Journey to Babel happening after Amok time is so incredibly funny because in that episode Jim learned that Vulcans have a heat cycle and his first officer has to fuck right now or he'll die. Met Spocks WIFE and also learned that T'Pau the most influential person on Vulcan is related to Spock, got into a messy three way divorce arc between T'Pring, Stonn and Spock, then having to literally fight Spock to the death and DIED. And yet after all of that extremly personal drama Jim witnessed Spock still didn't tell Jim who the fuck his parents are. Like the man is insane, your best friend and captain saved you from a fuck or die situation, got you out of a loveless marriage, literally died for you and you still won't introduce him to your mom and dad.
Welcome to the time when there was no guarantee that episodes would air in any kind of specific order—and the affiliate stations showing them straightforwardly refused to give any kind of commitment to showing episodes in any order that the studio desired.
Therefore TV Then was nothing, nothing like TV Now.
Episodes had to be able to stand alone when shown in any order. None of them could refer specifically to any other, because there was no way to tell which eps an affiliate had already shown. (Or not shown.)
People do know that order-of-showing of any kind in syndication didn't even start until Hill Street Blues, yeah? That the concept of the "episode arc" was first implemented then, in the early 1980s?
If you didn't know that, please know it now.
Therefore: if you were only young in the 1960s, or not born yet—as regards episode arcs and the logical results of anything you saw in any one given episode—please let ST:TOS off the hook.
Thank you. :)
Wait, so how did the Menegerie part 1 and 2 work? I’m watching my Star Trek on Netflix where they are two separate episodes. Were they originally not two episodes? The end of part 1 does have a continues next week text at the end.
Those are, AFAIK, the only eps made where a showing order is implied (as by the TBC card). And in the Syndication Times, they would still sometimes be shown separately/out of order if the local affiliate felt like it.
The only time the "Continued next week" card was guaranteed to be valid was on the initial live showing, fed by the network (NBC, it was then) to a given affiliate. In reruns, depending on the affiliate, the implication of showing order might or might not be honored. No way to tell.