Difference between revisions of "Talk:2727: Runtime"

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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I think the title text is less about the number of seasons of Doctor Who and more about the fact that people tend to suggest you start with the 9th Doctor. In other words, they're suggesting you skip the first 8 Doctors. [[User:Mrgvsv|Mrgvsv]] ([[User talk:Mrgvsv|talk]]) 15:22, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
 
I think the title text is less about the number of seasons of Doctor Who and more about the fact that people tend to suggest you start with the 9th Doctor. In other words, they're suggesting you skip the first 8 Doctors. [[User:Mrgvsv|Mrgvsv]] ([[User talk:Mrgvsv|talk]]) 15:22, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
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I interpreted the title text as saying that, although Doctor Who would by any reasonable metric (consistency of writing, consistency of worldbuilding, how compelling and/or realistic and/or complex villains are, plausibility, philosophical resonance, CGI, etc.) be rated as 'bad' or 'unlikely to be good' in almost any season, it is nonetheless good for the vast majority of it.  But I don't want to put that in unless somebody else reads it that way too.[[Special:Contributions/172.68.35.32|172.68.35.32]] 15:57, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

Revision as of 15:57, 21 January 2023


It has to be said that a first season of a series generally will be written as a whole season (give or take any pilot/feature-length-special that may be the heralding first episode). Whereas film sequences don't tend to be purposefully made/anticipated together (notable exceptions: Back To The Futures 2 & 3, the LOTR and (later) Hobbit trilogies, various sub-sets of Star Wars (the prequel and sequel trilogies, certainly, the OT's second and third conclusions to the story started with Ep4)). Sometimes it runs well enough to get up into high numbers of at least sufficiently similar-yet-innovating releases that satisfy the theme (the Fast And Furiouses... the whole Bond œuvre..?), though sometimes it might stutter (Highlander 2!) and may or may not actually recover. Either way, it risks becoming a made-for-TV-movie sinkhole (as Disney knows well enough), unless it was always intended to reproduce some previously successful serialisation (Tolkein's stuff, as already alluded to; J.K. Rowling's surprisingly popular product). I think, therefore that Cueball is right to more dread the effort of dealing with some multi-sequel monstrocity of a film-canon, compared to whatever degree of First Season Disservice he has suffered or heard that he must suffer before the kinks are properly ironed out in seasons 2-6. (Then it goes funny for 7, 8 and most of 9, until the story arc evolves into something that gets it to series 20 before a bit of cancel/uncancel shenanigans plague the production, spin-offs (including a prequel series and/or an animated version) take over the franchise and relegate the old stars to cameo-actors, the franchise then gets a Series: The Movie! which either does surprisingly well or surprisingly manages to upset the whole diverse fanbase in loads of differing ways... or some variation on all that.)
...but, anyway, it's not surprising. Yet it does probably qualify as an interesting point that fully deserves to be highlit or else we might never have thought of it for ousrselves, in as many words. 172.71.178.64 03:55, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

I don't think 8 moves are of about equal length to 1 season. I picked 8 random movies from the list of movies I'm planning to watch and it totaled 18¼ hours. Then looked at some series first seasons. The Mandalorian is 5½ hours, Wednesday is 6 hours, Friends is 6¼ hours, even an outlier like Dragon Ball Z is only 10½ hours. The premise of the comic probably still stands though, but can be explained by the fact that with a series it also gives the promise of more hours of good material. With movies if the first 8 are bad there might not be many good ones after that. Tharkon (talk) 04:13, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

You picked some BAD examples, though... AFAIK, Mandalorian and Wednesday are straight-to-streaming shows. STS, specialty channel, and non-North American shows (British, Australian) have particularly short seasons of 6, 8, or 10 episodes. A standard season is between 22 and 26 episodes at the very outside, usually around 24. Also, such discussions don't generally happen about half hour sitcoms & cartoons like Friends or Dragon Ball Z, most shows are hour shows (44 minutes without ads instead of 22). Quick and dirty math - rounding to 20 and 40 minute episodes, or 3 per hour and 3 per 2 hours - means you picked a weirdly short season of Friends of 18.75 episodes, their 26 episode seasons (as I recall they tended to hit 26) would be nearly 9 hours usually. Hour-long shows, using the average 24 episodes, is 16 hours. A usual average movie length these days is 2h per (used to be 1.5 until I'd say the late 90s, movies could be as short as 1:15 and rarely hit 2, but SO MANY long movies in recent decades) means 8 movies ALSO averages about 16. The math works out if you use standard, middle of the road examples - no long movies like Titanic or short seasons like streaming shows. NiceGuy1 (talk) 07:26, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
It's not just about the length, although yes, it's rare for movie series to have more than 8 movies. It's about continuity. Movies tend to be relatively stand-alone (although there are counterexamples, like LOTR) so watching 8 of them just to "get" the 9th is rarely needed. Meanwhile, with series, you usually NEED to watch the first season - or at least big part of it - to get the basic premise of the show. It's more likely you get away with skipping second one, if it actually gets better in third or fourth season (like ST:DS9, although you probably can just watch first four episodes then skip rest of first season and whole second and not miss much). -- Hkmaly (talk) 12:31, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

The runtime of most movies is O(n), but the runtime of some TV shows is O(n log n) because you have to go back for context. 162.158.2.114 04:24, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

I was surprised nobody noticed or made mention that with Doctor Who you CAN'T watch from the true beginning (not really) because of all the lost episodes from the 60s and 70s! So I added that to the explanation. I've collected every episode, but for those lost ones all I have is that they have the audio and some pictures so someone made a slideshow as a replacement, or they have the audio and someone animated a replacement (many of these replacements are shorter than an episode, though). And sometimes it isn't even full stories missing - as nearly every story spanned multiple episodes - so LOTS of stories aren't complete. So nobody can TRULY watch every episode from the beginning any more (I've done my best and got to season 3 before I couldn't find time any more). NiceGuy1 (talk) 08:07, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

Is "The original Doctor Who, running from 1963-1989 was extremely low budget, and is generally considered to be not as good as the revived series (2005-present), which has a much higher production budget and is typically much more popular with modern viewers (who mainly ignore the older episodes)" actually true? Most of the discussion I've seen is not particularly kind to the revival relative to the heyday of the third through seventh doctors. It seems like someone just made this up to fit the comic's underlying narrative. An actual citation is actually needed. I would suggest in this case that being its own thing means that the quality varies from writer to writer more than from year to year. 172.70.210.145 08:21, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

Without having read your comment, I made changes there that might help. But, really, the joke is not about Doctor Who (outside of the title text)v, and while there is much useful info to impart, the point is that it just isn't covered by the comparison and might even need to begiven a Trivia-like add-on for the detail, and leave the main bit as a "it's complicated!" to not distract..? ;)

I think the title text is less about the number of seasons of Doctor Who and more about the fact that people tend to suggest you start with the 9th Doctor. In other words, they're suggesting you skip the first 8 Doctors. Mrgvsv (talk) 15:22, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

I interpreted the title text as saying that, although Doctor Who would by any reasonable metric (consistency of writing, consistency of worldbuilding, how compelling and/or realistic and/or complex villains are, plausibility, philosophical resonance, CGI, etc.) be rated as 'bad' or 'unlikely to be good' in almost any season, it is nonetheless good for the vast majority of it. But I don't want to put that in unless somebody else reads it that way too.172.68.35.32 15:57, 21 January 2023 (UTC)