Question regarding 1987 Toon DVDs
 

Some time ago I bought the complete 1987 TMNT cartoon on DVD via that US Region 1 set packaged like the Turtle Van. I have a question about how they arranged the episodes. Apologies if this has been asked somewhere before but I'm curious about it and I couldn't find this question elsewhere on the forums.

Why were the episodes "Once upon a time machine" and "planet of the turtleoids" tucked away in special features disc rather than being included as season 5 episodes along with the other episodes in that season?

I mean I'm glad they've included them but was it a space issue or were they unaired and then shown at a later date or something? Just curious as to why.

The actual discs are the same as the original releases so the season 5 eps are still on the season 10 DVD.

Same reason the Euro vacation eps are on Season 7

You can read all original episode airdates here?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ries)_episodes

I vaguely remember upon release those two episodes were added as bonus episodes to the DVD set because they couldn't figure out which season they belonged to. Something like that. I don't live in the US so can't give you any more help there, sorry. :)

Thanks for that as I think that's the most likely explanation. They probably couldn't figure it out from the resources they had available and so just threw them into the special features. Surely there was an episode guide online by the time these DVDs were assembled though? Weird.

I guess the out of order releases began when the original season 1 DVD was released in April 2004, with some season 10 episodes (which was OK back then, there was no Youtube, downloding was mostly illegal and took time and many who grow up with the Fred Wolf cartoon hadn't seen season 10).

My recollection is that Lions Gate was using the episode lists from the Mirage site for the order of the episodes and they missed those two episodes during the season releases. It's also probably the reason "Plan Six from Outer Space" is on two different releases. It's also why season 4 is out of order with "The Dimension X Story" so late in the season, when it was the first episode aired. Just poor QA.

Season 4
 

All of season 4 was a mess already when it first aired in syndication and CBS back in 1990–1991.

Yup!! All we know for sure is that Dimension X Story and Son of the Return of the fly are connected since Son was right after the volcano erupted. Since they have a functioning portal at the end of Son, the rest doesn't matter as much.

Where I lived, "The Dimension X Story" originally aired with "Donatello's Degree" as the second episode of the 1-hour block. The next week was "Son of Return of the Fly II" and one of the Raphael episodes. CBS always aired a Shredder episode paired with a "Villain of the Week" episode (at least at first, in 1990. Usually with one of the Turtles' names in the title). I think the season's aired continuity was a mess because of this.

In Ireland, the syndication episodes were aired first followed by the CBS eps.

The Euro vacation eps were placed between “Unidentified Flying Leonardo” and “My Brother, the Bad Guy” which made little more sense.

I think Lionsgate would have had quite a challenge to try to put the episodes in the correct viewing order since even the aired order made zero sense. :D