When I was at the local DVD store today, I noticed they were selling the original series. Oddly enough, they claim that there were 79 episodes, but upon closer inspection they were including the pilot episode as number one, while the two-part adventure “The Menagerie” was only counted as one episode. Incidentally, they were also offering episode 99, though upon closer inspection that was just another version of the pilot episode.
So, am I right in thinking this is a massive mistake on Paramount’s part? Surely there were 79 episodes of the series, counting “Where No Man Has Gone Before” as the first episode, and “The Menagerie” as episodes 15 & 16. If fans feel that “The Cage” is the first episode, even though it was an unaired pilot, then surely there would then be a total of 80 episodes.
I just don’t understand how anyone could count The Menagerie as one episode, unless it was perhaps originally shown as a two-hour movie length episode.
And just for the record, how many episodes were there of “The Next Generation”, DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise?
Thanks for the link to the site, but it only seems to confuse me more.
The Menagerie Part I is considered episode 16,
The Menagerie Part II is also considered episode 16.
So the fact that it is counted as two episodes would seem to indicate that it should be, well, counted as two different episodes!
Oddly enough, the final two-hour episode of Voyager, which aired on the same night, with just one opening and closing credit sequence is counted as two episodes…
Should we notify Paramount about the counting error of the original Star Trek? Surely there were 79 original episodes, or 80 if including the pilot episode.
I just followed viva’s link and it has The Menagerie Parts I and II as being the sixteenth production of TOS… not as the sixteenth episode.
To avoid confusion, I guess you could say that TOS has seventy-nine episodes but eighty hours of programming.
…and since I was bored, I counted the episodes of Enterprise (51 hrs. : 07%), Star Trek (80 hrs. : 11%), Star Trek: The Animated Series (22 hrs. : 03%), The Next Generation (178 hrs. : 26%), Deep Space Nine (176 hrs. : 25%), Voyager (172 hrs. : 25%), and searched IMDB.com for the runtime of the ten movies (18 hrs. : 03%) and discovered that Trek as a franchise has a total of 697 hours to date.
Yes, Alzarian, Paramount changed its episode-numbering conventions in the nearly 20 years between the end of TOS and the beginning of TNG. The unaired pilot of TOS was considered episode 1 and the two-part Menagerie was considered a single episode – #16 – even though it was originally broadcast in two sections. In later incarnations of the show, two-parters are considered two episodes, even when originally broadcast in a single two-hour bloc. It’s not really a big deal.
(Now, try to tell me where that 22’d episode of the Animated Series went!)
–Cliffy