I just watched Trouble With Time and see Lion-O talk about getting driving lessons and not know how to drive the ThunderTank, when he had driven it fine an episode or two earlier. So after seeing this inconsistancy, I decided to look at the episode guide(s), to see what the proper viewing order would be.
Supposedly the “production order” list is supposed to make more sense with continuity, but it still has Lion-O’s Anointment Trials split up, and the two parts of the Feliner are also split up. How can this list be better for continuity with these multipart episodes split up this way? :?
The DVD’s, which went in the air date sequence, basically, has Trouble With Time as episode 7…and I don’t recall Lion-O driving the tank in the eps before that. My memory could be fuzzy, I admit. Been a while since I watched the early eps.
At any rate, all the episode orders have issues imho, of some sort. We really can’t win. And besides, Thundercats canon contradicts itself all over the place, so no matter what order you shuffle things, some stuff will never ever make any sense whatsoever.
The episode your referring to Snarf, is Pumm-Ra. When Panthro and the Thunderkittens leave the lair to do some work, Panthro says they won’t be using the Thundertank as he promised Lion-o, he could have it for the afternoon. (I believe it’s Tygra who then asks if Lion-o can actually drive it) and Panthro says he took to it like a duck to water.
Unfortunately this is a continuity problem where the production order would have worked best. But like Purrsia says, even the production order can pose some problems. The best thing would have been if WB had asked us fans to look at the episode order and re-arrange it for better continuity.
But then this is only a problem with the first season. Season 2 is fine with it’s ordering.
In Trouble With Time, Lion-O decides to take the ThunderTank for a joyride and loses control of it. He says Panthro hasn’t given him his driving lessons yet.
Basically, the “Production Order” is dictated primarily by the order that the scripts were numbered, as opposed to “Airdate Order”, which is the order the episodes were broadcast. I definitely agree with the point you make about the two “Feliner” parts and the Anointment Trials being split up, but, that would appear to be the order in which the scripts were approved and assigned episode numbers, and so that’s why that listing is the way it is!
I would also add that, in the introductory text to the Episode Guide, it states “many fans prefer to use the Production Order, which contains fewer continuity errors” - it doesn’t say that it eradicates them completely!
When I first starting browsing the Internet for ThunderCats websites waaaay back in 1998, I found at least one website using a “story order”-type guide for their episode guides, which tried to position the episodes from season 1 in some kind of chronological story order - in that guide, the episodes comprising Lion-O’s Anointment Trials were all listed together - I’m embarrassed to say I can’t remember the episode that preceded them off the top of my head, but I remember the next one was “Mongor”!
