Shoulda Been a Two-Parter

[JVTruman]

Wasn't Worf on the outpost that got attacked at Narendra III? And doesn't it get destroyed in the 'Yesterday's Enterprise' timeline? If that's so, wouldn't he be dead? If I'm missing something, please tell me what it is.

[Nate the Great]

Well, "destroyed" might be an exaggeration. Totally decimated, maybe. There could be rubble left behind for kids to hide under. Besides, what's a little retcon between friends?

[Burt]

Originally Posted by JVTruman

Wasn't Worf on the outpost that got attacked at Narendra III? And doesn't it get destroyed in the 'Yesterday's Enterprise' timeline? If that's so, wouldn't he be dead? If I'm missing something, please tell me what it is.

No, Worf was at Khitomer. The place from the Movie. Thats the other one that got attacked....
You know I'm thinking...Klingon Outposts? Not safe places to be...

[Nate the Great]

This reminds me of an old comment by somebody along the lines of "Klingon civilians? Huh?" I know, I know, not every citizen of the Empire can serve on kickbutt-class Birds of Prey, but still...

However, I suppose that every Empire/Federation/Alliance/Collective/Continuum has to have border outposts, just to make sure that no one abuses the imaginary boundarys (too much... )

[Nate the Great]

Thread, arise!

Jim Wright of Delta Blues said in his review of Tuvix that he wouldn't have minded if that episode had been a two-parter. Ditto for The '37s.

Mention should also be made of the confusion some have over why Birthright wasn't two separate episodes. The two plots were almost completely disjointed, so why did they have to overlap over two episodes?

[evay]

ENT's "Home" really should have been two parts. Let's see a frightened Earth recovering from the Xindi attack, let's see all of Archer's debriefing by the Vulcans and Starfleet, let's have Trip return to his parents' house (they're not dead, and he has two more siblings!) and grieve and be comforted.

And speaking of families, why didn't anyone besides T'Pol, whose planet was not attacked by the Xindi, go to visit theirs? Even if Malcolm and his parents weren't speaking, he still has a sister. Hoshi's parents are still around. Or even, gods forbid, some of the lower-decks folks (Rostov, Hess, Kelso).

But no, it's more important to waste time on Evil Gargoyle Alien Nazis and time-travel. Or Orion slave girls. Or a spectacularly improbable group of xenophobes trying to take over the world, or something.

[Zeke]

Hey, I loved "Storm Front". And the Terra Prime two-parter had the Mayor from Buffy. "Bound" I'll grant you.

I must have missed this topic the first time. It's an interesting question, and not an easy one to answer. When I like a one-part episode, one of the reasons is usually how effectively it tells its story. But nobody wants a bad episode turned into a two-parter.

That said, there's one that springs to mind immediately: the BSG S4 midseason cliffhanger, "Revelations". I talked about this in the review thread, but basically it tried to cover way too much ground in one hour, and wound up glossing over some very important details. The same is true of the followup, "Sometimes a Great Notion," though to a lesser extent. I could also name any number of Farscape episodes. You have to see how fast-paced that show is to believe it.

But as a rule, I'm with comic writer Marc Guggenheim, who said this about his great run on the short-lived Bart Allen FLASH title:

It is fun to think about what might have been - honestly, I would've loved to have spent a whole issue on what I did on those final three pages of #13. That's where the real drama is. But I made a very specific decision when I started writing comics - I always wanted to be criticized for trying to do too much in any given issue than trying to do too little. I always write with all the complaints of the reader in mind - like a lot of them, I hate decompression. My goal is always to pack as much story as I can into as few pages as possible.

("Decompression" means anything by Brian Michael Bendis anything by Warren Ellis except Nextwave this.)

[Wowbagger]

Generally, I prefer one-parters by far, particularly as we get later into Trek and the cliffhangers seem more and more artificial. So, counter-posting: Shoulda Been A One-Parter:

Scorpion
Species 8472 would have been a lot scarier if they'd only been seen for a second or two, discussed only in the vaguest terms, and never infected Kim with the Martian Death Flu. All we need to establish is: the Borg are losing; Voyager can help; let's have an alliance. Do that early and then focus like a laser on the J/C conflict, which is the heart and soul of the episode and - in case you missed it - is wonderful. Oh, and Seven, too, but she's already at the center of the J/C fight, so she'll get screentime in any event.

Flesh and Blood
The argument against doing this in one part is that only in the first, slower-paced hour does Iden get fleshed out enough for the audience to understand and sympathize with him. The counter-argument is that Iden goes completely messianic crazy for no convincing reason in the second hour, so why bother with all the development in the first?

Birthright
Two disconnected stories already live here. Easily the most pointless two-parter ever.

Dark Frontier
Seven didn't even end up back with the Borg until the seventh act, did she? Interweave a slimmed-down final four acts with those (canonically preposterous but storytellingly compelling) flashback scenes on the S.S. Raven, and you've got yourself a much stronger episode.

Gambit
I usually remember this as a one-part episode, until I see an episode list.

Unification
Cut all of part one except the Picard/Sarek scene. Bam. So much better with more Nimoy by percentage.

Image in the Sand/Shadows and Symbols
The shorter this episode is, the less opportunity for the series to reveal that Ben Sisko is part-Prophet. But... maybe this isn't a fair entry on my list. Not because it's a good two-parter (it juggles too much, including that bizarre and sadly unfulfilled Benny Russell flashback), but because it may not be a two-parter at all. One could easily argue that every episode in DS9's seventh season forms a single enormous storyline that should really be taken as one contiguous multi-parter.

Shockwave
Cut Part II. Yeah, you heard me.

Storm Front
More Enterprise blowing stuff up in the sky over Manhattan. Less alien Nazis. More human Nazis. Less Daniels/Silik. (More Daniels/Silik Foe Yay.) Or, if you insist on doing it as a two-parter, please do try to make the end of the Temporal Cold War make some kind of sense, and have some kind of revelation and/or characterization that allows us to sympathize with Silik when he dies. I wanted to care; I really did!

Incidentally, on what possible grounds could anyone claim to have liked "Storm Front"? As you know, I am the opposite of an ENT-basher, and I am a huge fan of Season 4. But "Storm Front" was tremendous, boring fluff. I admit, looking back, I smile widely at the memory of Enterprise battling it out over Manhattan, but the rest of that episode just really dragged for me. So, Zeke... what gives? I'd love to love that ep if I can.