GILLIGAN'S ISLAND - DVD SEASON & SERIES SETS (2004-2012) - Pros, Cons, Incongruities & Imponderables (1 Viewer)

[MartinP.]

I just read an article which says:

The person in charge of putting together a TV network's schedule is the director of network programming. The job goes by many names, including president of TV entertainment, senior vice president for TV programming or vice president of program scheduling.

Nowhere in the entire long article does it say that this person actually has any say in the broadcast order of individual series. They have a say in where and when it's placed in the schedule and also what shows are developed for the schedule, but nowhere does it say anything about input into what episodes are scheduled and when.

ALSO: I've found there is a whole thread on HTF about this subject: Production Order vs. Broadcast Order.

In perusing several posts, there seems to be any number of reasons why series episodes are or have been broadcast in the order they were; a lot of variables can determine the answer, but there is no one answer.

 

[Robbie^Blackmon]

There's local opt-out programming that can take precedence, as well. I recall an incident around 1998 where an East Coast CBS exec was refused VIP tickets for The Letterman Show. As a result, we got treated to Howie Mandel instead of Letterman for a full week as retaliation.

Though I made my own 25 disc bluray set of Gilligan, including movies, reunion specials, the cartoons, personal appearances and whatnot using the hi-def episodes, I'd still love it if Warner or whoever would make a proper set with all three proper intro themes, black-and-white where appropriate, tweak some mastering errors made on a few episodes, include all the variances in the color opening theme visuals (zoom-in on Minnow, cropped shot of Minnow, still water/moving water, Mary Ann/Professor portraits flipped), wiiiiith a bonus audio track of isolated musical score bits and bobs (it CAN be DONE!).

AND.. If someone, sometime, during the short bit of life I got left, would license and "restore" the reunion movies to their original broadcast state (tough with one being in WB/public domain limbo and the other two with NBC/Universal and filmed at Paramount-- the last 2 used the Mchale's Navy lagoon), I'd be quite happy.

Just make the impossible possible, right? The reunion movies would move at least 2 copies-- I'd get one as a backup!

 

[jayembee]

I don't think the way TV series episodes aired was ever arbitrary, nor do I believe they were always intended to air in production order. Episodic series without continuing storylines could air episodes the way they wanted to. I always assumed that the creators/producers of a series chose what episodes aired when, not the network they were broadcast on.

No, generally, it was the network that decided such things. It wasn't exactly arbitrary...at least in the sense that they didn't pick episode titles from a bowl to decided which order to air them in. At least for the first few weeks, they'd pick episodes they thought would grab audiences the most.

There are certainly some instances in which a series' pilot ended up being the last one broadcast. Two that come immediately to mind are Space Rangers and Firefly. In another, older case, A Man Called Sloane, the pilot was aired as TV movie a year or two after the series was cancelled!

As for production order, you're right in that episodic series could be seen in pretty much any order. But it's also the case, that production order can also be dependent on guest-star availability.

 

[ScottRE]

No, generally, it was the network that decided such things. It wasn't exactly arbitrary...at least in the sense that they didn't pick episode titles from a bowl to decided which order to air them in. At least for the first few weeks, they'd pick episodes they thought would grab audiences the most.

The original Star Trek, at its start, aired them in order of completeness. Some episodes intended to air up front were delayed for months due to effects not being finished. All NBC seemed to want was a "planet" show with an alien to lead the series and to not have an episode where evil Captain Kirk's rape fantasies were on display too early in the run. But even the second season, the production intended to kick off the year with Amok Time while Catspaw (filmed first) was intended as the Halloween show. Having said that, NBC held back episodes it didn't appreciate, such as Bread and Circuses.

Unlike today when season finales can be big ratings grabbers, back then, that was the graveyard for lousy episodes. Christmas was the same way. The Fugitive "buried" Coralee at the end of the season and The Girl From Little Egypt, an episode the production wasn't find of even though fans retroactively like it for the flashbacks to the Kimble murder and trial, was sacrificed at Christmastime so a "bad" episode wouldn't do as much harm.

