STSNW's episodic storytelling or STD and STP's Serialized Seasons
- Thread starter TRON JA307020
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I've often heard it said that Frasier is the most British American sitcom ever.You know what has great character-based storytelling? Fraser. It's almost a Britcom.
"The series is the arc" can work if a.) you know how you want to end the story, b.) you have writers up to the task of creating a journey to that end with compelling beats in each episode and each season, and c.) you don't get cancelled before you get to your desired ending.
This involves a lot of planning, skill and risk.
Even if Discovery and Picard's writers had the skills to do this well (and, frankly, they've not demonstrated these skills), it would require a commitment to a particular ending. I don't think Discovery was ever conceived of this way. My impression is that it was imagined as having either multi-episode or season-long arcs where we follow one primary protagonist (starting with Michael and moving on).
Picard, on the other hand, would have been perfect for this given that they never intended to go for more than a few seasons. I fully expected they were going for a single, focused story arc and series ending. The show's title also suggests a singular journey. I was really surprised when they wrapped things up at the end of the first season and started a new story for the second. Of course, the quality of the writing makes this all moot.
This is what I've been saying they should do from the beginning, but they don't have to have mysteries/mystery that need to be answered in the series finale, can't the show just continue and build upon its threads from season to season?
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The problem for me is that each season of the shows is built around a different mystery that has to be solved by the end of the season. It seems like in some cases the writers don't even know what the answers to the mysteries are when they started filming the earlier episodes. There are so many great serialized shows that don't revolve around mystery boxes or problems that have to wrap up by the end of a season. The writers of Picard went in knowing they had 3 seasons to play with. They could have had a great 3 season story that was connected and planned out. Instead we're getting 3 different stories, 2 of which were mystery boxes where the writers spun their wheels for several episodes and in the case of season 1 admitted they didn't know he ending when they started filming the season. Not knowing the ending when you're filming a serialized show can be ok if the season doesn't resolve around a mystery that you should know the answer to, but that wasn't the case here.
LOST was really good about answering pretty big questions in season finales while raising some new questions. But each season built on each other. While they didn't have a larger plan at the outset for the reasons you mentioned, they managed to make it work in the end; though not perfectly. But for a show that didn't have a large plan at the start, I thought it came together really well in the end.
And totally agreed on Picard as they knew it was only going to be three seasons, I wish they had carved out an arc for the series, overall, rather than take the Discovery approach and just do a new story each season.
It's because they think having mysteries make it more compelling...and they aren't EVEN mysteries, they are just questions the show refuses to answer until the end in an effort to keep us on edge. They stack all their chips on the final episode of the season resolving everything to the point where it's not even its own story. The finale is just answering questions.
I prefer episodic but I also enjoyed DS9's Dominion war arc. It spanned 4 seasons yet every episode was essentially a standalone story rather than just focussing on the war. Obviously towards the end S7 became more serialised where you had to watch the previous episode to know what the hell was going on, but for the most part it remained episodic with self-contained stories that connected things to the wider plot of the Dominion conflict.
Picard and Discovery have massive flaws due to their completely serialised nature. If you can't get the overall story right, the season becomes a disaster. DS9 got its main story right. The other 2 series, not so much.
Picard and Discovery have massive flaws due to their completely serialised nature. If you can't get the overall story right, the season becomes a disaster. DS9 got its main story right. The other 2 series, not so much.
Yup. Pretty much why I hated Lost at the end. UT was apparent they painted themselves into the corner and didn't have the answers to many things. The answers we did get were lackluster. The issues with STD and STP is that the stories could have easily been done in two parts. We basically get 7 or 8 eps of mostly filler then the last ep is resolution to what we get from the first ep or two. With episodic it's instant. We get our story, some character building and an ending jn less than an hour. I love that.
Episodic by far, especially with something like Star Trek where one of the great strengths of the premise is that virtually anything can happen, and the show can take on any genre or mood. I've really hated the trend towards serialised TV over the past couple of decades, I hope we're due for the pendulum to swing the other way. Episodic TV gets a bad rap at times because there used to be a lot of facile filler stuff in older genre shows, where you'd have a handful of good episodes per season and then a big pile of middling-to-crap stuff to pad everything out, but at this point so much awful serialised stuff has come out that I think a lot of supposedly-inherent weaknesses of the episodic format are being dispelled, and being revealed merely as weaknesses of bad writing in general.
I don't mind connecting threads between episodes and ongoing character development arcs and all that, but those have always been a feature of episodic television.
I don't mind connecting threads between episodes and ongoing character development arcs and all that, but those have always been a feature of episodic television.
Yup episodic is great. It's comforting knowing when I watch a ep I can watch from start to finish and get a whoke story in one hour that I can mull over right away. With serialized I'm always waiting and waiting for something exciting to happen or the plot to move along instead if getting melodramatic filler fluff. Some serialized shows work like The Boys but it's far and few between in my opinion. That show keeps the seasons to a 8 episode minimum and it works well. 10 or more episodes is just too much to slog through and the filler fluff especially in shows like STD and STP is too much.
Depends very much on the series.
I prefer serialized because episodic drops the balls on those connections too often for my liking.
Serialized shows do to. Look at Lost. That show was a huge mess and dropped connections like hot potatoes.
Sure, and that's frustrating as hell. But dropping basic character development from show to show is something pisses right off with episodic shows and the connective tissue is forgotten. So, I'd rather serialized and even if it is done poorly at least some connections are maintained, versus episodic which is just a toss up wild wild west set of rules.
I think serialized is much worse. You have so many writers writing on one huge arc abd story that it gets disjointed and convoluted. TIS had its issues with continuity at times but it was not nearly as obvious because everything we learned about the main characters were when they were doing their jobs or from a lone of dialogue. It didn't delve si deeply into their personal lives every episode. Rarely did we see them in their day to day life or hanging out with others constantly and dozens of side stories like we see on STD or STP. Filler is created on serialized stories when the main mission or story cannot be stretched ton10 or 13 els. So we get a lot of time on things like Saru trying to get a date with a Vukcan ambassador. We see him talking to Burnham one episode about it then the next it's talking to the ambassador and then another its someone else or the ambassador giving mixed signals in on ep because she's vulcan. These are are time fillers and have no bearing on the overall story and I find it frankly boring. The same can be said of Picard and his chateau flashbacks. My gosh I got sick of that greenhouse or whatever it was.
To each their own. I prefer the so called "filler" because they feel like real people, not avatars of Starfleet's work force.
I don't care either way.*
*Serialized can be great, just not the way Star Trek does it.
*Serialized can be great, just not the way Star Trek does it.
Yeah it's whatever anyone prefers. I felt the TIS crew were real people. I learned everything I needed about them while jn the bridge or in a mission. Basically while they were working. I love the show Adam 12 for the same reasons. We learned everything we needed about the two main characters through their work and dialkgue ar works. No melodramatic offsides with people in their lives. For a half hour episodic show we got a ton of story in just less then 30 minutes. Really good .
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