Massive "Dark Shadows" Problem

Will: While I don't have personal knowledge of the situation (and have never watched "Dark Shadows"), looking at the Wikipedia article you linked, it appears that the combined episode numbers reflect the fact that the show would have been preempted on what would have been the following scheduled airdate. As the lead of the Wikipedia article says, "A total of 1,225 episodes were produced, but during the course of its run, the show was pre-empted 20 times ago. ABC would compensate for this by occasionally skipping, double numbering and, in one case, triple numbering episodes in order to keep a show ending in a 5 or 0 airing on Fridays." This is consistent with what Mateja wrote above.

I don't think there were any "back-to-back" episodes of the series. The entire series was preserved (unlike most soap operas), except for one episode where only an audio recording survives, and has been released on DVD in its entirety. If there was a double-length or triple-length episode, the fans would certainly know about it.

For example, the first "combined" episode, "108/109/110", aired on Nov. 23, 1966. The following two days, on which the show did not air, were Thanksgiving and the day after Thanksgiving, on which different television programs aired (for example, a football game preempted "Dark Shadows" on Nov. 24).

Or to take another example, "801/802" aired July 22, 1969. No episode is listed as being aired on Monday, July 21, 1969 -- the day that the Apollo 11 astronauts were on the moon and regular programming was preempted.

Unfortunately, as Mateja indicates, there are nonexistent episodes entered into IMDb. For example, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1269815/, #1.109, is listed as being broadcast on Nov. 24, 1966, when as mentioned above, it was Thanksgiving and a football game was shown in place of the regular programming.

I suspect it will take a lot of work to fix this problem, but it would make sense for the Nov. 23, 1966 episode to have the title "108/109/110", as shown in the Wikipedia article, but the IMDb episode number #1.108, as standard. The following episode, broadcast on Nov. 28, 1966, would then have the title "111" but the IMDb episode number #1.109. Hence, the production numbering (also used on the DVDs) would be preserved in the episode titles but standard IMDb numbering would be used for the IMDb episode numbers.