4 ms·

Overall, I think it's a positive change. But I think there are other effects too. One is the trend toward longer, multi-season story arcs. This is also a trend

by new299 8y ago

Overall, I think it's a positive change. But I think there are other effects too. One is the trend toward longer, multi-season story arcs. This is also a trend in traditional television, but seems that the single episode story is dead on Netflix. That's a shame, because it often is possible to succinctly express an idea in 30mins or 1hour. But it's in Netflix's best interests to keep you hooked on a show and "watching one more episode". That's particularly valuable for content that is released week-by-week. It also has other benefits, the more you watch, the more you're dependent on their service. The one exception to this I've seen on Netflix is Black Mirror. But that was a show developed outside of the platform initially. I can't see something like Star trek the next generation, or another idea driven show which explores a single idea in a single episode being green lit on Netflix, and that's a shame.

eslaught 8y ago
Speak for yourself. In my opinion, this is a massive win for storytelling. And I'm saying this as a lifelong Star Trek fan who has watched every single series end-to-end except for TOS. As much as I love it, Star Trek feels old. And this is the #1 reason why. With relatively small exceptions, every episode is complete disconnected from every other. The beginning of the episode sets up some sort of problem or danger. By the end of the episode, this danger is dealt with, gone. Character development is either non-existent, or happens at such a painfully slow pace that it's difficult to feel connected to what's going on. Instead what we see (if anything) are "snapshots" into the character's mental state. This is simply not how you tell a good story! So it's not surprising to me that Star Trek went fallow for a long time. The point about character development applies to the universe too. People like to say that the Federation feels old. But what they really mean, in my opinion, is that the Federation should be viewed as a character. And if you think about it that way, it becomes obvious that as a character, the Federation is completely missing character development. So it's no wonder people get tired of it! Would you want to read a novel about a character who doesn't change at all during the course of the story? Would you come back for more after a half dozen of these? The problem with saving the world perfectly every time is that over the long term, this means there is no change. Every individual episode might be a great story, but at the end of the day, did any of it matter? If there are no permanent consequences, it's hard to see how. This becomes especially obvious if you binge-watch the shows. Everything is always the same. Nothing changes. What I want to see in a show (Star Trek or otherwise) is change. Permanent, irrevocable change. You dropped a glass, and it shattered, and no amount of wishing otherwise will put it back together again. That doesn't mean you can't do something about it! But certainly, you're not just going to put things back into exactly the same state they were before. P.S. You might be tempted to say, "oh, but what about DS9?" But even there, the format was largely unchanged. Go and count the episodes. The ones that actually dealt with any sort of ongoing story are a minority. Most of the shows follow the same framework as previous series. Except for one 10-episode sequence at the very end, you can basically forget that the war exists between the episodes that they mention it.
- new299 8y ago
  I'm not saying it's an either/or proposition. I think it's great to see characters develop over as they encounter different situations and the long term implications of their actions. But I think it's also interesting to sometimes explore idea in a shorter period of time... I don't think there's much space for that anymore. And sometimes that can explore certain ideas more succinctly. You mention DS9, I think a few characters developed in quite interesting ways over the course of the series actually Dukat and Kai Winn for example.
- c22 8y ago
  Binge-built tv shows are definitely great for storytelling, over the last 15 years or so I've found feature length films to be severely lacking in depth compared to the development that can happen over untold hours of serialized tv. There is something to be said for the isolated narrative format, though. I appreciate that I can watch any random Star Trek without refreshing my understanding of the plot or getting sucked into the next episode. I wonder if this format would be used in more Netflix shows if Netflix had a random button.
- mixmastamyk 8y ago
  Believe what you’re looking for is Babylon 5, which pioneered the story arc twenty years before Netflix.
  - rainbowmverse 8y ago
    The alleged (last I checked) Deep Space 9/Babylon 5 scandal is interesting to read about. Good starting point: https://www.reddit.com/r/babylon5/comments/7qbjn7/did_deep_space_nine_rip_off_babylon_5/ https://www.reddit.com/r/babylon5/comments/7qbjn7/did_deep_s...
TillE 8y ago
For all the gloss of "prestige TV", a lot of the big story arc shows are basically just modern soap operas. I think that'll slowly change though, because the current trend seems primarily motivated by culture rather than structure or economics. Like, procedural shows are still big, but they were everything for a few years after CSI. These things come and go.
- dsr_ 8y ago
  People like soap operas, if by that term you mean long stories about the relationships of a family-to-tribal size group of interesting people.
chickenfries 8y ago
Once nice counter example to this is Black Mirror, which I think really benefits from being completely episodic.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
siidooloo 8y ago
The quality of TV writing has definitely improved in recent years. But we a have a new problem now. The producers still want the shows to run forever. Instead of telling discrete stories and wrapping them up in a season or two they try to keep stringing the audience along. The characters end up repeating the same situations. Rather then one series that runs for 5 to 10 years I’d prefer 2 or 3 different series telling different stories about the same characters. A few crime series have been dealing with one case person. I’d like to see more things like that.
- greedo 8y ago
  There are some stories on Netflix that are single season, or single show. I just watched Anon, it was fine as a single show. A single season show like "The End of the F*ing World" is perfect, and true to its source material.
wvenable 8y ago
> But it's in Netflix's best interests to keep you hooked on a show Is it? For Netflix the more the watch, the more it costs them. The only thing they want is to keep you subscribed and that's an entirely different sort of motivation. Traditional TV is focused on selling eye-balls to advertisers; keep you hooked on a show is necessary. For Netflix, they just have to ensure the entire service provides enough value that you'll continue to pay monthly for it.
- lifeisstillgood 8y ago
  That's a fantastically insightful point - i suspect that Netflix has not truly grasped it either
  - 1123581321 8y ago
    We know Netflix doesn’t believe that measurement is good for their company because they spend as much as possible on content and give creators more control than traditional publishers to make the content better. They also talk about their competition being sleep, games, YouTube, etc. These aren’t the actions of a company that wants to give users “just enough.” I think the only time they’d apply this idea (the only place it’s appropriate, IMO) is when reaching the limits of their budget and prioritizing one market over another. In that case it would make sense to avoid dropping below a threshold of attention. However, as in the article, they do what they can to make content watchable in all markets at once so they don’t have to take that risk.
- new299 8y ago
  I would be surprised if this wasn't an internal metric that the optimize for. I'd be surprised if a drop in viewing time didn't strongly correlate with cancelled subscriptions (which they use as motivation). When a film ends, they always seem to play a trailer for something else (even if you've seen that trailer 10s of times already). They seem to want to push content at you. As noted elsewhere in the thread, they seem to see their competition not just as traditional TV, but as other ways of spending time.
hrktb 8y ago
Netflix is helping produce a bunch of anime recently, and from that point of view it doesn’t seem to have a single focus on genre or format. It looks more like a “we’ll pay you to make stuff people want to watch” approach, with no specific request on “high brow” or “low brow” or overall length. In a way I think they don’t care if a creator or studio makes 4 different series where 2 are big hits and 2 with a meh reception, or one big 4 season series where viewers drop out a random places. As long as viewers come back to Netflix to look for more stuff it should be fine for them.

