VOY: "Mortal Coil"

[CharlesPhipps]

It violates the suspension of belief if there are never any lasting consequences to events that occur.

Episodic television functioned pretty well for decades.

[Frustration]

And the best episodic television had consequences.

More to the point, it made sure that there was no state at the ending of an episode that wasn't reflected in the beginning of later episodes. People didn't learn lessons and then forget them in detectable ways; they didn't learn them, period, or they learned and it was never brought up again.

[pilight]

And the best episodic television had consequences.

Hardly any episodic television had consequences prior to the late 90's. TV execs didn't want to be tied to episode order for reruns or syndication and it was often difficult to catch missed episodes prior to the internet, so everything and everybody stayed the same throughout a show's run.

[Fianna]

The problem is when an episode ends on the message "this character has learned from this experience, they've grown as a person, and they're going to change how they act", only for the next episode to completely ignore that development.

For my money, the best way to handle drama in a strictly episodic format is to use a certain kind of character development. The kind that's focused, not on changing the character, but on revealing previously unseen sides of who they are. From an in-universe perspective, the character is the same as they always were, but from the audience's perspective, we now have a better understanding of the character, so our view of them is what changes, even as they continue behaving the same as always.

(Or, alternatively, you focus the drama on the guest stars of the week, who can go through all sorts of crazy changes, 'cause they're not sticking around after this episode. See: The Twilight Zone.)

[Madner Kami]

Correct, Fianna.

I'd go so far to say, that Voyager is a living fossil of a bygone era. TNG had the excuse of coming from a different time and happened right at the beginning of a change from episodic to long-form story-telling. The height of character-development was Picard carrying a new jacket and acting slightly more emotional after his melding with the broken Sarek, both keeping a little something from the other (something that is sorely missed when it comes to mind-melds lateron: they are actual meldings of both minds, but that's besides the point).
Then you get DS9 and Babylon 5, which fundamentally change everything in this regard and long-form story-telling becomes the norm, although there are still self-contained episodes.
And then you get Voyager, which treads the paths that TNG has gone before and the height of character-development is the captain wearing a different hair-style as a marker for the events during the "Year of Hell".

[pilight]

Even DS9 didn't fundamentally change its characters. Season seven Sisko is pretty much the same as season one Sisko except that he's gotten past Jennifer's death.

Serialized TV has its risks. Focus too much on character dynamics and you can turn your show into a high concept soap opera like The Walking Dead.

[clearspira]

Enterprise. Now that's a living fossil of a bygone era. This show was a contemporary of the Battlestar Galactica Reboot of all things! And yet you wouldn't know it from its TNG-era scripts. Whilst Ron D. Moore was giving us blistering space combat, a host of strong protagonists, cutting political intrigue and layered stories, Star Trek was giving us Jonathan Archer, the decon chamber, and shitty villain after shitty villain.

Stagnation. That is the word I would use to describe Trek of this era. Maybe without 9/11 the tonal shift on what audiences were looking for wouldn't have been so harsh but there you go. Adapt or die.

[Madner Kami]

Enterprise. Now that's a living fossil of a bygone era. This show was a contemporary of the Battlestar Galactica Reboot of all things! And yet you wouldn't know it from its TNG-era scripts. Whilst Ron D. Moore was giving us blistering space combat, a host of strong protagonists, cutting political intrigue and layered stories, Star Trek was giving us Jonathan Archer, the decon chamber, and shitty villain after shitty villain.

Stagnation. That is the word I would use to describe Trek of this era. Maybe without 9/11 the tonal shift on what audiences were looking for wouldn't have been so harsh but there you go. Adapt or die.

I feel Enterprise is more akin to the early iterations of movie-dinosaurs. You know, those stop-motion thingies that very obviously take their inspiration from something big and unusual and you recognize what it is, but as soon as you look even just a little bit closer, you realize it's nothing like the real thing. Instead it's mostly a representation of something awe-inspiring as seen through the eyes of somebody who doesn't have the slightest idea about what the fuck he is doing and looking at.

[TGLS]

Even DS9 didn't fundamentally change its characters. Season seven Sisko is pretty much the same as season one Sisko except that he's gotten past Jennifer's death.

Didn't he get past her death in like the first episode?

[pilight]

Even DS9 didn't fundamentally change its characters. Season seven Sisko is pretty much the same as season one Sisko except that he's gotten past Jennifer's death.

Didn't he get past her death in like the first episode?

He wasn't really past it until season three when he met the mirror Jennifer