After Cartoon Network's initial run of Dragon Ball Z's Ultimate Uncut Special Editon, (dubbed simply as Dragon Ball Z Uncut or DBZ Uncut by Cartoon Network) featuring the Saiyan and Namek "sagas" in their full uncut form dubbed in English by FUNimation's Texas-based cast on a Monday-Thursday rotation at 10:30pm had concluded with episode 67, A Legend Revealed on Monday, October 10, 2005, it was then swiftly moved to their Toonami block, which at that point only had a weekly presence on Saturday nights starting on Saturday, October 15, 2005.
Naturally they started from the beginning of the series, sticking with FUNimation's uncut dub, though occasionally an episode would be postponed or skipped due to a tight schedule or the occasional Naruto marathon (which was only a taste of what was to come for the short-term future of the network).
However, on the January 21, 2006 edition of Toonami, Cartoon Network opted to air the episode Escape from Piccolo, rooted from the Saban dub rather than the episode that would have followed the UUSE's The Strangest Robot, the episode titled A New Friend.
What's particularly strange about this is that rather than starting the series over from scratch once again or at least lining up the subsequent episode of the alternate dub to directly follow the episode they played the previous week, they decided to skip a pretty good number of episodes therein (albeit filler episodes, but still). My only rationale for this is that the Saban dub equivalent to the episode they were supposed to air, Gohan Makes a Friend borrows footage seen in The Strangest Robot and uses it to piece together a slightly different narrative than what was seen in the uncut version of the series. (Ex. Gohan walking through the sandstorm with tears in his eyes was originally in reaction to what happened to the robot, but because that storyline was skipped over in the Saban dub, the same footage was used for Gohan to react to
Spoiler:
I apologize for my extensive meanderings. Because this is a sidestep to the point of this thread.
What interested me, was that ItachiIshtar of Tumblr, while creating a pretty comprehensive and accurate archive of Toonami's weekly schedules between 2004 and 2013, he does point out something pretty bold about the dub swap with no citation.
Jan 21, 2006
7:30pm: Dragon Ball Z - “Escape from Picccolo” (Switched to old edited dub due to low ratings)
Is there actually any evidence to back this up, just for history's sake? Not that I wouldn't believe that that was the reason, but I'd rather have something to fall back on, as we all do.
Also because given the fact that they ran FUNimation's uncut dub in its completion and began to run it again, the content at hand clearly wasn't an issue, at least not immediately, and considering what they're able to air as of late, not much has really changed.
Anyway, I'd love to hear any input, if possible.
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