Ratings "sweeps weeks" were a thing then also, so better episodes were saved for those times. Now while episodic shows were meant to air in almost any order, a lot of shows still had a sort of continuity which got confusing with the jumble. Honestly, Gilligan's Island was pretty easy to toss around, but Land of the Giants initial episodes were very much a period of growth for the situation and characters. This is lost in the random order ABC ran the series in.

I Spy is a good example of burying the pilot and premiering with a home run episode. So Long Patrick Henry (written by Robert Culp) was an exceptional hour of television and was picked to kick off the show. Affair in T'Sien Cha, the actual series pilot, was held back for more than 3 months because it kinda sucked.

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea was a show that the network led off with very strong episodes. The first two seasons were strategically planned to capture the audience. Season three, by contrast, ran the majority of it in production order. By late midseason, they didn't bother picking and choosing at all. It was strict production order. Probably because each episode was pretty much the same by that time. Season 4, though, was heavily jumbled.

There are certainly some instances in which a series' pilot ended up being the last one broadcast. Two that come immediately to mind are Space Rangers and Firefly. In another, older case, A Man Called Sloane, the pilot was aired as TV movie a year or two after the series was cancelled!

The Powers of Matthew Starr aired its pilot as the final episode. It had a different cast other than the main lead and other than an on air narration just before the main credits explaining it, there was no attempt to work it into the series continuity. That narration, by the way, is not on the DVD set.

As for production order, you're right in that episodic series could be seen in pretty much any order. But it's also the case, that production order can also be dependent on guest-star availability.

One more thing to keep in mind is that most of what we think of as production order is actually production number order. Scripts are commissioned and given a production number before filming. By anything can happen after that and an episode can be delayed without the number being changed. So production number order isn't necessarily filming order.

Example:

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea
"The Death Clock" Production #1311 was aired as the 25th episode of the season. For years, I thought that meant it was filmed 11th and held back. But it wasn't. Production was delayed so long it wasn't filmed until the very end of the season after #1326 "No Way Back."

So unless we have info on when each episode was actually put into production, we don't know for certain the accurate production order. All the numbers represent are the order in which they intended to film them, the order they were designated to be in production. Whether they actually stuck to that schedule is another thing.

 

[ScottRE]

And since it's Alan Hale's birthday, I posted a tribute on our ongoing thread. Go take a look.

Tributes To Your Favorite Classic TV Stars

Ron Howard (March 1, 1954 -) 70th Birthday Tribute Ronald William Howard (born March 1, 1954) is an American director, producer, screenwriter, and actor. Howard first came to prominence as a child actor, guest-starring in several television series, including an episode of The Twilight Zone. He...

www.hometheaterforum.com

 

[Wiseguy]

I don't think the way TV series episodes aired was ever arbitrary, nor do I believe they were always intended to air in production order. Episodic series without continuing storylines could air episodes the way they wanted to. I always assumed that the creators/producers of a series chose what episodes aired when, not the network they were broadcast on.

I remembering hearing Don Adams say they chose to air an episode they thought wasn't particularly good on New Year's Eve because viewership would be down as people were getting ready to go out or something, and then he went to a party where many of the guests told him they'd watched that episode while they were getting ready to go out and he was embarrassed! Ha!

When I read a book about All in the Family, it had a section of all the episodes with various info including the airdates and production order and I was surprised to find out that they had a two-part episode where they taped the first part, then they did a completely different episode followed by doing the second part of the two-parter. Curious.

There's also the curious case of a three episode story arc of 12 O'Clock High where the third episode was aired weeks later. Experts on this series haven't ever come up with a reason for this.

I wasn't referring to two-parters produced out of sequence or episodes not shown in production order due to plot points. I was (obviously) talking about holding an early episode to the end of the season or even the following season. Regardless of your explanations, it's still, by definition, arbitrary.

 

[ScottRE]

I wasn't referring to two-parters produced out of sequence or episodes not shown in production order due to plot points. I was (obviously) talking about holding an early episode to the end of the season or even the following season. Regardless of your explanations, it's still, by definition, arbitrary.

Well, if going by definition, "arbitrary" is "based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system." There was generally a reason: to showcase stronger episodes at peak times and save weaker installments for lower ratings weeks. If a pilot episode was not considered good or a strong enough opener for the series compared to other episodes, it would be held back. That's a logical reason, not a whim.

