Jumping The Shark

[MacNimon]

You know the moment. That moment when you just know that it's downhill from here onwards...that your favourite series has already reached it's peak, and will never be better. You've just watched that moment which confirms to you that the series will never be the same again. The moment when it "jumps the shark".

So this thread is simply to discuss when any of our favourite series jumped the shark, if ever. Any series, any genre...cult tv, comedy, soaps...you name it. As this forum is primarily a Doctor Who forum, I'll kick us off with our favourite series....

So when, in your opinion, did Doctor Who jump the shark? Or did it ever?

[Pip Madeley]

Doctor Who's jumped the shark on many occasions, but it's never for good...

[Dave Lewis]

The Cave Of Skulls.

[MacNimon]

Doctor Who's jumped the shark on many occasions, but it's never for good...

Quite right! While it quickly recovered from the Graham Williams era, imo the time when the series really jumped was Season 24. Episode 1 of Time And The Rani, to be precise. While Season 23 was a disappointment, Season 24 was a disaster and basically Seasons 25 and 26 were a case of damage limitation, an attempt to rebuild the series damaged reputation. Even the improvement seen over the course of these 2 seasons didn't exactly endear the public much, rather it was the long absence of the series from tour screens followed by a decent Paul McGann performance in the TVM (even though the film itself met a mixed response) which helped salvage the series reputation. And as we all know, it was to be another 7 years before it was felt that the time was right to relaunch the series.

But still, eventually the series did recover. But in some people's opinion, 2005 was when Doctor Who jumped the shark...

[Matthew T]

I think Doctor Who jumped the shark when K9 arrived - after that the ratio of classics to simply average stories nosedives.

Not until Rose did it recover fully.

[Perry Vale]

While Season 23 was a disappointment, Season 24 was a disaster and basically Seasons 25 and 26 were a case of damage limitation, an attempt to rebuild the series damaged reputation....

I'm curious as to how you decide it was a disaster? Season 24 got better viewing figures than Season 23, how is that "a disaster"?

[Milky Tears]

Doctor Who jumped the shark as soon as that talentless Canadian hit these shores and raped my mum's childhood.

[SiHart]

It never has. There's been dodgy stories all the way through, but it's always picked itself up, as Pip said. There's never been such a prolonged run of awful stories that have made me stop watching, and IMO, all the so called nadirs have made some of the most entertaining stories.

The problem is the age old one- everyone has a different idea of what Doctor Who should be like... the main problem with that is that isn't only one thing, only one style... its many different styles and some of them appeal more than others. My love of Season17 and Seasons 18 could be an example of that. The tones of those seasons couldn't be more different, but I love them both. There's room for that.
That's why it's never jumped the shark, its simply evolved. People don't like change.

Si xx

[Stephen Morgan]

As Si says, and I couldn't have put it better myself.
There were times in the series history when I felt that the stories have been utter drivel, and wondered why, myself included, people still watched it. But it's always picked itself up and given us one hell of a classic story. The series has evolved a lot in its time, it's had to to survive. And for all the people who hate the current incarnation, who's to say that had the series continued after 1989 what we are getting now isn't what the show would have evolved into anyway.
Does that make sense?

[WhiteCrow]

Torchwood ... with the sex gas alien!

[Andrew Curnow]

"EastEnders" - when they killed off Arthur Fowler

"Emmerdale Farm" - when the plane crashed

[Jonno]

Grange Hill - the 1990 series - flash new titles and theme music that had no resemblance to the original, plus the death of Danny Kendall and departure of Mr Bronson the season before. It wouldn't be long before Mrs McCluskey went either. I stopped watching after this series.

X Files - S6 when they switched production base from Vancouver to Los Angeles. Coincided with a) too many "clever" episodes trying to show how clever they were and b) the ongoing "mythology" episodes becoming far too complicated to follow.

Only Fools and Horses - after the superb 1996 trilogy. It was a big mistake to bring it back for three more (2001-03) without Uncle Albert and Mike (both actors had passed away). Very few laughs in these three stories.

[Dave Tudor]

I always thought 'jumping the shark' meant that a series does something so ridiculous, so far-fteched, that it loses any credibility that it may have had, in reference to the 'Happy Days' episode in which the Fonz literally jumped over a shark on water skis?

Grange Hill - the 1990 series - flash new titles and theme music that had no resemblance to the original, plus the death of Danny Kendall and departure of Mr Bronson the season before. It wouldn't be long before Mrs McCluskey went either. I stopped watching after this series.

Grange Hill really jumped the shark when it featured a daft storyline in the mid-nineties in which an asteroid was about to hit the school - they even had a cliffhanger! I'm not making this up!

