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Multi-series with these long arcs only seemed to start with Babylon 5. Star Trek Next Gen was quite old school and so was voyager where stories were mostly standalone. X-Files had threads of an arc that split the series into one-offs and mythos episodes. Series where every episode fed into the next requiring a 'last time on...' Were popularised by Buffy and similar. These series that are entirely arc driven and require dedication from the viewer I think was done almost punishingly by Lost, but BSG and others like Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones have made it far more the normal expectation for a series. I don't think if Star Trek comes back now it could do the weekly episode format any more. It's the ease of access with home video and online/demand viewing being so cheap that really allows for it. 20 years ago when VHS was expensive and stuff was rarely repeated, it would be difficult to make many series that punished people for missing the only showing. Further, I think audiences are just more demanding now, they want complex immersive stuff like Lost, Ganes of Thrones and Breaking Bad.

I don't. I like my TV to be a one or two hour piece of entertainment that is complete in itself. There are still plenty of shows like that, e.g. Midsomer Murders, of course.

Soap had the "last week on 'Soap'" bit at the start of each show.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap_(TV_series)

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
Multi-series with these long arcs only seemed to start with Babylon 5. Star Trek Next Gen was quite old school and so was voyager where stories were mostly standalone. X-Files had threads of an arc that split the series into one-offs and mythos episodes. Series where every episode fed into the next requiring a 'last time on...' Were popularised by Buffy and similar. These series that are entirely arc driven and require dedication from the viewer I think was done almost punishingly by Lost, but BSG and others like Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones have made it far more the normal expectation for a series. I don't think if Star Trek comes back now it could do the weekly episode format any more. It's the ease of access with home video and online/demand viewing being so cheap that really allows for it. 20 years ago when VHS was expensive and stuff was rarely repeated, it would be difficult to make many series that punished people for missing the only showing. Further, I think audiences are just more demanding now, they want complex immersive stuff like Lost, Ganes of Thrones and Breaking Bad.

Some of the articles I've read on this subject have suggested that this comes and goes in much the same way as fashions do. Obviously we can point to some of our favorite shows and say, "see season/series spanning plot arcs have always been here!" and you'd be right. At the same time some of us can also point to some of our favorite shows from the same time period and say, "See, plot arcs spanning an entire series/season are a new thing!" and you'd be sort of right.

Back when Friends and Frasier were at their height in popularity, it was considered the "norm" for most episodes to be not tied to each other in any meaningful way. Sure you'd have the occasional 2 part episodes, but they were more an exception. Even Scrubs is barely sequential or tied together because you have some vague "passage of time" in between seasons.

I suspect that at somepoint in the future we will return to the "one off" stories in the majority of TV shows.

 TheAuldGrump wrote:
And fewer Lens Flares!

What's wrong with lense flares?