Multi-volume science fiction and fantasy sagas have been around forever, but it's only recently that the story arc has made it to film and television. I'm not talking about studio executives producing Yet Another Halloween Sequel 12: Guess What? The Horror Still Continues. I mean stories that have been properly planned out in advance to last several films or seasons. Stories such as Star Wars, Dark Skies and Babylon 5. But does this idea really work in the film and television industries, where the deciding factor is how much money it can bring in? Two of the examples I gave above are never likely to be completed as they were initially intended: George Lucas has decided to stop at six Star Wars films instead of the nine he originally planned, due to the fact that all the people behind it will be too old to make the final three; and the ambitious five-year story arc planned for Dark Skies came to a halt after its first season because it received poor viewing figures, and now the cast are tied up doing other projects. The only one of the three that has so far managed to achieve its full length is Babylon 5, and some would say that even this didn't work as planned due to a rushed fourth season, when a fifth seemed unlikely, which resulted in an empty and stretched-out final season when it did go through.

So why do the producers of these films and shows take the risk of putting so much effort into a project that most probably won't be possible to finish? Surely creating a series that has an underlying plot arc, and managing to keep the show running long enough to see the full story through, must be much more stressful than simply hiring a load of writers to do one-off scripts to fill the series with. But it must also be much more satisfying if such a project works and gets completed. They have not just created a series that people will remember the main elements of, and maybe the occasional stand-out episode. They have made something, which people will remember the full story of, and the changes that took place in the series' characters as the story progressed. Fans of Babylon 5 watched with amazement at the way the Shadows were slowly introduced to the series. It started off with brief glimpses of mysterious alien ships attacking outposts during season one, gradually building up to Captain Sheridan and the command staff becoming aware of a new alien race in season two, and resulting in the fully-blown war in seasons three and four.

But can a story arc help a series attract the all-important viewers? Without the ongoing storyline to keep people watching it is unlikely that Babylon 5 would have the fan base it has now, because it had such a highly volatile level of quality. On the other hand however, the fact that certain episodes related heavily to events in previous episodes meant that occasional viewers found themselves wondering what on earth was going on, and couldn't get into the series properly. If fans of Dark Skies hadn't been forced to play Find The New Time Slot every other week in the States, then the fast-moving storyline would surely have kept people hooked. Although it would probably have had an even greater problem attracting new viewers.

Video sales are another area which can benefit from having a story arc for a series. People who would normally see buying videos of a TV series to be obsessive have started to collect series like Babylon 5 on video because of the continuing story, so they can one day watch the whole thing through from beginning to end and observe the glory in full. I somehow managed to slip through a lot of the Star Wars experience and so didn't become much of a fan until recently. This would have meant I wouldn't have bothered buying the videos, but because the new film will relate to the existing three films I'll be certain to buy and watch them before I see the prequel in the cinema. I'm also not really a fan of comics, but hearing that the Dark Skies story will continue in this form has resulted in me deciding to buy them, just to see how the story continues.

It seems that the story arc does have a lot to offer to everyone involved, from the person who originally came up with the idea, to the viewers and fans of the end result, and therefore to the studio executives who need to make enough money to keep the series going. But the producers have to be careful that they don't exclude late arrivals to their series by making lots of episodes that make little sense by themselves. If a series combines the long-running story arc of the series with individual episodic stories, subtly enough not to confuse new viewers, but also apparent enough to keep regular fans thirsting for more, then it can result in a show that is, without a doubt, greater than the sum of its episodes.

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