[Andrew Curnow]

In the interests of fair play, I have to say that the asteroid 'plot' was only in the first episode of the new series - some newspaper reported that an asteroid was going to come very close to earth, so some of the boys took that to mean it would crash into the school. At the end, the computers all went mad (flashing something like 'asteroid hit' I think) but because of some whizzkid's interference, not an asteroid. It was a bit daft, but it wasn't what you would really call a plot.

As you can tell, I didn't stop watching at the same time as Jonno... I agree, though, that the 1990 season was a huge plummet in quality from the year before, and although the series did pick itself up, it took at least three or four seasons.

[Alex]

I always thought 'jumping the shark' meant that a series does something so ridiculous, so far-fteched, that it loses any credibility that it may have had, in reference to the 'Happy Days' episode in which the Fonz literally jumped over a shark on water skis?

That's the official version, yeah, but I think the phrase has changed just to mean when a series has lost it a fair bit these days. But I could be wrong.

I think The X-Files really lost it for me at the end of season 7, there were still some good episodes for me during S.6 and S.7 (though I agree that the mythology side of things got far too complicated during these seasons), but when Mulder went part time and they bought in Robert Patrick, I struggled to maintain interest. I still watched the show most weeks, but it wasn't really worth doing so, especially considering the ending...grrr...

And okay, here's a more difficult one for me...I should stress that for about seven years I LOVED The Simpsons, and hated seeing it begin to decline...For me there are a fair few dodgy episodes in seasons 8 and 9, but it's the Tommaco episode (where the family go to live on Grandpa's old farm, and grow a new vegetable which is a combination of tomato and nicotine) when I thought it had really jumped the shark and lost it. It times in with when they made Homer borderline retarded, which really upsets. I was watching the Be Sharps episode last night and for me it really shows how much the show changes. That episodes filled with so many great gags, lots of subtle ones too, but by the Tommaco episode it's just silly lunacy, with all of the characters becoming charicatures...

[Andrew Curnow]

I'm not au fait which episodes of "The Simpsons" come from which seasons, but I would agree it's not as good as it was - so 'quite some time before episode 300' is when I would say it jumped the shark. However, although agreed, the Be-Sharps is a superb episode, I also quite like the Tommaco one. "Duel, satisfaction, coming through, challenge."

[Perry Vale]

The X-Files "jumped the shark" in the S9 episode called......"Jumping The Shark".

[Anthony Williams]

the Star Trek franchise jumped the shark when they brought the Borg into every other episode of Voyager...

Ant x

[MacNimon]

I'm curious as to how you decide it was a disaster? Season 24 got better viewing figures than Season 23, how is that "a disaster"?

I suppose I should have added those magic words 'in my opinion' here!

But basically I'm going by my own personal experience here. Yes, it may have got higher ratings than Season 23 (which considering the overall standard of that season isn't something worth shouting about)(imo) but it generally wasn't very well received. Yes, I know that many fans hold the McCoy era in high regard, but the general public doesn't. I'm not a great fan of the era myself, although admittedly it's not as bad as I originally thought, and there are a number of excellent stories in it...but whether it's at work, or down the pub, for many years (and still nowadays) when the conversation turned to Doctor Who and Sylvester McCoy, typical comments were "pathetic", "the worst Doctor Who ever", "how did he ever get the part?", "that was when I really stopped watching the series" and "he was shite!" So in my area in the West of Scotland, not a million miles away from Sylvester's home town of Dunoon, he wasn't particularly well received!

PS none of the above comments were made up, and none of them were mine...I actually tried to stand up for him...to a point! But it's hard to be convincing when you're not his greatest fan to begin with....

Anyway, my point was that imo this was when the series really jumped...while Seasons 25 & 26 showed improvement, it wasn't until the new series was broadcast that the memory of those last few years were finally laid to rest. For the most part, people now talk about the old series good times rather than it's last few years...

[Dave Lewis]

Grange Hill - the 1990 series - flash new titles and theme music that had no resemblance to the original, plus the death of Danny Kendall and departure of Mr Bronson the season before. It wouldn't be long before Mrs McCluskey went either. I stopped watching after this series.

I dunno about this... I think it had a few more good years after the change to the (in my opinion superior ) new titles and theme....

X Files - S6 when they switched production base from Vancouver to Los Angeles. Coincided with a) too many "clever" episodes trying to show how clever they were and b) the ongoing "mythology" episodes becoming far too complicated to follow.

I think it happened a year earlier, actually... season five, set before but recorded after the movie, is pretty dire in places. Thankfully, the series actually jumped back over the shark for seasons eight and nine. I think that Doggett and Reyes could quite happily have carried the show on for a few more years.

