Editing 2727: Runtime
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==Explanation== | ==Explanation== | ||
| + | {{incomplete|Created by THE XKCD CINEMATIC UNIVERSE - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}} | ||
The comic presents two separate conversations, which boil down to the same premise and yet differing conclusions. In one, a particular TV show is being watched, in the other a film franchise. | The comic presents two separate conversations, which boil down to the same premise and yet differing conclusions. In one, a particular TV show is being watched, in the other a film franchise. | ||
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While it is finding its feet, a new season of a television show (perhaps commissioned, on the back of some perceived interest in the story it will tell, for a dozen or so episodes of around 50 minutes - i.e. about ten hours) is not necessarily going to get everything right in the writing style, the slant it puts on the subject matter, the cast of characters or other production values. Or at least not for mass appeal to the everyman, for whom [[Cueball]] is the archetypal representative. Nevertheless, many series ''do'' get further seasons and greatly improve. [[White Hat]] (the optimist, and clearly won over by the production) is on the way to successfully convincing Cueball to view a particular series, or perhaps to continue to watch it after becoming jaded by its early failure to live up to its hype. It sounds reasonable to Cueball, just from his friend's recommendation, to get over the hump and appreciate it "when it gets good". | While it is finding its feet, a new season of a television show (perhaps commissioned, on the back of some perceived interest in the story it will tell, for a dozen or so episodes of around 50 minutes - i.e. about ten hours) is not necessarily going to get everything right in the writing style, the slant it puts on the subject matter, the cast of characters or other production values. Or at least not for mass appeal to the everyman, for whom [[Cueball]] is the archetypal representative. Nevertheless, many series ''do'' get further seasons and greatly improve. [[White Hat]] (the optimist, and clearly won over by the production) is on the way to successfully convincing Cueball to view a particular series, or perhaps to continue to watch it after becoming jaded by its early failure to live up to its hype. It sounds reasonable to Cueball, just from his friend's recommendation, to get over the hump and appreciate it "when it gets good". | ||
| − | + | On the other hand, many television shows achieve their highest popularity in their first season. The first season is usually when unknown stars achieve their breakout and become popular, when mysteries and cliffhangers that capture the imagination are introduced, and when interesting plotlines that engender viewer interest develop (often which two members of a love triangle will fall for each other). While the next few seasons are often considered the "golden age" of such series (as all of the interest is fresh, plot lines and mysteries are not yet resolved, and actors and writers are in their stride and not yet burned out) it is rare for a popular or well regarded TV series to have a first season that is considered bad. | |
| − | + | A series of films, however, is seemingly a different matter. By substituting 10+ hours of filmed-for-television with something more cinematic, the prospect of getting over the exact same scale of 'hump' in a long-running set of sequels (eight films at a not unreasonable average length of 85 minutes each would ''also'' require a bit more than ten hours of commitment), is not at all enticing. However, since the average movie runs about 131 minutes, 10 hours of TV run time (about 15 episodes each with 40 minutes of show - the 40 minutes being the one hour time slot minus commercials) would only last the same as about four and a half movies, not eight. TV shows on modern streaming services such as Netflix tend to be longer (55 minutes per episode) but also fewer episodes per season (10-13) and so are still only as long as four to five movies. Watching four or so movies seems much less of a burden, many modern film franchises (among them the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Star Wars, Star Trek and the Harry Potter series) have successfully gone well beyond four films. | |
| − | * A television series that gets good can be expected to run for at least five seasons, whereas nine movies is already quite long for a movie series. | + | |
| − | + | The real reasons for this difference are that: | |
| + | * A television series that gets good can be expected to run for at least five seasons, whereas nine movies is already quite long for a movie series. Sitting through eight bad movies in order to understand two or three good ones is not a worthwhile tradeoff. | ||
* The longer run-time of a movie generally means that a film series will focus on one specific plotline in each entry, whereas televised series are or can be more episodic (the characters are involved in a different situation each time) and can also interweave plotlines throughout individual episodes or episode arcs, so that less time per episode is spent on plots viewers dislike. | * The longer run-time of a movie generally means that a film series will focus on one specific plotline in each entry, whereas televised series are or can be more episodic (the characters are involved in a different situation each time) and can also interweave plotlines throughout individual episodes or episode arcs, so that less time per episode is spent on plots viewers dislike. | ||
* In the US, a film typically begins shooting from a completed script with only minor revisions conducted once filming starts; whereas in television, writers are usually engaged throughout most of a series' season and can more quickly change unpopular elements in future episodes. | * In the US, a film typically begins shooting from a completed script with only minor revisions conducted once filming starts; whereas in television, writers are usually engaged throughout most of a series' season and can more quickly change unpopular elements in future episodes. | ||
