Honestly way better than having to remember everything that happened for an entire season thats basically 8, hour and a half long movies.
this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2025
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I struggle a lot with shows that have 2 or 3 year hiatus between seasons. (Who's that and why do I care about them?)
Same problem here. Unfortunately the only good solution is to wait until they are done and watch then.
I'm waiting for EastEnders to finish so I can start watching from the beginning.
Any day now.
I do this (I watch the first season when it comes out and then if I really liked it I'll wait until the whole series is complete so I can binge it in one go, and if I just thought it was just okay I'll watch the seasons as they come out because I don't care that much if I miss stuff on account it forgetting what happened previously) and I know it screws with viewership numbers when it comes time to decide what to renew/axe but when the alternative is rewatching the entire series every time a new season comes out...
(Otherwise known as the tale of why I've watched Bojack Horseman S1 five times)
The good shows will have a “last time on X “at the beginning of each episode, aka “The Previouslys”
Those are actually becoming an artform of their own. The best ones subtly hint at the areas of focus in the upcoming episode and get your mind tee'd up.
And the worst outright spoil twists for you.
I wonder who the mystery villain could be - maybe the character with a grudge from two seasons ago that the “previously on” chose to remind us about?
I just try not to pay attention to them.
Totally agreed
I'm more annoyed that shows blatantly and egregiously stretch the runtime, so that what could be a two- or three-hour film takes a season or two.
I think DS9 and some other shows of the era really hit the sweet spot here. They were mostly contained episodes, but there were overarching narratives lurking in the background, sometimes occupying an episode or two, or a subplot here and there, blowing up around season finales and premiers, although once war broke out the ones that didn't do much to acknowledge it admittedly felt a bit out of place. That method of storytelling also forced the writers to at least consider character developments that had occurred in prior episodes and not simply ignore them in the name of the quest for syndication.
The modern format can make for some truly great TV (Andor, e.g.) and freeing up the run time without reducing the budget can mean beautiful looking shows, but they don't work well when you're basically filming an overlong first draft of a movie script, rather than writing a story (or two or three) that's meant to occupy 8-12 hours. I also agree with the others who say that a gap of more than a year (and even that much, really... it used to be three or four months) puts all but the most anticipated shows at a huge disadvantage, and god help you if you cast kids in S1.
Do you have thoughts on Babylon 5? If you haven't watched it, you will love it. It's compared alot to DS9 but I think both are good shows in their own right. Tho what you said is also very true about B5 except that during the war, there are no episodes that don't acknowledge it I think.
I enjoy B5 - but to me it's getting really long in the tooth visually. DS9 holds up much better in that regard.
I watched it during the pandemic so the pace worked for me but I see your point
I enjoyed B5 and would consider it one of the shows that did things well. The production values haven't held up quite as well (except for the prosthetics and hair, which are easily Star Trek quality I think), and I never fully warmed to either station commander, but for what it was trying to be and within the constraints of its budget, it is a really good show.
I did stop watching after the "original" finale though. I didn't see where it was likely to get any better and I wasn't quite invested enough to tolerate a significant downturn.
But did you watch the finale? Because the finale of the 5th season was intended as the finale of the 4th and when the 5th season was greenlit they shot a season finale for the 4th that doesn't really do anything for the story. I enjoyed the 5th season. It's fresh, finding itself with no purpose, just playing around. You can totally skip it if that's not your cup of tea and watch the finale. Also the first movie is quite good I think.
DS9 is a funny example because (relative to contemporary shows TNG and Voyager, but other TV of that era too) they oftentimes doesn't wrap up the philosophical/moral/ethical conundrum neatly by end of episode and leave things more open or unresolved or ambiguous, which is simultaneously dissatisfying and refreshing IMO. Also, I think some of their best episodes from a conceptual perspective ended up a bit clunky in execution, like they don't have enough time to properly explore the subject at hand in only one episode so they squeeze it into a more superficial plot that then as a result feels a bit drawn out (also Star Trek dialogue usually ranges from mid to meh--with a few standout lines sprinkled in--which unsurprisingly taints the acting too). There are a number of single-episode plots that were good but could have been great if they'd given them more time to marinade over multiple episodes, but they already had a huge number of balls in the air for an episodic show in terms of plot and character development, so maybe that would have been disastrous to attempt idk.
leave things more open or unresolved or ambiguous, which is simultaneously dissatisfying and refreshing
Agreed, and it absolutely depends on the episode. Also agree that they sometimes (often?) bit off more than they could chew, but in general they weren't so disastrous that I didn't appreciate the effort. I imagine there was a lot of compromise and horse trading on those scripts, and people were probably relieved to get out something as good as they got. I like to imagine the Ferengi episodes were generally the penance exacted from writers who insisted on too much self-respect.
"On screen. Set corporate sponsorships to maximum"
Why don't they do this anymore?
Gotta keep you watching and binging. Episodic format work best for syndication, where in the episodes might get, skipped or aired in a different order than they were produced.
I mean... that's a lot of Strange New Worlds?
SNW is doing well with their format. We need a DS9 clone though. Maybe a Klingon orientated show that follows a battle group. Would be sweet to see them roll into the Order of Kahless and party, fight, and die for the empire
Personally, what I think would be awesome is a semi-anthology series inspired by LD's Wej Duj where each episode follows a different ship, and each episode builds to a final plot in which all the ships are involved.
Of course, we'd have the Klingon episode, but mainly, I just want an episode called "Cetacean Ops" that follows the crew of the USS George & Gracie, a Starfleet vessel staffed almost entirely by a plethora of aquatic life forms - I'm talking humpback whale captain next to Xindi Aquatic first officer-type things.
You might have a small crew of humanoids for maintenance and the occasional away mission or non-aquatic starbase, and you could explore an interesting story around how an aquatic crew tries to accommodate them.
Just like the 38-min opening window from Stargate huh?
44 minutes -- in space.
would time not work differently in space with all the gravitational mumbo-jumbo? so, is a minute for us the same as a minute for them?
Relativistic Time Dialation is a thing that is never dealt with in Trek.
I mean we're watching a show from literally hundreds of years from now! That might be backwards but I don't care.
There was that Voyager episode with the doughnut planet, although I don't think that was a perfectly accurate portrayal.