Why are episodes on DVD sometimes not in “numerical order” (and possibly also not in order of broadcast)? E.g., Star Trek Voyager.
TV episodes aren’t always broadcast in the order they’re produced. DVD collections are often put together in the order of production instead of by air date.
I seem to have heard that, Cochrane, but now I ask whether that is appropriate.
Production order is affected by economics: E.g., All outdoor shots using a snazzy car on location are shot together to save rental fees. E.g., the outsourced special effects took longer than expected, and the broadcast of an episode was delayed two weeks.
Broadcast order needs to follow any plot developments, but is affected by production order, and other factors.
What’s notable in the sequence of the 5th season of Star Trek Voyager episodes is that the level of intimacy between characters jumps forward and back. It’s subtle, as are other changes.
It seems that someone should make a determination of how the overall season flow works (the producers, presumably), and reorder the DVD episodes to match the format in which the episodes are now likely being watched, presumably back-to-back.
Well, I haven’t watched Voyager since it was originally broadcast, and I don’t have the DVDs, but it seems to me that usually is the purpose of ordering DVD collections by production order, so as to iron out any continuity discrepancies and so that the overall flow of character development and references to earlier events make better sense than they might have when broadcast.
Yeah, production order is usually the intended broadcast order, so usually any type of analysis is unnecessary.
In fact, if you are saying that some episodes made more sense in broadcast order, then I would guess it was an accident. I honestly cannot think of a show in which the production order was not the intended broadcast order, and the change did not only happen because of executive meddling.
Are you sure you’re not watching it on shuffle or anything? Because comparing the Amazon listing with List of Episodes of Voyager Season 5, the episodes should be in the same order.
Production order may sometimes follow the plot line of the show more logically, or the original intentions of the producers more faithfully, than the broadcast order. For instance, the producers of a show may have designed it in such a way as to broadcast episodes A, B, C, D in that sequence, and produce them accordingly. Later on, for whatever reason the TV network may decide to switch episodes around and broadcast them, e.g., A, C, D, B. Maybe there’s some public holiday with which the theme of an episode coincides, so they decide to broadcast that episode on that day. Or the TV network people consider a produced episode unsuitable for broadcasting, then change their mind and broadcast it later on. Or the network people take offence at a particular sequence in the episode, insist that it be cut, but that cut sequence has implications on the plot that make it preferable to place it after some other episode that has been produced after the cut one.
The producers of the DVD edition, however, are often not subject to such considerations and try to edit the show as it was originally intended by its makers, to give buyers a more accurate view of the development of the show and its characters.
No, your first statement is in agreement with what I meant. I’ve noticed a couple of series (Bleep My Dad Says, Venture Bros. Season 4, Drew Carey Season 9) have had episodes aired out of production order and so have confusing references to things in episodes that were produced earlier but not yet broadcast. Then the earlier produced episode will air after and the previously broadcast episode will make sense. Watching them in production order would have made the series less confusing.
Edit - Schnitte explained it a lot better.
One of the more notorious examples of this (notorious in certain circles, at least) was Firefly. Take a look at the broadcast order vs. production order in the table at the bottom of the linked section; it’s pretty ridiculous how dissimilar they are.