 

[rjd0309]

My main reason for preferring production order is to avoid confusion with ongoing characters.

"Hey, didn't that guy get killed in a previous episode? Why is he suddenly alive again?"

"Didn't Lori already leave the Five-O team? Then why is she back all of a sudden?"

 

[ScottRE]

My main reason for preferring production order is to avoid confusion with ongoing characters.

"Hey, didn't that guy get killed in a previous episode? Why is he suddenly alive again?"

"Didn't Lori already leave the Five-O team? Then why is she back all of a sudden?"

Yep that certainly happens in some shows (V: The Series had a couple like that). Gilligan's Island didn't have that problem and only one or two guest stars returned. As long as references to Wrongway Feldman didn't come before his introduction, it didn't matter what order the show ran in within seasons. In fact, I never noticed the episodes discussed above were wildly out of order.

 

[Robbie^Blackmon]

Except that in the early episodes, everyone stayed in one big hut, until they had squabbles that led to separate living quarters. Only the first few episodes had any semblance of continuity.

Oh, and the Japanese soldier episodes needed to be seen in order for reasonable context-- when The Castaways start "remembering" how things happened in their favor, we already know Gilligan saved the day.

 

[Ron Lee Green]

I just remembered another example of the benefit of broadcast order versus production order: During mid-production of the fifth season of Bewitched, actor Dick York who played Darrin on Bewitched suffered a seizure on the set, and had to quit the show mid-season because of health reasons, so he was absent for about ten episodes that season. They explained it in the story as having Darrin "out of town on business." I don't know who's decision it was (the network or the producers), but they decided to rearrange the broadcast schedule and hold back some of the Darrin episodes and air them later in the season so that there wouldn't be this big gap of non-Darrin episodes.

 

[jayembee]

Another odd example...a mid-90s Mark Harmon show, Charlie Grace. Apparently, it was thought that the pilot didn't quite have the right stuff to introduce the show, so they filmed another episode to lead off the series, with the pilot airing second. The title of the new first episode was "Take Me to the Pilot".

 

[ScottRE]

Except that in the early episodes, everyone stayed in one big hut, until they had squabbles that led to separate living quarters. Only the first few episodes had any semblance of continuity.

Oh, and the Japanese soldier episodes needed to be seen in order for reasonable context-- when The Castaways start "remembering" how things happened in their favor, we already know Gilligan saved the day.

Yeah those early episodes did have something of an evolution. After the Minnow fell apart, though, it didn't matter all that much. And, TBH, CBS did run those in a good sequence. So the airdate order worked for Gilligan's Island. Keep in mind, I'm saying this based on old memories and I am only just now going through something of a revisit.

The apex of "it doesn't matter" are those ITC shows. Toss The Saint or Danger Man in any order and you won't be able to tell the difference unless they jumble color and black and whites.

 

[MartinP.]

I was wondering if any of you have seen Gilligan's Island: The Musical.

I saw it in the early 1990s in San Diego. If you sat in the first couple rows of the theatre, which we did, your feet were in sand!

I thought it was immensely entertaining. I thought the songs were quite good. (By ex-Wings lead guitarist Laurence Juber--music and lyrics.)

One of the conceits of the production was that any time the Howells exited a scene, when they returned they were wearing different costumes. One time it was really quick, like a minute or so.

Some years later I know there was a production of it in Thousand Oaks (Los Angeles) with Lee Meriwether playing Mrs. Howell. I wanted to go see that, too, but there was a transportation strike at the time and I didn't have any other way to get to it!

 

[Wiseguy]

My main reason for preferring production order is to avoid confusion with ongoing characters.

"Hey, didn't that guy get killed in a previous episode? Why is he suddenly alive again?"

"Didn't Lori already leave the Five-O team? Then why is she back all of a sudden?"

That applies to Ben in the seventh season as well along with the continued appearances and disappearences of Ross Martin in Wild Wild West and Lynda Day George in Mission: Impossible when their characters were supposed to be away on missions. Martin's character even got a welcome-back episode broadcast immediately after a new episode he was in.