Episode order

[Therin of Andor]

Actually, a couple of fanzines in the 70's were published that contained fairly comprehensive listings of the filming dates of the episodes based on the clapperboards shown in the film clips. Not to take anything away from Asherman's hard work, but those fanzines pre-dated his Compendium. Of course, the Compendium was more widely available.

My point exactly. From where I was in Australia, it was likely 70s fans could find a commercial "ST Concordance" (or the first two seasons episode guide in "The Making of Star Trek") quite easily, but not so the fan editions of the Concordance, nor many of the hundreds of US fanzines. Even "Starlog" episode guides for ST did airdate order until the 80s.

My strong memory of the "ST Compendium" is that it was the first time many of us had access to TOS production numbers.

Even the FAQ booklet issued by the ST Welcommittee had the same ol' airdate order.

 

[NickintheATL]

Where do you get this information? I've not read or seen any mention of episodes being delayed. I have read plenty about the network playing them the way they thought they should be seen. Production order (which I take to be synonynmous with filming order) is the order they made it. All rough edges are smoothed by progression. (ref: Ship Design, Costuming, Character Development, etc).

This episode is mentioned specifically in at least one "Making of" but no production delays are mentioned at all. Of course, "production order" is still "production order." Not "production completion order," which I think you may be thinking of?

I thought it was common knowledge that they were struggling to meet their airdates in the first season. It's only logical that shows with more effects took more time to complete in postproduction than other shows that didn't require as many effects. This is not the case all the time, but it's true to a certain extent. It was still up to NBC to choose what order to air the episodes in, of course. And maybe they decided to sit on episodes with more effects for later broadcast. I can't prove that one way or the other.

They weren't intended to be in any specific order at all, production or airdate. I'm just happy they were produced!

I disagree with the former, but whole heartedly agree with the latter. Of course this is all mental masturbation in the long run... production order or airdate order... I still say you can't go too far wrong either way. Go with the order it was filmed or the order we originally saw it. Either way, it's all golden. Either way beats the way subsequent generations saw it... completely random in syndication! (and even that way drew probably the majority of the fans!).

Hear hear, watch it in whatever order you want! Opinions are like... you know... everybody has one, and we wouldn't be a fun board here if that wasn't true

 

[Therin of Andor]

Where do you get this information? I've not read or seen any mention of episodes being delayed.

"The Making of ST", I'm sure, mentions how some episodes were taking so long to get back from the SPFX team, that Roddenberry ended up getting other companies on board, to work on episodes simultaneously.they were trying to do stuff - weekly - to a standard usually only used by motion pictures, which have months to prepare SPFX.

Many early "Starlog" interviews, too, mentioned the SPFX problems. Probably the memos in the Justman/Solow "Inside Star Trek", too. IIRC. David Gerrold's "World of ST" and "The Making of the Trouble With Tribbles"?

They were often scrambling to have a full episode ready for broadcast quite a few times. There was no luxury of time to "decide" an order of what to broadcast next. Making use of "The Cage" across two new episodes also gave the SPFX people some catch-up time.

Writing problems also caused delays, of course. "City of the Edge..." was delayed many, many times before it even got to a soundstage. They originally assumed the script would be ready to film much earlier. I don't think they give a production number to a script till it's in the queue for filming.