Here we believe there is only one correct order in which to watch a franchise, and that is in release order only. I suppose we'd better explain ourselves.
Sometimes you want to watch, or more likely if you are here and one of us rewatch, an entire franchise. This can be hard as the value of a franchise lies in crossing over between different shows/movies/media. These crossovers will have been made to make sense in the context of the order of when they were released. So in order to best (re)watch the whole franchise you need to know what this order was.
Knowing this order can be hard. Most content, when purchased or on a streaming platform, will be presented as individual shows. Some franchises are spread over different providers. Knowing the exact order to watch in sometimes requires knowing the TV schedule at the time of release. This is what we are here to help with.
This comes down to 2 things; 1) we've not gotten around to it yet or 2) we don't consider it a "franchise".
To fall into our definition of a franchise, and thus requiring a full release order list, something must;
While above (Why is show x not on here?) we defined which collections of movies/shows/media we will add here, what is harder to come to is a single definition for each franchise. Some are simple, e.g. Buffy and Angel, include the original film, Buffy and Angel TV Shows. All are pretty story dependant on each other.
Others are more complex, e.g. Star Wars. There is a long list of shorts produced by Lucasfilm, but whether or not you will want to include those in your rewatch is a reasonable thing to debate. So we have included both options. Or how about NCIS, the wider Bellisario-verse (including JAG), and the tangential Lenko-verse (Hawaii 5-O, MacGyver, and Magnum P.I.). They all cross over between each other at various points, but I can easily see people wanting to filter to just one of the 3 options, so we've included all 3.
Obviously, my view is always the broadest encompassing set :)
Firstly, we reserve the right to break our own rules whenever we feel justified ... however this is a good observation. Some shows have been placed in a none-release order. So far, this is only in situations where the predominant creative voice (e.g. J. Michael Straczynski) has vehemently disagreed with the order put in place by a distribution corporation, and stuck by that ever since. This should be very rare.