Episode Production Order

[Avenger90]

Hi All,

I'm currently having a whole series watch, and have decided to watch the episodes in production order this time.

Does anyone know why the production order of the episodes differs so much from the airdate order? Why show King Tut's Coup/Batman's Waterloo before the Black Widow episodes for example, when the Black Widow eps were filmed first. Or the Joker eps before Zelda, when Anne Baxter filmed her eps first? Catwoman/Sandman was filmed before 'The Cats Meow' eps, but the latter was shown first.

I'm going to watch season 3 in production order too just for something different, even though it's more difficult with the end of villain teasers. Does anyone know whether the next week villain teasers at the end of the episodes in season 3 were filmed at the time of filming the episode they were attached too, or were just edited on the end of particular episodes at a later date (for example, would Eartha Kitt have filmed the brief appearance from Catwoman at the end of the Londinium trilogy at the same time the filming for those episodes were going on? Or would she have done this when she was filming her Catwoman episodes, and this was just edited on later on)?

I'm very curious.

[Jim Akin]

Does anyone know whether the next week villain teasers at the end of the episodes in season 3 were filmed at the time of filming the episode they were attached too, or were just edited on the end of particular episodes at a later date (for example, would Eartha Kitt have filmed the brief appearance from Catwoman at the end of the Londinium trilogy at the same time the filming for those episodes were going on? Or would she have done this when she was filming her Catwoman episodes, and this was just edited on later on)?

I await confirmation from board members with intimate knowledge of call sheets, but I'd bet 500 pounds of caviar that Greenway wouldn't foot the bill for a future guest villain to show up on set just to shoot a teaser. Even if the actors were only paid scale for those bits, putting them in costumes, doing make-up, and staging even a bare-bones setup (like the one used for Riddler's phone call) would cost way more than Dozier was willing to spend, especially during Season 3. Those teasers must have been shot along with the respective villains' main episodes, then tacked on to the preceding shows.

[dell]

Part of the discrepancy can be explained by scheduling issues. I am sure some guest villains would be expected to have higher ratings than others. No sense airing Catwoman or Joker episodes on a week when the networks expect low viewership such as Christmas or Thanksgiving. Air the Puzzler episodes instead. Once the episodes were in the can you can air them in whatever order you want as Batman episodes don't have much continuity in them. Something in this week's episode does not rely on stuff from previous episodes.

Also, they sometimes shoot scenes for multiple episodes on the same day. We actually talked about this on our Video Bat Chat call yesterday. Ben had the call sheet for one day of the Puzzler episodes and it called for three window cameos to be shot on the same day; one at 5 and two at 5:30. They did all the lighting and blocking for the shoot at 5 and then could bang out 2 more at 5:30 with much less effort as everything was already set up from the 5 shoot.

[Avenger90]

Thanks dell i never thought of it like that. I assumed they shown the first Joker arc before Zelda as Joker was a more well known villain, especially as the show had just started. I know they filmed the Penguin's Nest episodes before any others of season 2, opting to air these episodes much further into season 2. No doubt not starting with Penguin as he was the last villain of Season 1, so trying to avoid a Penguin overload.

Some interesting stuff about the shooting for the bat climbs. So they could have a couple of guest villains in on the same day then, shooting scenes for different episode arcs? They could film a scene with Cesar in the morning for example, then that afternoon be filming a Riddler episode with Frank?

[Jimmy L. 66]

Just a guess, but they could film the window scenes anytime, and edited into almost any script. They are usually stand alone and do not effect the plot. Santa at Xmas time, for example, could have been anyone but since Puzzler aired in Dec why not put in St. nick? Ho, ho, ho Batman !

[Scott Sebring]

A picture is worth a thousand words. A video saves you reading fifty paragraphs with about forty attachments. Ben and I started talking about this thread and decided to just start recording. Hope this works and maybe we can do more in the future. Various documents shown in the video, btw (not just our pretty faces.) Full screen viewing recommended so you can really see the call sheet info as we talk about them.

[Ben Bentley]

This is a fun thread!

Here's the graphic I mentioned in our Deep Dive video which shows the production numbers against the episodes in the aired order we are familiar with.

Big thanks to Troy for throwing the spreadsheet together!

(click to enlarge)

[Jim Akin]

Great video! Thanks to Scott and Ben.

[Jimmy L. 66]

I missed Ernie Glick on the call sheet. Was he just a third season regular?
informative otherwise.
Well done Chums.

[Avenger90]

Ben and Scott - brilliant video. A very interesting watch. It's exactly the kind of stuff i wanted to know. Whilst watching them in production order, I've been thinking whilst watching a particular scene, that at the same time, shooting with another guest villain would be going on not too far away.

