I always thought Burn Notice nailed the episodic/serialized format.

Hello

I just keep remembering that Rick Berman wanted the entire Dominion arc to be at most a 2 parter. Thank goodness he was too busy with Voyager commanding Braga to do his bidding so Ira could ignore him.

I agree that serialized episodes and bottle episodes seasons are ideal. Especially if your serialized story is a mystery box, which almost always is unsatisfying at the reveal. Personally, I also really resent the direction of streaming television. Most of it is 10 episode seasons, and it's entirely serialized. As a result, if you don't like the premise, your basically out the entire season. It also makes me very unforgiving for a bad episode. With a 24 episode season, I get you'll have some bad ones. When your only making 10 episodes.... and 4 of them are medicore. I generally just tap out for the remainder of the series.

You guys haven't even come close to the really good episodes that are strictly stand alone episodes...we can't talk about them...yet but trust me when you see some of these off beat one of a kind...sometimes whimsical...sometimes totally different perspective...sometimes things I'm not allowed to talk about but trust me you WILL BE GLAD for some of the one offs that you'll see when we get there....and again i stand by my comment you will like Xfiles more than Star Trek eventually...sacrilegious I know

If you want to see an example of ST being updated, you actually saw that in S1 of BSG where there was that episode of TNG with the hard ass prosecutor trying to throw whoever that was in prison for unfair reasons and then Picard gives a speech condemning the injustice and all is right with the world. I forget what that was called. In S1 of BSG that episode was remade, first they incorporated it into the serialization by having the person on trial be the Chief, a starring role, the evidence against him was steeped in the serialized aspects ongoing plot, and then Adama gives a speech condemning the injustice and all is right with the world. This happens again and again. As I've watched these shows I have seen again and again "Oh, BSG remade this and did it better"

I watched these early X Files seasons watching just the serialized episodes to catch up so most of the monster or the week episodes are first time with the serialized episodes mixed in for nostalgia

I feel like Buffy was also one of the pioneers of that kind of format. Episodic stories mixed in with “arc episodes” that move the larger season story forward. And each season always focuses more and more on the arc the further along it gets, with everything culminating in the finale. I think halfway through season 4, I would say DS9 is generally more: What’s our status quo at the moment? What stories can we tell in the current status quo, while picking up on/starting threads and character arcs we find interesting?

We got a hint of that with the DS9 three parter Circle story with Frank Langella and Winn. It is easy to see how DS9 could be updated to a modern show going into the political and religious machinations on Bajor with a war in the background with the Cardassians or whoever. Ron Moore achieved all of this with BSG and I think they went 18 episodes per season. You could see how the G rated Voyager ship on the run trying to survive can be tweaked into the PG BSG where you get complete serialization and they have to worry about fuel or whatever. I would go so far as to call DS9 a proto-BSG, and that Moore dabbled or saw concepts with potential he liked on that show and VOY and then brought them to their potential on BSG. You should do yourselves a favor and give it another chance.

I need the „One Breath“ reaction so bad! 😭🙏

What I like about the X-Files episode format is that it demonstrates a passage of time better. Especially when a character will reference an event from an earlier episode, and it shows their growth as a character and learning from their experiences. Another Sci-Fy show that does that is the Stargate series.

Man, I can't wait for this reaction!

Season 6 of Sopranos was basically two seasons. They almost doubled their standard episode count, split the 21 episodes in half essentially giving us a season 6 and 7, even had a long break in between them... but then called both "season 6" ...weird

I agree. My favorite format of a show is the combination of episodic bottle episodes interweaved within a larger narrative serialized structure. This enables the characters to be fleshed out so much more than in most modern fully serialized shows. In fact, in many ways, modern TV doesn't exist. We have short movies, or extremely long movies. And don't get me wrong, I can still be wildly satisfied with some modern long-movie "shows", but it's just not the same as what we had in the golden past (oh no... I'm an old man). And yeah Alex, imagining Picard as Locutus of Borg in a 6 episode-arc serialized thread within S4, but it's not a 6-parter, maybe you get a two-parter opening, then 3-4 episodic episodes where the crew mostly tries to deal with the real possibility that they can't save Picard, and as a viewer because it's stretched out longer, you start to believe it yourself too... it's just so good, and then a three parter, more episodics, and one final heavy hitter to round it out at the end of the season. Lastly, in many cases, even in those bottle episodes, little sprinkles of "main-plot" info or character-related concerns are dropped at the beginning or end, just to tighten the proverbial knot a bit more, keeping it cohesive and relevant even in stretches of unrelated episodes. Would you consider it spoilers if I mentioned other of my favorite shows that follow this formula (that I do hope you end up reacting to down the line)?