kd5

Star Trek: The Original Series: 50th Anniversary Editions (S1, 2, & 3, individual seasons), purchased from Walmart for $14.96 ea.

Started watching this a few days ago, something I noticed and wanted to ask about...

These episodes are definitely out of order, are they arranged by air dates? They are defintely not in order of how they should appear (star dates). Each episode has a number attached to it, I'm guessing that's the order of their respective appearance as far as star dates are concerned. The first 2 episodes show the crew in their updated uniforms while the 3rd episode shows them in their older uniforms...

If this is the way they were first aired, I could see why they created this episode listing like they did. I would hate to try watching these by star date, I'd be jumping all over the place on these discs...

Cartload

The episodes in the season sets are arranged by their original air date, not production order. Don't pay too much attention to star dates. I think they end up being pretty random.

Josh-da-man

Yeah, star dates are pretty meaningless. Just some futuristic technobabble they came up with so they didn't have to mess with dating the series.

I'm not really a fan of the way the episodes were arranged on the season sets.

They're presented by when they aired, and not production order, which presents some continuity gaffes.

I much prefer the production order for the first season. Otherwise, you end up with "Where No Man Has Gone Before" as the third episode, where the uniforms don't match and there are a handful of different crew members.

The second and third season don't really matter much since there was little in the way of story arcs or continuity between episodes.

Josh-da-man

^Actually, there are a couple of problematic episodes in both production order and broadcast order.

In production order, "Court Martial" is kind of an unusual lead-in to "The Menagerie." Both take place on the same Starbase and feature similar plot devices, so it seems kind of awkward for both of these events to take place back-to-back.

Also, with broadcast order, "Shore Leave" presents a sort of strange follow-up to "Balance of Terror" with regard to a recurring actor/character.

kd5

Based on what you've said, I guess it really doesn't matter in what order we watch these. As I remember it, each episode was pretty much a story unto itself, no long story arcs to worry about. If the star dates are meaningless, then we'll just watch and enjoy. Thanks for your help!