I know it's a special, but the christmas special happens each year and is a full length episode, so shouldn't it be showen under "next episode" on this site, and the API?
If you look at the episode listings & goto "Specials", you'll see all the Christmas episodes are listed in that way, including this years episode :)
Yeah I did see that, but in the API, it doesn't come under the next episode part.
So in order to find out when the next Doctor who episode is, I have to always check the specials too, incase it's a special..
I know what you mean, however a special will never be qualified as a regular episode and therefore it will never appear in ''Next Episode''. The only way to stay up to date with them is either to check your calendar so now and then or check the series regularly.
Oh, she was referring to the API? My bad :P
Yeah, we don't consider specials in the previous/next episode data because specials are usually pretty insignificant. I understand that this isn't really the same for Doctor Who, but unfortunately it's not possible to change this for a single show.
david wrote:
Yeah, we don't consider specials in the previous/next episode data because specials are usually pretty insignificant. I understand that this isn't really the same for Doctor Who, but unfortunately it's not possible to change this for a single show.
The new Sherlock episode is also a "special", which is VERY significant.
Robot chicken also has a shit-ton of specials ever, whic aren't "insignificant"
Perhaps the questions is, what kind of specials are not significant?
For instance, this Sunday, Once Upon a Time is doing some kind of special on the making of Snow White the Disney animated movie. It's not part of the series, but it has one of the actresses narrating, features scenes from the series, is airing in the series time slot, and they promoted it as part of OUaT at the end of last week's episode. Plus twice a season after breaks they do hour-long recaps, interviews with the crews, voice-over narrated scenes, etc., to bring viewers up to speed.
Are those significant or insignificant specials? It seems like it'd be useful to have them on the calendar.
There are things like the little 10-minute previews of new shows in the fall (in the U.S., at least). I wouldn't call those significant. But then again, I wouldn't call them specials, either.
Yeah, there are simply different kinds of specials. I think it would be good to allow specifying the "type of special" and tightly narrow down what can / can't be added in each type. That's a complicated topic though.. :)
Edit: yeah what David said.
Gadfly wrote:
Perhaps the questions is, what kind of specials are not significant?
For instance, this Sunday, Once Upon a Time is doing some kind of special on the making of Snow White the Disney animated movie. It's not part of the series, but it has one of the actresses narrating, features scenes from the series, is airing in the series time slot, and they promoted it as part of OUaT at the end of last week's episode. Plus twice a season after breaks they do hour-long recaps, interviews with the crews, voice-over narrated scenes, etc., to bring viewers up to speed.
Are those significant or insignificant specials? It seems like it'd be useful to have them on the calendar.
There are things like the little 10-minute previews of new shows in the fall (in the U.S., at least). I wouldn't call those significant. But then again, I wouldn't call them specials, either.
Hmm yeah. I would the OUaT special would be clased as a insignificant special as it's not part of the main series plot, whereas Sherlock and Doctor Who often are. Same goes for Downton Abbey christmas specials I think.
Maybe if you could mark them as in/significant when adding them/editing them then the API and other sites will know how to handle them.
Because at the moment we either show all specials or none at all.
Of course this begs the question if those episodes should really be classified as specials here in the first place. The fact that an episode is named "Christmas Special" doesn't necessarily mean we have to classify it as special.
Quoting the current policy for reference: "For most shows, deciding whether an episode should be classified as special is fairly easy: if the premise of an episode significally differs from normal episodes and if you can skip it without missing out on any story arcs , it's a special. For example, a scripted show airing a "recap" episode at the beginning of the season that only consists out of fragments from earlier episodes. Or an episode using the same actors as normal, but with a script completely unrelated to the show's regular plot or arcs. In general, anything announced as "preview", "sneak peak", "special", "event" should be regarded as a special. "
Except the Doctor Who Christmas Specials are announced as... well, "specials." But they also don't differ significantly from normal episodes and often involve story arcs. That's where the confusion sets in.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06tl32t
"EXTRA: The Christmas Special… Watch the 'Next Time' trailer!"