by new299 8y ago

eslaught 8y ago

Speak for yourself. In my opinion, this is a massive win for storytelling. And I'm saying this as a lifelong Star Trek fan who has watched every single series end-to-end except for TOS. As much as I love it, Star Trek feels old. And this is the #1 reason why. With relatively small exceptions, every episode is complete disconnected from every other. The beginning of the episode sets up some sort of problem or danger. By the end of the episode, this danger is dealt with, gone. Character development is either non-existent, or happens at such a painfully slow pace that it's difficult to feel connected to what's going on. Instead what we see (if anything) are "snapshots" into the character's mental state. This is simply not how you tell a good story! So it's not surprising to me that Star Trek went fallow for a long time. The point about character development applies to the universe too. People like to say that the Federation feels old. But what they really mean, in my opinion, is that the Federation should be viewed as a character. And if you think about it that way, it becomes obvious that as a character, the Federation is completely missing character development. So it's no wonder people get tired of it! Would you want to read a novel about a character who doesn't change at all during the course of the story? Would you come back for more after a half dozen of these? The problem with saving the world perfectly every time is that over the long term, this means there is no change. Every individual episode might be a great story, but at the end of the day, did any of it matter? If there are no permanent consequences, it's hard to see how. This becomes especially obvious if you binge-watch the shows. Everything is always the same. Nothing changes. What I want to see in a show (Star Trek or otherwise) is change. Permanent, irrevocable change. You dropped a glass, and it shattered, and no amount of wishing otherwise will put it back together again. That doesn't mean you can't do something about it! But certainly, you're not just going to put things back into exactly the same state they were before. P.S. You might be tempted to say, "oh, but what about DS9?" But even there, the format was largely unchanged. Go and count the episodes. The ones that actually dealt with any sort of ongoing story are a minority. Most of the shows follow the same framework as previous series. Except for one 10-episode sequence at the very end, you can basically forget that the war exists between the episodes that they mention it.

