Long Seasons

I’ve been watching some of Star Trek: The Next Generation lately and besides continuing my realization that Star Trek is very much my jam, it’s making me realize how much I miss long seasons of television. Television used to run in consistent 22-24 episode seasons (at least in the States; shows in the UK and elsewhere often had shorter seasons for a bevy of reasons). There were, of course, exceptions — you had your miniseries or premium cable shows like Game of Thrones with its ten-episode seasons. For the most part, though, a standard television show would be picked up for 22-24 episodes, maybe 13 if it was a half season. Or you had Firefly, tragically cancelled after 14 episodes.

Oh, for a season of a television show to have 14 episodes

Somehow in the arms race for every streamer to have their Game of Thrones, short seasons have become standard. Sometimes this makes sense. A show like Stranger Things was (originally, at least) a very plot-forward, contained story and Shrinking, a television show starring Harrison Ford, definitely felt akin to a miniseries or ‘prestige’ show. But everything is short now. A quick peek at Rotten Tomatoes’ list of popular television shows reveals a list of shows on streaming, most of which are firmly in that ten-episode-season range.

And while shorter seasons do allow for a focus of material (the first season of Stranger Things remains excellent in my memory and Game of Thrones [when it was doing well] was three wonderful months of theorizing, discussion, and heartbreak), I miss shows that had, well, time. How I Met Your Mother had plenty of fun, silly episodes about the (heightened) minutiae of being a young adult. Lost’s episodes gave each character room to have their big flashback episode scene, really rounding out the cast. Community could throw every genre against the wall in its never-ending pastiches. And, of course, The Next Generation has room for episodes of all sorts. Do we want an episode about Wesley? No matter; this episode’s gonna be a Wesley episode.

This wasn’t always necessarily a good thing: There were filler episodes and unnecessary padding and episodes about Wesley. But that space of having more episodes necessitated finding a way to fill them. It’s part of why pilots were so important — they had to introduce a cast, set up a world, and demonstrate how the show would be able to sustain many seasons of stories. The pilots of Lost and Firefly are both exceptional and quickly tell you exactly what the game is going to be. Now the first episode of a show is less a pilot and more the inciting incident of a miniseries or, well, a episode of a show.

These shorter seasons are strongly felt in new Star Trek. Lower Decks and Strange New Worlds are both great shows, but also burdened by having such short runs. Strange New Worlds, despite its ensemble cast and willingness to have fun with some episodes, is burdened by needing to serve its overarching arc and its preciousness of time leaving little space to give that ensemble cast their individual days in the sun. Meanwhile Lower Decks has its delightful blend of truly excellent science fiction and random nonsense episodes, but only getting ten episodes is a damn shame. 

Somehow, we’ve come to the place where Firefly’s 14 episode season feels absurdly generous.

Note: This is all, of course, discounting the absolutely awful effects these shorter seasons are having on the television industry. That part really, really sucks too.