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The title text talks of the long-running British TV series that is ''{{w|Doctor Who}}''. The original Doctor Who, running from 1963-1989 was typically low budget, for its time and locality, though initially considered cutting edge in many ways. Compared to more modern classics, and especially Hollywood sci-fi, it would be noticeably not as good. The revived series (2005-present) has a much higher production budget and is typically much more aligned to modern viewers, who may willfully ignore or not even know of the older episodes. Someone just starting to watching Doctor Who sequentially from the ''very'' first season (broadcast in 1963) would have to watch hundreds of episodes (26 'seasons', by some counts) before the series "gets good" to modern eyes, if the {{tvtropes|GrowingTheBeard|"good" point}} is the 2005 series revival, or even quite a few to reach any given key point in the original run. Thus Doctor Who is considered to be its own thing, and unlike other shows where the fans recommend you suffer through a poor first season to enjoy improvement in subsequent seasons, {{w|Whovians}} might recommend potential new fans to begin with the 2005 reboot (technically the 27th season), which was produced to appeal to all new-comers without even necessarily any cultural knowledge of what had been broadcast up until the long hiatus a decade and a half before. | The title text talks of the long-running British TV series that is ''{{w|Doctor Who}}''. The original Doctor Who, running from 1963-1989 was typically low budget, for its time and locality, though initially considered cutting edge in many ways. Compared to more modern classics, and especially Hollywood sci-fi, it would be noticeably not as good. The revived series (2005-present) has a much higher production budget and is typically much more aligned to modern viewers, who may willfully ignore or not even know of the older episodes. Someone just starting to watching Doctor Who sequentially from the ''very'' first season (broadcast in 1963) would have to watch hundreds of episodes (26 'seasons', by some counts) before the series "gets good" to modern eyes, if the {{tvtropes|GrowingTheBeard|"good" point}} is the 2005 series revival, or even quite a few to reach any given key point in the original run. Thus Doctor Who is considered to be its own thing, and unlike other shows where the fans recommend you suffer through a poor first season to enjoy improvement in subsequent seasons, {{w|Whovians}} might recommend potential new fans to begin with the 2005 reboot (technically the 27th season), which was produced to appeal to all new-comers without even necessarily any cultural knowledge of what had been broadcast up until the long hiatus a decade and a half before. | ||
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| + | Furthermore, it is not uncommon to recommend that even within the 2005 reboot of Doctor who, that new viewers don't start at the beginning (season 1 or 27 if counting the original series), but instead start at season 5 (or 31 including the originals), when the Doctor regenerated to his 11th incarnation (due to higher budgets and production values by that point, and the start of a new story arc with new characters being introduced), and later on go back to watch the earlier seasons.{{Actual citation needed|...because, come on, Ten(nant) had some iconic stuff to more than rival Matt Smith's initial term. The best reason to start with the opening of Smith's era instead was that it was a (mostly) fresh start with no hangover Companions, etc, so you didn't need to know about Rose's prior time so much. But Matt and Karen didn't start off brilliantly, so you'd still have to bear with a few 'finding their feet' episodes until it started dealing with Pandorica-level awesomeness (assuming you *liked* the Pandorica stuff, which isn't universally accepted). What I'm saying here is "horses for courses" on this *whole* paragraph, but not going to remove it.}} | ||
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| + | There is also the wrinkle that anyone wishing to start with the original run would be out of luck, seeing as many early episodes - before the late-70s - were {{w|Doctor Who missing episodes|lost forever}}. ([https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/MissingEpisode/DoctorWho TV Tropes link]). | ||
| + | The BBC didn't see any value in keeping them as they couldn't rerun them, so random episodes would be disposed of or recycled for various reasons, and those episodes are gone, making many stories incomplete. Some have been recovered because fans recorded them, or because tapes were sent to overseas stations for rebroadcast and never discarded (in fact, the ''audio'' for every single episode has been preserved) but most lost episodes remain lost. | ||
It is vague about Randall's precise opinion, but even the most dedicated fan would acknowledge that it has had a varying quality/charm/consistency/etc, according to one's personal tastes for such things. Comparing the original run (pre-Millenium, featuring seven key actors sequentially taking on the title role over more than four decades, and another for a standalone TV-movie) with the revived series (continuing the pattern with a similar number of additional title-actors in just half the time), and any number of 'show-runners' (producers, main writers, etc) is one possible point of contention, probably more suited to British viewers. Possibly, in Randall's case, it is just the (perceived) ups and downs in the more recent era, which has been more consistently screened in the US. | It is vague about Randall's precise opinion, but even the most dedicated fan would acknowledge that it has had a varying quality/charm/consistency/etc, according to one's personal tastes for such things. Comparing the original run (pre-Millenium, featuring seven key actors sequentially taking on the title role over more than four decades, and another for a standalone TV-movie) with the revived series (continuing the pattern with a similar number of additional title-actors in just half the time), and any number of 'show-runners' (producers, main writers, etc) is one possible point of contention, probably more suited to British viewers. Possibly, in Randall's case, it is just the (perceived) ups and downs in the more recent era, which has been more consistently screened in the US. | ||
==Transcript== | ==Transcript== | ||
| + | {{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}} | ||
:[Two situations are depicted between White Hat and Cueball.] | :[Two situations are depicted between White Hat and Cueball.] | ||
:[Situation 1:] | :[Situation 1:] | ||