new299 8y ago
I'm not saying it's an either/or proposition. I think it's great to see characters develop over as they encounter different situations and the long term implications of their actions. But I think it's also interesting to sometimes explore idea in a shorter period of time... I don't think there's much space for that anymore. And sometimes that can explore certain ideas more succinctly. You mention DS9, I think a few characters developed in quite interesting ways over the course of the series actually Dukat and Kai Winn for example.
c22 8y ago
Binge-built tv shows are definitely great for storytelling, over the last 15 years or so I've found feature length films to be severely lacking in depth compared to the development that can happen over untold hours of serialized tv. There is something to be said for the isolated narrative format, though. I appreciate that I can watch any random Star Trek without refreshing my understanding of the plot or getting sucked into the next episode. I wonder if this format would be used in more Netflix shows if Netflix had a random button.
mixmastamyk 8y ago
Believe what you’re looking for is Babylon 5, which pioneered the story arc twenty years before Netflix.
- rainbowmverse 8y ago
  The alleged (last I checked) Deep Space 9/Babylon 5 scandal is interesting to read about. Good starting point: https://www.reddit.com/r/babylon5/comments/7qbjn7/did_deep_space_nine_rip_off_babylon_5/ https://www.reddit.com/r/babylon5/comments/7qbjn7/did_deep_s...

TillE 8y ago

For all the gloss of "prestige TV", a lot of the big story arc shows are basically just modern soap operas. I think that'll slowly change though, because the current trend seems primarily motivated by culture rather than structure or economics. Like, procedural shows are still big, but they were everything for a few years after CSI. These things come and go.

dsr_ 8y ago
People like soap operas, if by that term you mean long stories about the relationships of a family-to-tribal size group of interesting people.

chickenfries 8y ago

Once nice counter example to this is Black Mirror, which I think really benefits from being completely episodic.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

siidooloo 8y ago

The quality of TV writing has definitely improved in recent years. But we a have a new problem now. The producers still want the shows to run forever. Instead of telling discrete stories and wrapping them up in a season or two they try to keep stringing the audience along. The characters end up repeating the same situations. Rather then one series that runs for 5 to 10 years I’d prefer 2 or 3 different series telling different stories about the same characters. A few crime series have been dealing with one case person. I’d like to see more things like that.

greedo 8y ago
There are some stories on Netflix that are single season, or single show. I just watched Anon, it was fine as a single show. A single season show like "The End of the F*ing World" is perfect, and true to its source material.

wvenable 8y ago

> But it's in Netflix's best interests to keep you hooked on a show Is it? For Netflix the more the watch, the more it costs them. The only thing they want is to keep you subscribed and that's an entirely different sort of motivation. Traditional TV is focused on selling eye-balls to advertisers; keep you hooked on a show is necessary. For Netflix, they just have to ensure the entire service provides enough value that you'll continue to pay monthly for it.

lifeisstillgood 8y ago
That's a fantastically insightful point - i suspect that Netflix has not truly grasped it either
- 1123581321 8y ago
  We know Netflix doesn’t believe that measurement is good for their company because they spend as much as possible on content and give creators more control than traditional publishers to make the content better. They also talk about their competition being sleep, games, YouTube, etc. These aren’t the actions of a company that wants to give users “just enough.” I think the only time they’d apply this idea (the only place it’s appropriate, IMO) is when reaching the limits of their budget and prioritizing one market over another. In that case it would make sense to avoid dropping below a threshold of attention. However, as in the article, they do what they can to make content watchable in all markets at once so they don’t have to take that risk.
new299 8y ago
I would be surprised if this wasn't an internal metric that the optimize for. I'd be surprised if a drop in viewing time didn't strongly correlate with cancelled subscriptions (which they use as motivation). When a film ends, they always seem to play a trailer for something else (even if you've seen that trailer 10s of times already). They seem to want to push content at you. As noted elsewhere in the thread, they seem to see their competition not just as traditional TV, but as other ways of spending time.

hrktb 8y ago

Netflix is helping produce a bunch of anime recently, and from that point of view it doesn’t seem to have a single focus on genre or format. It looks more like a “we’ll pay you to make stuff people want to watch” approach, with no specific request on “high brow” or “low brow” or overall length. In a way I think they don’t care if a creator or studio makes 4 different series where 2 are big hits and 2 with a meh reception, or one big 4 season series where viewers drop out a random places. As long as viewers come back to Netflix to look for more stuff it should be fine for them.