Neither broadcast order nor production order really makes sense of all that happens in the first season of the original Thundercats series. (You can find my series overview here.)
The likely explanation is that the episodes were written by multiple storytellers whose efforts were not fully coordinated, with oversight probably provided by people who felt the series was episodic children’s television and if one story conflicted a bit with another or failed to follow a cohesive timeline, that was acceptable.
This problem is most evident when you look at the five episodes of Lion-O’s Anointment Trials, which not only first aired on different weeks (one every Friday) but were actually made at separate times, with other episodes produced in between, even though it is quite plain that the trials all take place on consecutive days, with no other stories intervening. This resulted in continuity headaches. For instance, a place/entity called the Vortex is introduced in the first Anointment Trial episode, clearly the first time the Thundercats have encountered it; the Vortex is seen again in “Divide and Conquer,” which was both produced and aired after Day 1 but before Day 5 of the Anointment Trials. The final Anointment Trial day also included a wide shot of a vast number of characters encountered by the Thundercats, which indicates that the Trials take place after those characters have been introduced, even though some of their episodes were made and aired after the first Anointment episode. So you can’t move all the Trials to where the first day stands or to where the last day stands. Some of the episodes in between need to come before the Trials and some of them need to come after the Trials.
Watching the episodes through this last time, I crafted my own chronology, repositioning a great many first-season episodes for one reason or another. I started with the broadcast order and consulted, sometimes, the production order, but I relied most of all on the content of the stories themselves, assuming that broadcast and production orders were unreliable.
Not all of these changes are strictly necessary, and I probably went overboard trying to prolong Vultureman’s petulant rejection of the other Mutants. But some of the repositioning can help untangle confused continuity and make better sense of characters’ behavior. If I ever add more episode commentaries I’ll explain my reasoning for the individual shifts.
A proviso: I have not gone back and rewatched everything using this updated sequence. There might be places where the new arrangement creates issues of continuity I didn’t think about.
Season 1
Exodus Unholy Alliance Berbils The Slaves of Castle Plun-Darr Trouble With Time Pumm-Ra The Terror of Hammerhand Tower of Traps Garden of Delights Mandora the Evil-Chaser The Ghost Warrior The Doom Gaze Lord of the Snows All That Glitters Spaceship Beneath the Sands The Time Capsule Fireballs of Plun-Darr Return to Thundera Spitting Image Safari Joe Mongor Dr. Dometone Astral Prison Crystal Queen Snarf Takes Up the Challenge Return of the Driller Turmagar the Tuska Sixth Sense Rock Giant Thundercutter Mechanical Plague Demolisher Wolfrat Mandora and the Pirates Feliner pts. 1-2 Dimension Doom Queen of Eight Legs Eye of the Beholder Excalibur Secret of the Ice King Sword in a Hole Good and Ugly Trapped Anointment Trials 1-5 Divide and Conquer Micrits Out of Sight Shifter Superpower Potion Transfer Jackalman’s Rebellion Tight Squeeze Monkian’s Bargain Evil Harp of Charr-Nin Mountain Mumm-Ra Berbil Trouble With Thunderkittens Mumm-Rana Dream Master Fond Memories
Later Episodes
In the later part of the series, broadcast and production order seem to align, and the episode writing was apparently more tightly controlled to keep writers on track. There were only three episodes I saw a need to rearrange:
- move “Ravage Island” back and place it between “Psyche Out” and “Mask of Gorgon”;
- reverse “Hachiman’s Honor” and “Runaways” so that “Runaways” comes first;
- reverse “Thunderscope” and “Jade Dragon” so that “Jade Dragon” comes first.