TNG stardates viewing order!

[johnnybear]

There has been a lot of talk recently on the TOS page about watching the show in stardate order! But how would you watch TNG in that way? I mean the Tasha Yar death theme affects the stardates as well as Remick mentioning events in Coming of Age like The Ferengi and The Stargazer which all come after COA in stardate order! Any ideas?
JB

 

[Timo]

Weirdly enough, the ill-fitting stardates were added to the episodes in the final rewrite. TrekCore has a selection of penultimate scripts for the episodes, including an <insert nifty plot resolution here> version of "Angel One", and those lack the contradictory bits, either omitting stardates or having more suitable ones.

Apart from that, Yar largely plays bit parts in her "posthumous" episodes, and could easily have been left out of those stories - ¨save for "The Arsenal of Freedom", where not having her front and center when key officers were trapped or incapacitated would have been odd.

It's also odd that the stardates of "Lonely Among Us" follow so soon after "Datalore", which supposedly is a fairly long adventure where Lore first is assembled, then mingles with the crew for some time. But by no means impossible. I just feel the heroes should be more wary of the possibility that somebody who looks like a known entity actually has Evil Inside in the immediate aftermath of the Lore adventure!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[JesterFace]

Funny how in the beginning of third season 'The Ensigns Of Command' was filmed before 'Evolution' but Evolution was aired first, still the stardates are in a correct order.

Evolution 43125.8
The Ensigns Of Command 43133.3

 

[johnnybear]

SKY tv always showed Ensigns of command before Evolution every single time!
JB

 

[T'Girl]

It's also odd that the stardates of "Lonely Among Us" follow so soon after "Datalore", which supposedly is a fairly long adventure where Lore first is assembled, then mingles with the crew for some time.

I wonder if it would be possible that other episodes took place during the course of Datalore? Lore was aboard during those episodes, but not seen.

 

[Lance]

Interesting what Timo said above about some of the scripts being without their stardates until the last rewrite. I think the producers wanted the freedom to experiment with the broadcast order, and it's worth noting that "Angel One" ends with the Enterprise warping off to investigate an increase in activity along the Romulan Neutral Zone -- I've long pondered on the possibility that maybe it was originally circled in to be broadcast as a lead-in to "The Neutral Zone", but that they had to change their plans at short notice after Denise Crosby decided to leave the series. So the nebulous reference to the Romulans remains in the episode even though it was not followed up.....

 

[The Old Mixer]

After Season 1, didn't the stardates largely coincide with airing order?

 

[Timo]

I'm not aware of any exceptions, actually. There's of course "Unification", where parts I and II were technically shot in reverse order to accommodate Nimoy's schedule, but that was never reflected in the airdates. And no doubt many episodes involved parallel processing or postprocessing to some degree.

I think the producers wanted the freedom to experiment with the broadcast order, and it's worth noting that "Angel One" ends with the Enterprise warping off to investigate an increase in activity along the Romulan Neutral Zone -- I've long pondered on the possibility that maybe it was originally circled in to be broadcast as a lead-in to "The Neutral Zone", but that they had to change their plans at short notice after Denise Crosby decided to leave the series.

The other possibility is that the writers had nothing major planned for the Romulans until the very last minute, so they were name-dropped every now and then as irrelevant background villains - until the finale where the concept of a long isolation was invented and introduced.

There's the story about "Conspiracy" being part of an arc set up by "Coming of Age", with a threat against Starfleet from within. When that collapsed, I doubt another arc was waiting in the wings ready for use: "The Neutral Zone" was just a patch-up job that accidentally and retroactively ended up being part of one of the biggest story arcs of TNG, even if this contradicted the spirit of "Angel One".

Timo Saloniemi