A spin-off of sorts from this thread.
Sometimes an episode of a TV series is just an episode of a TV series. Other times, there's something more important afoot. It's a metaphor, an analogy, an allegory for some burning issue of the time. The story is a groundbreaking, award-baiting message about... something or other.
Thing is, while lots of writers want to do a message episode, they can be difficult to get right, in the sense of effectively conveying the intended moral while also being an entertaining installment of the franchise. Some writers can do both well, some can do neither.
One classic example (well, example from the Classic Series) is The Sun Makers. It looks like a story about workers rising up against the bosses and "corporate colonialism", but then there are numerous references to taxes on everything, and the villain is meant to look like Denis Healey. Is it trying to be a left-wing screed or a right-wing one? Or both?
A newer example is The Zygon Invasion/Inversion. It wears its allegory on its sleeve and even ends with Capaldi giving a Picard-style monologue, but many found that the story left them cold. It's meant to be about immigration, refugees and terrorism, right down to the faux-ISIS flags. We are repeatedly told that the vast majority of Zygon settlers are non-violent and want to assimilate with the humans... but they're all offscreen. Every Zygon we actually encounter in the story is one of the terrorist faction, and it's made clear that the treaty between worlds (negotiated in a secret bunker with no input by any public authority on Earth) is continually breaking down in dangerous ways. It's obvious what we're supposed to take away from this story but I think in practice it actually says the opposite.
Sometimes an episode of a TV series is just an episode of a TV series. Other times, there's something more important afoot. It's a metaphor, an analogy, an allegory for some burning issue of the time. The story is a groundbreaking, award-baiting message about... something or other.
Thing is, while lots of writers want to do a message episode, they can be difficult to get right, in the sense of effectively conveying the intended moral while also being an entertaining installment of the franchise. Some writers can do both well, some can do neither.
One classic example (well, example from the Classic Series) is The Sun Makers. It looks like a story about workers rising up against the bosses and "corporate colonialism", but then there are numerous references to taxes on everything, and the villain is meant to look like Denis Healey. Is it trying to be a left-wing screed or a right-wing one? Or both?
A newer example is The Zygon Invasion/Inversion. It wears its allegory on its sleeve and even ends with Capaldi giving a Picard-style monologue, but many found that the story left them cold. It's meant to be about immigration, refugees and terrorism, right down to the faux-ISIS flags. We are repeatedly told that the vast majority of Zygon settlers are non-violent and want to assimilate with the humans... but they're all offscreen. Every Zygon we actually encounter in the story is one of the terrorist faction, and it's made clear that the treaty between worlds (negotiated in a secret bunker with no input by any public authority on Earth) is continually breaking down in dangerous ways. It's obvious what we're supposed to take away from this story but I think in practice it actually says the opposite.
Last edited:
