnoxious graphics superimposed onto the screen, special news reports interrupting the show, sports overtimes delaying the show, and in the pre-cable days, staticky broadcast signals and TV sets whose pictures flipped and warped if you didn't set the knobs just right. I often longed for the chance to see shows in a pure form without all those interruptions and distortions, to see something better than the original, flawed experience. Holding up the original experience as some ideal to be craved is delusional, a nostalgic fantasy overwriting the messy reality.

 

[Sci]

Is the goal of the home video collection to serve internal continuity or story logic, or is the goal to faithfully represent the series as it was first experienced by the audience? If the former, it makes sense to go by chronological order; if the latter, it makes sense to go by airdate.

The former, of course. If a series was released in an order that didn't fit its internal continuity, then why would anyone want to be forced to live with that less-than-ideal presentation just because it's the way their parents or grandparents had to experience it?

Well, we have a fundamental disagreement here. I think that the goal is to faithfully represent the series as it was first experienced by the audience as closely as possible. So, for instance, I think the proper viewing for the Star Wars films would be A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith, The Force Awakens, Rogue One, The Last Jedi, Solo, and The Rise of Skywalker -- not The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith, Solo, Rogue One, A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi, and The Rise of Skywalker.

If you get a second chance to do something, the goal is to correct past mistakes, not perpetuate them.

I think the goal is preservation, not correction. To make another comparison: King Henry IV may have reigned eighty years before Richard III, but I don't think a collection of the works of William Shakespeare should place Henry IV before Richard III. Nor do I think a Sherlock Holmes collection should put The Hound of the Baskervilles before "The Final Problem."

Holding up the original experience as some ideal to be craved is delusional, a nostalgic fantasy overwriting the messy reality.

I understand you have a preference for chronological order, but don't you think it's overstating things just a little to call it "a delusional, nostalgic fantasy" just because others have the artistic goal of preserving the original experience as closely as possible?

 

[Therin of Andor]

IIRC, these days most everyone seems to assume airdate order is how things happened, with a few notable exceptions. IE, WNMHGB obviously takes place before all other TOS episodes aside from The Cage as opposed to being Kirk's third televised adventure.

I found that, bookwise, Alan Dean Foster's "Star Trek Log" series, which novelize Filmation's TAS in a different order, work much better than airdate order. ADF ignores the randomness of the onscreen TAS Stardates and gives his adaptations and original material all-new Stardates in the Logs.

Also, the Timeliner's Timeline found that the hardcover "Prime Directive" (which destroys the bridge module as part of the action), works really well as a transition novel between the end of TOS and the beginning of TAS.

Is the goal of the home video collection to serve internal continuity or story logic, or is the goal to faithfully represent the series as it was first experienced by the audience? If the former, it makes sense to go by chronological order; if the latter, it makes sense to go by airdate.

People complained when the TOS VHS tapes came out in production order, so the DVDs went original airdate order instead. And different people complained. Kobayashi Maru.

 

[Christopher]

Well, we have a fundamental disagreement here. I think that the goal is to faithfully represent the series as it was first experienced by the audience as closely as possible.

I'll believe that when you tell me you only watch 1960s-70s TV shows with a fuzzy broadcast signal on an antiquated set where you keep having to get up and fiddle with the knobs to try to get a stable, undistorted picture, and that you watch it with commercial breaks every 10-12 minutes. Or that you only watch 1990s shows if there are annoying network-promo animations superimposed on them intrusively at key dramatic moments.

Nothing is ever perfect the first time around. The goal of doing things more than once is to try to do them better. My "original experience" as an audience member of commercial TV routinely included the wish that I could see them in a purer form without interruption and without the instances where episodes were aired out of their logical story order due to external production or scheduling factors. There's nothing about that that's worth recreating. Longing for some perfect version of the past that's better than what you can get in the present is a fantasy. The past is something to be improved on. A Star Trek fan should know that.

So, for instance, I think the proper viewing for the Star Wars films would be A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith, The Force Awakens, Rogue One, The Last Jedi, Solo, and The Rise of Skywalker -- not The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith, Solo, Rogue One, A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi, and The Rise of Skywalker.

Because the films were made in that order. That is not always the case with series television. There are many instances where the episodes were shown in the incorrect story order due to external factors. For instance, I recently read that the final broadcast episode of the original Night Court was actually an earlier episode postponed until after the series finale. It made no story sense after the finale, because the finale decisively had the characters break up and move on to new jobs and life paths. It was not meant to go there, and thus there's no value in recreating the mistake.

This is what I'm saying. You can't just apply a blanket rule universally, because every case is individual. The best approach for one series is not necessarily the best approach for another.

I understand you have a preference for chronological order, but don't you think it's overstating things just a little to call it "a delusional, nostalgic fantasy" just because others have the artistic goal of preserving the original experience as closely as possible?

The fantasy is that the original experience is somehow better. And it's focusing on the wrong thing. The important thing to be preserved is the show itself, not the context of how it was originally presented to the audience, which was something imposed on the show from outside.

I mean, it might be worth seeing a Shakespeare play performed in a recreation of the Globe Theater with an all-male acting troupe once or twice in your life, to get a feel for what it was like, but it would make no sense to refuse to watch a Shakespeare play any other way. And even that's a bad analogy, because nobody alive today was there for the original experience. I had the original experience of watching TV in first run in the '70s and after, and I can tell you that it sucked and I always wanted something better. For my childhood self, the opportunity to watch a show with a clear HD picture and no commercial interruptions in the original production order would have been paradise. The grass is always greener on the other side.

 

[Sci]

Nothing is ever perfect the first time around. The goal of doing things more than once is to try to do them better.