It was great seeing the time sheets for the episodes. Does anyone think maybe Alfred was originally meant to be put in the trunk with Aunt Harriett in The Dead Ringers, but then they opted for the unseen chauffeur instead, because Alan Napier was busy shooting his many scenes for Impractical Joker/Joker's Provokers? It's always seemed a bit odd to me how we never seen the Chauffeur. And isn't it usually Alfred driving Aunt Harriett around. Just a thought that came to me when i seen how much those episodes overlapped.

Guys, a chat about the season 3 production order would be welcome. I'm viewing them now. It was mentioned early on in the thread about the teaser scenes for next week's villain being shot at a different time to the actual episode they are attached to (shot when that particular villain was in shooting their main episode). Would be interesting to see if this is the case. What I've noticed is a few of the teaser scenes kind of sums up the last episode, before introducing the new villain (For example, Gordon mentions all about Penguin and the horse race to Barbara just before they encounter King Tut). They must have known which villain was going to be attached to which episode, even if they were filmed at different times.

[High C]

Outstanding video. Thanks for putting it together.

[Ricky]

Really enjoyed listening to this and looking through those call sheets!
I could be wrong but I'm guessing Ben could confirm as from the UK - which is when Batman was broadcasted in the early/mid 00's (I think it was) on the cable channel FX (now Fox) they aired the second season in some random order in which I believe was the production order? And they weirdly included Fine Finny Fiends at the start of the run. Im assuming this was production order or it may have been some other random oddity?

[Ben Bentley]

Really enjoyed listening to this and looking through those call sheets!
I could be wrong but I'm guessing Ben could confirm as from the UK - which is when Batman was broadcasted in the early/mid 00's (I think it was) on the cable channel FX (now Fox) they aired the second season in some random order in which I believe was the production order? And they weirdly included Fine Finny Fiends at the start of the run. Im assuming this was production order or it may have been some other random oddity?

So, coincidentally "FX289" as it was called initially (before just becoming "FX") launched in the UK on... January 12th, 2004.

I taped the entire initial run of Seasons one and two from FX in 2004 into 2005 and on that go-around the episodes were seemingly in order. They re-ran S1 and S2 multiple times within that time period. My recollection after that first run that I managed to tape gets a little hazy as I know by July 2005 I had my first set of DVD bootlegs and subsequently wasn't paying attention to FX's scheduling by that point, but I don't believe FX in the UK aired the Third Season, or if they did it was well after I was paying attention to their listings.

[Ricky]

Really enjoyed listening to this and looking through those call sheets!
I could be wrong but I'm guessing Ben could confirm as from the UK - which is when Batman was broadcasted in the early/mid 00's (I think it was) on the cable channel FX (now Fox) they aired the second season in some random order in which I believe was the production order? And they weirdly included Fine Finny Fiends at the start of the run. Im assuming this was production order or it may have been some other random oddity?

So, coincidentally "FX289" as it was called initially (before just becoming "FX") launched in the UK on... January 12th, 2004.

I taped the entire initial run of Seasons one and two from FX in 2004 into 2005 and on that go-around the episodes were seemingly in order. They re-ran S1 and S2 multiple times within that time period. My recollection after that first run that I managed to tape gets a little hazy as I know by July 2005 I had my first set of DVD bootlegs and subsequently wasn't paying attention to FX's scheduling by that point, but I don't believe FX in the UK aired the Third Season, or if they did it was well after I was paying attention to their listings.

FX did end up showing the third season but they took something ridiculous like 2 years to get around to it. Before the show was on FX a now defund channel called Granada Plus had the rights in which they only ever showed the first season (minus showing Fine Finny Fiends) and was broadcasted in a random order. I have a theory (or a bad conspiracy lol) that I can't prove which is whoever had the broadcast tapes in the UK had messed up the order somewhere down the line as like we recall when FX picked up the series after them Fine Finny Fiends was broadcasted in a run included with the second season.

Anyways sorry for going off topic on this, it just came to mind when I was thinking about this all!

[Mr. Glee]

I enjoyed the video, thanks for posting. I was surprised to see how extensive the "pick-ups" shooting was for some episodes.

About "Sandman" having its production delayed - a memo exists from Dozier to ABC listing the first eight shows scheduled to be shot for season 2, and in it "Sandman" is listed at #7 (see text below.) My hunch is that they had to pull this episode from schedule when Robert Morley backed out, and then had to wait to recast the part before putting it back on the schedule.

MEMO from William Dozier to Harve Bennett (ABC), dated June 17, 1966:

Dear Harve;

For your information, the first eight shows to be shot for Batman, and in the order of shooting, are:

1: Penguin (Burgess Meredith)

2: Catwoman (Julie Newmar)

3: Archer (Art Carney)

4: King Tut (Victor Buono)

5: Clock King (Walter Slezak)

6: Minstrel (Van Johnson)

7: Dr. Somnambula (Robert Morley)

8: The Greatest Mother of Them All (Shelley Winters)

The order of shooting is determined by availability of the special guest villain. I would say we shall be able to choose the order of release from the first six shows shot.