Hi Bill,
I dropped by the Forum to see what everyone thought of the new DVD box sets ... and I saw your question.
The book presents the episodes in the order in which they were meant to be viewed, as arranged by the producers. This is also, for the most part, the order in which they were filmed, and certainly the order in which they were completed.
I Spy was shot in blocks of nine (usually). The Company would do the location filming first - for instance, shooting all the location sequences for the episodes in Hong Kong - then returning to Desilu to shoot the studio portions. The book will show you the order in which the episodes were completed once the Company was back home, which, again, was also the order in which the producers felt the shows could best be aired. NBC, however, would change that order, which sometimes caused confusion. We would see Kelly and Scott in Palm Springs, then in Vegas, then back to Palm Springs, then to Los Angeles, then back to Vegas ... or getting excited because they were going to San Francisco, when we had just seen them in San Francisco the previous week! Or we would see a recurring characters, like the double-agent Troy Duncan, get killed, then return the following week quite alive and giving assignments to Kelly and Scott. Maddening!
Sadly this problem also occurs to a certain degree in syndication, because this order was based on that miss-leading production numbering system, which was actually the script numbering system. These numbers merely designated the order in which the script assignments were given out.
I haven't seen the new box sets yet, but my guess is the episodes will either be arranged as NBC aired them, or as they were shown in syndication.
Try watching them in the order that the book lists them. This is what Friedkin and Fine had wanted, and it will be a much smoother ride.
Best, Marc Cushman
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