Only Fools and Horses - after the superb 1996 trilogy. It was a big mistake to bring it back for three more (2001-03) without Uncle Albert and Mike (both actors had passed away). Very few laughs in these three stories.

Absolutely. They were pointless, mainly humourless and actually quite offensive, in some ways. The fact that Mike was supposedly in prison for embezzlement was a bit insulting to the character and to the late Kenneth MacDonald... Albert's funeral was tasteless and unfunny, too. But that was nothing compared to the dodgy let's-laugh-at-the-silly-foreigner "Gary!" stuff in the second one. The third one was crap, too. The BBC, John Sullivan, David Jason... who to blame for this? Or is it us, the great British public, for wanting more of a good thing?

[Perry Vale]

I suppose I should have added those magic words 'in my opinion' here!

Ah, right.

But basically I'm going by my own personal experience here. Yes, it may have got higher ratings than Season 23 (which considering the overall standard of that season isn't something worth shouting about)(imo) but it generally wasn't very well received. Yes, I know that many fans hold the McCoy era in high regard, but the general public doesn't. I'm not a great fan of the era myself, although admittedly it's not as bad as I originally thought, and there are a number of excellent stories in it...but whether it's at work, or down the pub, for many years (and still nowadays) when the conversation turned to Doctor Who and Sylvester McCoy, typical comments were "pathetic", "the worst Doctor Who ever", "how did he ever get the part?", "that was when I really stopped watching the series" and "he was shite!" So in my area in the West of Scotland, not a million miles away from Sylvester's home town of Dunoon, he wasn't particularly well received!
...

Funny, I hear all those things about Colin Baker, normally preceeded by "the one in the disgusting outfit". Fair enough, I've heard some of those things about McCoy, although normally when pursued further, I've normally found that the person saying it hasn't actually ever watched him in the part. Probably because they'd switched off after the one in the disgusting outfit.....

[Ralph]

Doctor Who
"in my opinion" it was "Seeds of Doom" - that was the pinnacle after which things would gradually descend. There was some excellent stuff still to come but this was for me the switchover point.

Space 1999
Start of Season 2 - the two seasons are like night and day.

Survivors
Start of Season 2 but it was still great to watch.

more later

[Wayne]

Thankfully, the series actually jumped back over the shark for seasons eight and nine. I think that Doggett and Reyes could quite happily have carried the show on for a few more years.

I tend to agree with Dave re. X-Files. IMO, The decline started in S5, & became more pronounced in S6, hitting it's lowest in S7, But made a great comeback during S8, & peaking at S9!

Doctor Who is a more difficult one, as there are many fine stories throughout the whole series, But if i had to say something more definitive, i'd say that i'm pretty happy with everything up to & including 'Destiny of the Daleks'.
...ish.

[Rob McCow]

Doctor Who
"in my opinion" it was "Seeds of Doom" - that was the pinnacle after which things would gradually descend. There was some excellent stuff still to come but this was for me the switchover point.

Really, Ralph? I'd have thought you'd have switched off 24 minutes and 32 seconds into part 6 of Planet of The Spiders.

Hmm. Perhaps each Doctor jumped the shark, but in different directions?

Hartnell - Went downhill due to illness after Celestial Toymaker.
Troughton - Things got ropey after The Dominators.
Pertwee - Held out good until Carnival of Monsters.
Tom Baker - Illness again, after Meglos. Although the budget ran out during part four of The Armageddon Factor.
Peter Davison - Reverse shark jumper, everything got good after Terminus.
Colin Baker - Er...
McCoy - Reverse jumper, starting with Dragonfire.
McGann - everything after he sat up in the hospital bed was a waste of time.
Eccleston - Backwards from Dalek.
Tennant - The Runaway Bride could be the turning point!
Grant - Reverse jumper, it was really good after the line 'Don't worry about the sign!'
The New Adventures - Pretty blatantly everything after No Future was trash.
Big Finish - the rot set in with Axis of Insanity.
The Ultimate Adventure - it was never the same after Pertwee left.
EDAs - Sabbath.
PDAs - The Celestial Toymaker story was pretty much the end.
DWM Comic Strip - Jumped at Voyager, jumped back when it moved to colour, jumped into the dustbin with the arrival of Eccleston.
Pat Gorman - after he appeared on both sides of a gunfight in Colony In Space I just couldn't take him seriously.

[Ralph]

Doctor Who is a more difficult one, as there are many fine stories throughout the whole series, But if i had to say something more definitive, i'd say that i'm pretty happy with everything up to & including 'Destiny of the Daleks'.
...ish.

But it's about when you reckon it reach it's height to which it never returned not what you were happy with