Pendell

@pendell

Current Hyperfixation: Wizard of Oz

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I use outdated technology just for fun, listen to crappy music, and watch a lot of horror movies. Expect posts about These Things. I talk a lot.

Check tags like Star Trek Archive and Media Piracy to find things I share for others.

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Pendell @pendell5/14/2023, 5:48 AM

Kind of interesting how some shows, like Star Trek, utilize and display episode names prominently, to the point most fans refer to episodes by name rather than season and episode number; whereas other shows simply don't bother with them at all.

Fans of Twin Peaks have to just say "Episode 8" when they're referring to that episode. It was given a name after the fact for the blu-ray release, but posthumous episode names always feel more like "we needed to put some kind of text on the box/menus" rather than serious names, and since they're nowhere in the episodes at all, nobody uses them anyways.

#pendell rambling #tv shows

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in reply to @pendell's post:

Millennium @milliesquilly5/14/2023, 5:59 AM

I wonder if with Star Trek it comes from both the very episodic nature of original Trek, plus the sci-fi short story vibe, where a title for each story is sort of expected. Whereas something like Twin Peaks is much more serialised so it's like "chapter 1, chapter 2" and so on, maybe?

Pendell @pendell5/14/2023, 6:43 AM

That's true for the specific examples I used but I imagine there's plenty of shows that go in either direction using either approach. Though there's episodic and then there's episodic, like I don't think NCIS has episode names but that's because it's just Infinite Content Machine.

Millennium @milliesquilly5/14/2023, 6:49 AM

Yeah, I feel like with trek there's sort of the vibe of an individual episode being an individual work that needs and deserves a name. Like you need to be able to say "ahh yes that's in The City On The Edge Of Forever" or some such.

There's definitely a fair amount of serialised works that use episode names (most anime, I think) but it feels like they're not used as much to refer to them maybe?

John Colagioia @jcolag5/14/2023, 12:02 PM

My impression has been that every show uses episode titles, on the chance that something becomes so well-received that they want to submit it for awards. I have to imagine that names show up in the pitch stage, too, so that they're not talking internally about "Maude's third idea from Wednesday." Only certain shows communicate those titles to the audience, and maybe it has something to do with artifice? Like, a lot of shows want to bring you into their world, whereas Star Trek typically presents itself as something like a stage play.

I remember that there was a point in the '80s when TV guides in newspapers would slap titles on an inconsistent selection of episodes every night, probably as filler for when the description ran short. And as you point out, it became a lot more apparent when studios started releasing TV shows on VHS, since no non-fanatical person would "watch season 25, episodes 3, 9, and parts of 11" of a show.

If there's a huge exception, it's probably soap operas. I don't think that they have a Daytime Emmy for "best episode," and they need to get episodes out the door every day with enough clarity that someone taking care of kids and doing chores can also follow the story. At that point, titles probably don't matter at all. (Daily children's television doesn't seem to have titles, either. Even on DVD, the titles are things like "episode 25136.")

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