Sure, but a home video release isn't "doing things more than once." It's been done already; that's why I interpret the creative goal of a home video release as preservation of what was already done rather than revision.

My "original experience" as an audience member of commercial TV routinely included the wish that I could see them in a purer form without interruption and without the instances where episodes were aired out of their logical story order due to external production or scheduling factors. There's nothing about that that's worth recreating.

You may feel that way and that feeling is legitimate. But for me, it's worth recreating because this was how Star Trek entered the world -- it was Star Trek, as surely as Episodes IV, V, and VI preceding I, II, and III was Star Wars.

Longing for some perfect version of the past that's better than what you can get in the present is a fantasy. The past is something to be improved on. A Star Trek fan should know that.

You are making this weirdly personal now; could you please tone it down a bit? No need for hostility here.

And wanting to preserve the completed work in the manner in which it was completed is not "longing for some perfect version of the past that's better than what you can get in the present." I don't consider TOS to be better than modern ST shows; I very much think of it as a deeply imperfect show and consider the modern shows better. But I also believe that works of art deserve to be preserved in their original form, warts and all. I think TOS deserves to be preserved as it was, in its original form, including original broadcast order.

Hell, I don't even object to the existence of the TOS Remastered version, as long as the original broadcast version, warts and all, is still available to interested audiences.

Because the films were made in that order. That is not always the case with series television. There are many instances where the episodes were shown in the incorrect story order due to external factors.

Sure, and as I said, I'm not an absolutist about this. But by the same token, I think preserving the order in which Star Wars films were released helps one understand the context in which the stories were received by their audiences. The fact that Rogue One was released in the immediate aftermath of both the election of Donald Trump and the death of Carrie Fisher means something and affects how you understand the work, apart from the question of production order per se. The fact that "The Cage" was not released until the 1980s and that "Where No Man Has Gone Before" aired after "The Man Trap" means something in terms of understanding the audience's relationship to this series and its characters. Art is a form of communication, and so if you're preserving the work, you also ought to preserve the work as the audience received it as best you can as a general principle, because order matters in communication.

For instance, I recently read that the final broadcast episode of the original Night Court was actually an earlier episode postponed until after the series finale. It made no story sense after the finale, because the finale decisively had the characters break up and move on to new jobs and life paths. It was not meant to go there, and thus there's no value in recreating the mistake.

This is what I'm saying. You can't just apply a blanket rule universally, because every case is individual. The best approach for one series is not necessarily the best approach for another.

Sure. I don't disagree that there are times when the general rule doesn't apply. I am describing a default and never claimed it was an absolute.

The fantasy is that the original experience is somehow better.

Who said anything about "better?" As I said, the question is, what fundamental goal is being served by your preferred installment order? If the fundamental goal being served is internal continuity, then chronological order is the order you should probably default to. But if the fundamental goal being served is to represent the series as it was experienced by the audience at the time as closely as possible, then airdate is the order you should probably default to.

Ultimately, this is a matter of subjective creative goals. Neither goal is "better" than the other, but I personally would default to airdate order, because that to me is a more accurate representation of the work as the audience experienced it and I think doing so lends itself to a greater understanding of the audience's relationship to the work.

And it's focusing on the wrong thing. The important thing to be preserved is the show itself, not the context of how it was originally presented to the audience, which was something imposed on the show from outside.

I mean, it might be worth seeing a Shakespeare play performed in a recreation of the Globe Theater with an all-male acting troupe once or twice in your life, to get a feel for what it was like, but it would make no sense to refuse to watch a Shakespeare play any other way.

And even that's a bad analogy, because nobody alive today was there for the original experience. I had the original experience of watching TV in first run in the '70s and after, and I can tell you that it sucked and I always wanted something better. For my childhood self, the opportunity to watch a show with a clear HD picture and no commercial interruptions in the original production order would have been paradise. The grass is always greener on the other side.

And that is a completely valid artistic preference. No one said it wasn't. But you keep insisting that your preferred creative goal of internal continuity/improvement is superior to the creative goal of preservation/reproduction of experience. And I'm sorry, but there's no objectively superior creative goal here.

Another factor to consider, of course, is... who determines what the proper chronological order of TOS is? TOS was both episodic enough, and had enough internal inconsistencies in general, that I'm not particularly convinced production order is a definitive metric by which to determine chronological order. (Hell, if I'm putting them in chronological order, I'd be as likely to look at stardates as anything else.) To me that seems like a very subjective evaluation of what the "actual" internal chronology of the series was.

 

[Smiley]

"Where No Man Has Gone Before" is the best example of how production order makes more sense as a chronology than airdate order for TOS. The cast used and production details like uniform designs are vastly different than the episodes that aired before and after that episode.

I still argue with myself over whether I should watch "A Man Alone" or "Past Prologue" first on DS9 rewatches. "Past Prologue" was produced after "A Man Alone" but aired first because of the guest star and action quotient appeal.

I won't address every point from the back and forth between Christopher and Sci, but I find myself looking at it more from Christopher's perspective. Historical context can be important, but exact preservation of the initial experience is impossible and often unwelcome. I wouldn't want to watch Voyager only on Wednesdays or wait weeks in between viewing the episodes. To use a movie example, my initial experience with The Dark Knight was poor because I was distracted by a girl far younger than 13 sitting on the aisle steps not far from my seat. I would not want to reproduce my theater experience on subsequent viewings.

My ideal for home releases of movies and TV is to provide as appealing an experience as possible. Inclusion of previous or alternate versions can be beneficial (see TOS Remastered). For seasons of TV, people can make their own choices on viewing order if they have all of the episodes.