The current policy does already contain a loophole: "In general, anything announced as "preview", "sneak peak", "special", "event" should be regarded as a special."
I don't watch Doctor Who, but everything I've seen indicates that the Christmas Specials are really pretty much regular episodes. Episodes that you won't want to miss as a follower of the show.
IMO it would be fine to declare - on a case by case basis for a show - that such episodes should not actually be marked as special here, but as a regular episode part of the season. It would really make more sense and keep the division between regular episode & special as "simple" as must-see vs can-easily-be-skipped.
I welcome everyone's considerations on that proposal!
david wrote:
The current policy does already contain a loophole: "In general, anything announced as "preview", "sneak peak", "special", "event" should be regarded as a special."
I don't watch Doctor Who, but everything I've seen indicates that the Christmas Specials are really pretty much regular episodes. Episodes that you won't want to miss as a follower of the show.
IMO it would be fine to declare - on a case by case basis for a show - that such episodes should not actually be marked as special here, but as a regular episode part of the season. It would really make more sense and keep the division between regular episode & special as "simple" as must-see vs can-easily-be-skipped.
I welcome everyone's considerations on that proposal!
I am completely against this, we would have a for example Doctor Who 6x09 episode here on tvmaze that no other site in the whole wide world has, because it does not exists, a special is a special, even the BBC treats it and marks it as a special, the point that it is important for the storyline does NOT make it a regular episode.
cheers
Juan
Well, if two staff members can't agree on the definition of a Special, whether must-see means it should be a Special or disqualifies it... imagine the confusion for the rest of us. :)
I tend to agree with Juan, that if the network says that it's a "special," then it's a special. I'm not sure I follow his last sentence, though. "the point that it is important for the storyline does NOT make it a regular episode. If regular episodes are important to the storyline, and a DW Christmas special is important to the storyline... shouldn't it be treated like a regular episode? As least the Doctor Who specials are as important to the storyline as regular episodes, but they're neither more nor less important. About the same, really.
I suspect it's one of those things that no matter what you decide, a lot of people will be unhappy. IMO, the best way to treat it would be to let it be marked as a Special, but in no way should that effect Next Episode links, or calendar displays, or the episode list, or whatever. Let people fight over how to mark it, Normal or Special, but don't let that make it turn invisible as far as any displays.
I agree with Gadfly and Juan on this one. If the network deems it a special then that's what we should list it as. It doesn't matter if it's important to the storyline or not, if it's listed as a special by the network then that's it, anything else is bound to end up being a complete mess to handle.
The problem is if "Special" displays weird or not at all somewhere. That's the problem we ran in to on TVRage. We'd mark something as a Special, and someone would complain, 'Hey, that throws off the episode count, or the season order, or the API, or something."
I think we should mark it as a special, but we need to find something to categorize what sort of special, so we can specify them more and maybe can add this Christmas special to the API but other sort of specials not for instance.
That all sounds horribly complicated. ;)
Al I'd really like to see is the system add something at the end like (Special). Then, when I bring up the episode list for the current season of Doctor Who, it shows me the 13 episodes this season. The first twelve are normal, the 13th one has (Special) at the end. Or has a S to the left. Or something. Some kind of Special indicator can appear on the episode page itself, too.
Right now if I go to the Doctor Who episode page:
http://www.tvmaze.com/shows/210/doctor-who/episode...
I have to click on Specials or otherwise scroll down to the bottom of the page to see the upcoming Christmas special.
I wouldn't mind if webisodes were separated out on their own, and I seem to recall that was at one time being discussed on a different thread. Then they wouldn't be mixed in with specials.
To put it bluntly, right now the current system of displaying Specials sucks as far as TVMaze itself is concerned. It doesn't sound any better when it comes to API.