TV Series: Star Trek

I just want to make a few remarks about the order in which the episodes in the original series are presented in the currently available DVD box sets, which isn't optimal. There are several ways to order the episodes:

1. The broadcast order (the order in which they were originally shown on American television, and is also used for the DVD box set releases).
2. The production order (the order in which they were made, which is also the order in which they were first shown on British television).
3. The stardate order (the order in which the episodes "really happened", which is based on the captain's log entries in the episodes).

The most useful order to watch the series in is the production order, because this best shows the development of the characters. This is most obvious in the case of Spock, who often raised his voice in the first few episodes filmed, but spoke more calmly as Leonard Nimoy developed a style for his character. The costumes were inconsistent in the first episodes until the producers decided what ranks should wear what colour.

Stardates are useful to know the order in which things happened, but it's impossible to correlate stardates and real dates as we know them. The series creator Gene Roddenberry used "stardates" because he didn't want people to fix dates. All he wanted the viewer to know was that the adventures happened in the future. It's been suggested that 1000 stardate units express one year in the original series. In "Star Trek: TNG" one stardate unit is one day. In the films there are further inconsistencies that make an exact correlation impossible.

The following table (which can be copied and pasted into a spreadsheet) lists the name, production number and stardate of each episode. Five episodes have no stardate, so a sensible guess has been made where they fit in. The pilot episode, "The Cage", is said to have taken place 11 years before stardate 3012, which would put it in a pre-stardate era.

Episode	Name	Prod-Nr	Star-Nr	Stardate
1.01	The Man Trap	6	5	1513.1
1.02	Charlie X	8	6	1533.6
1.03	Where No Man Has Gone Before	2	2	1312.4
1.04	The Naked Time	7	8	1704.2
1.05	The Enemy Within	5	7	1672.1
1.06	Mudd's Women	4	3	1329.8
1.07	What Are Little Girls Made Of?	10	12	2712.4
1.08	Miri	12	13	2713.5
1.09	Dagger of the Mind	11	14	2715.1
1.10	The Corbomite Maneuver	3	4	1512.2
1.11	The Menagerie Part I	16	18	3012.4
1.12	The Menagerie Part II	16	19	3013.1
1.13	The Conscience of the King	13	15	2817.6
1.14	Balance of Terror	9	9	1709.2
1.15	Shore Leave	17	21	3025.3
1.16	The Galileo Seven	14	16	2821.5
1.17	The Squire of Gothos	18	10	2124.5
1.18	Arena	19	22	3045.6
1.19	Tomorrow Is Yesterday	21	24	3113.2
1.20	Court Martial	15	17	2947.3
1.21	The Return of the Archons	22	27	3156.2
1.22	Space Seed	24	26	3141.9
1.23	A Taste of Armageddon	23	28	3192.1
1.24	This Side of Paradise	25	35	3417.3
1.25	The Devil in the Dark	26	29	3196.1
1.26	Errand of Mercy	27	30	3198.4
1.27	The Alternative Factor	20	23	3087.6
1.28	The City on the Edge of Forever	28	25	3134.0
1.29	Operation: Annihilate!	29	33	3287.2
2.01	Amok Time	34	34	3372.7
2.02	Who Mourns for Adonais?	33	36	3468.1
2.03	The Changeling	37	39	3541.9
2.04	Mirror Mirror	39	40	3580.0	(approx)
2.05	The Apple	38	43	3715.3
2.06	The Doomsday Machine	35	46	4202.9
2.07	Catspaw	30	20	3018.2
2.08	I Mudd	41	51	4513.3
2.09	Metamorphosis	31	32	3219.4
2.10	Journey to Babel	44	44	3842.3
2.11	Friday's Child	32	38	3497.2
2.12	The Deadly Years	40	37	3478.2
2.13	Obsession	47	42	3619.2
2.14	Wolf in the Fold	36	41	3614.9
2.15	The Trouble With Tribbles	42	52	4523.3
2.16	The Gamesters of Triskelion	46	31	3211.8
2.17	A Piece of the Action	49	53	4598.0
2.18	The Immunity Syndrome	48	48	4307.1
2.19	A Private Little War	45	47	4211.4
2.20	Return to Tomorrow	51	57	4768.3
2.21	Patterns of Force	52	11	2534.0
2.22	By Any Other Name	50	54	4657.5
2.23	The Omega Glory	54	55	4690.0	(approx)
2.24	The Ultimate Computer	53	56	4729.4
2.25	Bread and Circuses	43	45	4040.7
2.26	Assignment: Earth	55	59	4990.0	(approx)
3.01	Spock's Brain	61	64	5431.4
3.02	The Enterprise Incident	59	60	5027.3
3.03	The Paradise Syndrome	58	58	4842.6
3.04	And the Children Shall Lead	60	61	5029.5
3.05	Is There in Truth No Beauty?	62	67	5630.7
3.06	Spectre of the Gun	56	50	4385.3
3.07	Day of the Dove	66	68	5660.0	(approx)
3.08	For the World Is Hollow	65	65	5476.3
3.09	The Tholian Web	64	69	5693.2
3.10	Plato's Stepchildren	67	74	5784.2
3.11	Wink of an Eye	68	70	5710.5
3.12	The Empath	63	62	5121.5
3.13	Elaan of Troyius	57	49	4372.5
3.14	Whom Gods Destroy	71	71	5718.3
3.15	Let That Be Your Last Battlefield	70	73	5730.2
3.16	The Mark of Gideon	72	63	5423.4
3.17	That Which Survives	69	66	5579.0	(approx)
3.18	The Lights of Zetar	73	72	5725.3
3.19	Requiem for Methuselah	76	77	5843.7
3.20	The Way to Eden	75	76	5832.3
3.21	The Cloud Minders	74	75	5818.4
3.22	The Savage Curtain	77	78	5906.4
3.23	All Our Yesterdays	78	80	5943.7
3.24	Turnabout Intruder	79	79	5928.5
0.01	The Cage	1	1	0.0