Soap Opera Elements

[Rob McCow]

One of the recurring complaints about the new series is it's incorporation of so-called 'Soap opera elements'. But I find this really hard to understand.

Wikipedia defines a 'soap opera' thus:

What differentiates a soap from other television drama programs is the open-ended nature of the narrative, with stories spanning several episodes. The defining feature that makes a program a soap opera is that it, according to Albert Moran, is "that form of television that works with a continuous open narrative. Each episode ends with a promise that the storyline is to be continued in another episode". Soap opera stories run concurrently, intersect, and lead into further developments. An individual episode of a soap opera will generally switch between several different concurrent story threads that may at times interconnect and affect one another, or may run entirely independent of each other. Each episode may feature some of the show's current storylines but not always all of them. There is some rotation of both storylines and actors so any given storyline or actor will appear in some but usually not all of a week's worth of episodes. Soap operas rarely "wrap things up" storywise, and generally avoid bringing all the current storylines to a conclusion at the same time. When one storyline ends there are always several other story threads at differing stages of development. Soap opera episodes typically end on some sort of cliffhanger.

According to this principle, the only series' of Doctor Who that have really been a soap opera are Seasons 1, 2, 18 and perhaps The Key To Time and Trial of A Timelord seasons, where every story continued into the next. But even then individual 'stories' had a distinct start and finish.

What I think people really are referring to though is the presence of families in the show that we keep returning to.

To my mind, a soap opera should feature the every-day life of normal people. Plot-lines in soaps can be outlandish, but the most succesful ones balance the occasional car crash and fight with ongoing personal drama, entirely based on day-to-day life.

This never happens in Doctor Who. When we see peoples' families, their reactions and the drama are entirely based on the Doctor or other alien influence. For example, we see Jackie's reaction to having her daughter taken forward in time by a year. We see Mrs. Jones' concern over her daughter travelling with the Doctor and Grandpa Noble's delight over Donna heading off with the Doctor.

When we revisit the families, they are always being gassed, threatened, spied on, covered with pickles etc, etc. Basically, sci-fi or adventure events that never happen in 'real life' as they would in soaps.

So having families in the show is not the same as 'soap opera elements'. Having people crying and caring for each other isn't 'soapy', I'd call that 'emotional content', part of what has made the return of the show such a success - and absolutely nothing that the show should get rid of!

Whadyathink?

[Dirk Gently]

Wouldn't a 'story arc' fit that description?

[Rob McCow]

In terms of Utopia running through to Last of The Timelords, yes, because it's an ongoing storyline with cliffhangers. The story is left totally unresolved at the end of each episode.

But with a Doctor Who-style story arc, you have things in the background rather than actual ongoing events. So just because they mention bees every now and then doesn't mean it's a continuing story.

[Andrew Curnow]

I think, though, that people are saying Doctor Who has a 'soap' element to it simply because the series now highlights the companions' 'real' lives and families, away from the Doctor. It's not really soap though is it, that's just drama (IMHO) - for a practical definition, I would say that soap tends to be a drama series where the regular cast are in a world of their own. Whereas most shows (cop, sci-fi, hospital) tend to have a mix of regulars and guest actors (eg, the regular cops investigate different criminals every week, the regular Enterprise crew beam down to a different set of aliens every week), a soap doesn't - it solely has its regular characters, and its regular locations, and because of that it tends to sometimes feel (again IMHO) that the stories are driven by "what can we do with them now?".

It's true that Who has focussed on the companions home lives this time round more than ever before (in fact, other than introductory stories, the show never did before), but I don't think it does it to excess. The problem really lies in the attempt to keep it different - now we're onto the third set of families it's perhaps inevitable that it's not easy to make it fresh and exciting. It WAS absolutely the right thing, and such an obvious thing with hindsight, in 2005 with Rose & the Tylers - whether Donna's family add anything to the mix in 2008, I suppose is a matter of opinion.