(Warning upfront: long post ahead, so feel free to TLDR it. 
)
I have no facts. As far as I know, nobody behind the scenes has ever confirmed this.
What we do know as a fact is that Maurice Hurley especially was a lot more keen on continuity between episodes, while the likes of Roddenberry, Justman and Berman were less for it.
Roddenberry in particular always said he prefered things to be mostly continuity free so as to allow the episodes to air in any order. So if the affiliate in Boomerville Boomerton decided they needed to shuffle things around then it wouldn't affect the flow too much.
Pragmatic. He had his TV producer hat on, there.
But Maurice Hurley came for the more serialized dramas of the early to mid 1980s, particularly the way police procedurals increasingly didn't just have a case of the week, one and done with everything solved and all the characters moving on with no character growth or repurcussions.
Hurley became basically the show runner from about halfway through season 1 until the very end of season 2. He often speaks when asked about it that he had this grand plan for a season long story arc, featuring the Federation's and the Romulan's investigation of mysterious attacks along the neutral zone ultimately leading to discovering the Borg, but that the writer's guild strike put paid to any attempt to create that narrative. It would mostly be left to inference and retroactive continuity (in season 3's finale) to fully join the dots.
Another complication was Denise Crosby, Lt Tasha Yar, leaving and needing to be killed off/written out.
Ok, so, my theory.
I believe that several episodes in season 1 were intended to air later than they did, but by necessity of Tasha's death had to be pushed back, causing some minor continuity nitpicks.
Famously, in "Angel One" a minor subplot featuring a deadly virus aboard the Enterprise is underpinned by impending warship activity along the Romulan side of the neutral zone. The episode ends with the Enterprise speeding off to engage the Romulans. But later, in "Heart of Glory", the crew briefly entertain the idea of Romulan activity by observing they have heard nothing from them in a long long time, and of course by "The Neutral Zone" this is pretty much ratified as fact.
So, "Angel One" is just wrong. Right?
Well here's where it gets interesting.
Four episodes in Season 1 feature stardates after Tasha's departure in "Skin of Evil", but of course aired before it due to them still featuring Tasha as a living character.
These episodes are: "The Big Goodbye", "The Battle", "The Arsenal of Freedom"... and "Angel One".
So what? Stardates never really mattered that much... right?
Well, yes and no. Yes because The Next Generation always prided itself on roughly more or less maintaining a credible progression each year, and became a lot better at it as they went on. No because The Original Series hadn't previously cared too much about such things, and at this point TOS was still very much seen as the, as it were, primary source of what Star Trek 'is'. TNG didn't come into it's own until at least the following year, probably even the year after that. Twice on TOS, background characters that appeared prominantly were killed off, but turned up in episodes with later stardates. One of these was in the series finale. It didn't seem to matter much.
But the combination of namedropping the Romulans as a present menace, and Tasha being alive, plus the stardate, leads me to wonder if "Angel One" was filmed earlier but intended for later... until Crosby pulling the pin on the grenade put paid to the idea.
Food for thought? I know that in several other ways, Hurley did manage to create a tighter knit continuity in that season, particularly in "Coming of Age" (which references backwards to several earlier episodes), and "Conspiracy" (which was a sequel to "Coming of Age", and foreshadowed the Borg, who were originally intended to be an insectoid race related to the conspiracy aliens.)
)I have no facts. As far as I know, nobody behind the scenes has ever confirmed this.
What we do know as a fact is that Maurice Hurley especially was a lot more keen on continuity between episodes, while the likes of Roddenberry, Justman and Berman were less for it.
Roddenberry in particular always said he prefered things to be mostly continuity free so as to allow the episodes to air in any order. So if the affiliate in Boomerville Boomerton decided they needed to shuffle things around then it wouldn't affect the flow too much.
Pragmatic. He had his TV producer hat on, there.
But Maurice Hurley came for the more serialized dramas of the early to mid 1980s, particularly the way police procedurals increasingly didn't just have a case of the week, one and done with everything solved and all the characters moving on with no character growth or repurcussions.
Hurley became basically the show runner from about halfway through season 1 until the very end of season 2. He often speaks when asked about it that he had this grand plan for a season long story arc, featuring the Federation's and the Romulan's investigation of mysterious attacks along the neutral zone ultimately leading to discovering the Borg, but that the writer's guild strike put paid to any attempt to create that narrative. It would mostly be left to inference and retroactive continuity (in season 3's finale) to fully join the dots.
Another complication was Denise Crosby, Lt Tasha Yar, leaving and needing to be killed off/written out.
Ok, so, my theory.
I believe that several episodes in season 1 were intended to air later than they did, but by necessity of Tasha's death had to be pushed back, causing some minor continuity nitpicks.
Famously, in "Angel One" a minor subplot featuring a deadly virus aboard the Enterprise is underpinned by impending warship activity along the Romulan side of the neutral zone. The episode ends with the Enterprise speeding off to engage the Romulans. But later, in "Heart of Glory", the crew briefly entertain the idea of Romulan activity by observing they have heard nothing from them in a long long time, and of course by "The Neutral Zone" this is pretty much ratified as fact.
So, "Angel One" is just wrong. Right?
Well here's where it gets interesting.
Four episodes in Season 1 feature stardates after Tasha's departure in "Skin of Evil", but of course aired before it due to them still featuring Tasha as a living character.
These episodes are: "The Big Goodbye", "The Battle", "The Arsenal of Freedom"... and "Angel One".
So what? Stardates never really mattered that much... right?
Well, yes and no. Yes because The Next Generation always prided itself on roughly more or less maintaining a credible progression each year, and became a lot better at it as they went on. No because The Original Series hadn't previously cared too much about such things, and at this point TOS was still very much seen as the, as it were, primary source of what Star Trek 'is'. TNG didn't come into it's own until at least the following year, probably even the year after that. Twice on TOS, background characters that appeared prominantly were killed off, but turned up in episodes with later stardates. One of these was in the series finale. It didn't seem to matter much.
But the combination of namedropping the Romulans as a present menace, and Tasha being alive, plus the stardate, leads me to wonder if "Angel One" was filmed earlier but intended for later... until Crosby pulling the pin on the grenade put paid to the idea.
Food for thought? I know that in several other ways, Hurley did manage to create a tighter knit continuity in that season, particularly in "Coming of Age" (which references backwards to several earlier episodes), and "Conspiracy" (which was a sequel to "Coming of Age", and foreshadowed the Borg, who were originally intended to be an insectoid race related to the conspiracy aliens.)
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