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alt title(s): Arc; An Arc A story arc (a contraction of "over-arcing storyline") is a sequence of episodes that puts characters through their paces in response to a single impetus; basically, an ongoing storyline. This can be a few episodes, an entire season, or even the focus of the entire series.
Arcs are not necessarily consecutive episodes. The story may reach a point where, although the arc is not completely resolved, it ceases to be of immediate concern to the characters, thus allowing the writers to intersperse non-arc episodes.
Writers may decide to use a stand-alone episode to lighten the mood during a dark arc, or to feature a character not involved in the arc. For example, the Buffy The Vampire Slayer episode "Go Fish," which aired between "I Only Have Eyes For You" and "Becoming" during the second season, has very little to do with the Angelus storyline.
Episodes that form a story arc cannot be run out of order, or at least they shouldn't be. Not that this always stops networks or syndicators from doing so.
While the Soap Opera has been exclusively arc-based since the beginning of television and before, the recent popularity of arcs doesn't seem to come from soaps. Back in the 90's when half-funny Sit Com reruns and poorly constructed Saturday morning cartoons ruled with an iron fist, the consensus among writers was that casual viewers wouldn't be able to get into the show. Hill Street Blues was the first American prime-time drama to rely on arcs, and is probably when the term came into the American TV vernacular. British Shows have a longer-standing tradition of arcs (See Doctor Who).
According to Doctor Who producer Russell T Davies, the term is not used by UK TV writers. However, it is becoming increasingly well known by UK viewers, and UK Comic Book writers certainly use the term.
Story arcs also occur in most other serial media; Super Hero and dramedy comic series (especially online series in the latter case) are well known for them, and since they lack the seasonal format of most Western television shows, some of them take years to resolve.
See also Myth Arc, Half Arc Season, Plot Threads, Season Fluidity, and Aborted Arc.
Examples:
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Live Action TV
- The canonical British TV show with a Story Arc is The Prisoner, which was created from the get-go with a beginning, middle and end, and is also used as an example of the TV Novel.
- The X Files (see Myth Arc)
- Alias — So heavily, in fact, that there was significant Continuity Lockout experienced by casual viewers.
- Babylon 5 (another Myth Arc)
- The Adventures Of Brisco County Jr. had two intertwining story arcs throughout the series (The Search for The Orb and The Capture of the John Bly Gang).
- Star Trek Deep Space Nine has several, featuring battles against the Maquis, the Jem'Hadar, and finally the Dominion as a whole.
- Lost has one main arc per season with several mini-arcs and myth arcs running through it.
- Season One: Surviving on the Island
- Season Two: The Hatch
- Season Three: Conflict with the Others
- Season Four: Getting off the Island/Life off the Island and the people from the Freighter
- Season Five: Time Travel/Return to Isand, DHARMA
- Season Six: Jacob/Esau, aka PROFIT!
- Doctor Who has a few, used for combo DVD sets, when a clear follow-on is present.
- Season 8's arc introduced the Master, who was a common villain in each serial and was captured by UNIT in the Season Finale.
- The Key To Time arc (all of Season 16) - the search for pieces of a Cosmic Keystone.
- The E-Space Trilogy ("Full Circle", "State of Decay" and "Warriors Gate"
- Following directly on from this was the season-crossing Return of the Master trilogy, comprising "The Keeper of Traken", "Logopolis" and "Castrovalva", released as New Beginnings on DVD as it also took in the Fourth Doctor's regeneration into the Fifth.
- The Black Guardian Trilogy ("Mawdryn Undead", "Terminus" and "Enlightenment") - involving Turlough's relationship with the Black Guardian.
- The Trial of a Time Lord (Season 23 — the first 12 episodes consisted of three distinct stories with a common Framing Device, which took over as the main story for the two-part Season Finale)
- In addition, thematic arcs showed up in the classic series: season 18 concerned the theme of entropy and decay, in preparation for the regeneration in the final episode; each serial of season 20 involved the return of a classic enemy, building up to the movie-length special "The Five Doctors".
- Since the revival, the series has opted for season-long arcs, mostly linked together through Arc Words.
- Suprisingly, The Beverly Hillbillies used story arcs in a Network Sit Com all the way back in the early 1960s.
- Mrs. Driesdale's multi-episode psychotic breakdown after living next to the Clampets, combined with the Clampets' attempts to "help" her.
- The Clampets' acquisition of an English Manor and their subsequent "War of the Roses" with their alcoholic neighbor. This was spread over several seasons.
- Ellie May's engagement to a "Naval Frogman" and Granny's belief that this means he turns into a frog from the bellybutton down when he gets wet. Lasted most of a season.
- Probably the oldest one in television is I Love Lucy, which featured several long-running arcs. The most famous is of course Lucy's pregnancy, which took up a full season from her first learning of it to giving birth and bringing Little Ricky home. Subsequent seasons followed the Ricardos and Mertzes on long trips through Europe, the US, and a stay in Hollywood.
- The re-imagined series of Battlestar Galactica had plenty of story arcs, particularly in the first and second seasons, which led to Executive Meddling in the third season for more standalone episodes so that new viewers were not alienated. As a result, the third season is generally not as well liked, and the fourth and final season has resumed a more arc-based approach.
- Brit Com Allo Allo might be the most humorously convoluted example of this and certainly for a Sit Com, being a comedy gave the writers numerous excuses to resolve them in absurdist manners.
Anime
- The vast majority of anime series are built around arcs, which further distinguishes them from American cartoons, which are very often episodic (though less exclusively so in recent years).
- The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya's six-episode arc was broadcast with eight Breather Episodes that flashed forward to after the arc. It also successfully broke the rule of never showing a story arc out of order.
- Helped largely by the fact that the Arc episodes were still in order, just with the Breathers inserted in-between.
Western Animation
- The first season of the Dilbert animated series had a story arc regarding the companies new flagship product: The Gruntmaster 3000. It covered things such as producing, marketing, and site-testing. The story was frequently broken up with non-arc epiodes.
- Justice League Unlimited had one in the second season, dealing with the fight between the League and Project Cadmus, and another in the third season focusing on the Secret Society/Legion Of Doom.
- Transformers: Beast Wars had arcs a-plenty. The first season often leaving a viewer wondering What Happened To The Mouse, until, several episodes later, just when they'd almost forgotten, it was revealed. The second and third seasons, however, are more serialized. Skip an episode, and you'll miss at least one thing that's worth knowing later. You won't be left completely hanging, but you won't get what's going on as well as a more devoted viewer, either.
- Transformers Animated follows arc structure as well, with Season 1 focusing on Megatron's attempts to rebuild his body (with his eventual success covered in the finale), and Season 2 dealing with the Decepticons' plot to build a space bridge to Cybertron. Season 3 is a bit more fluid, possibly because a lot of loose ends are getting tied up.
- Though his higher-ups demanded a strictly toy deal series for the lines of action figures, story editor John Semper managed to "sneak in" overarching storylines and development into Spider-Man: TAS. Naming each season and referring to episodes as "chapters" probably didn't hurt. By the time they realized what he had done, and despite limited animation and extremely restrictive censorship, the show had become the number 1 cartoon in America. Nonetheless, they still didn't let him join in on the Spider-Man Unlimited spinoff, which was primarily stand-alone format and petered out after barely reaching 13 episodes.
- The X-Men cartoon of the 90s did this as well, going through a number of arcs that were featured in the comic books, including the Phoenix and Dark Phoenix sagas.
- The 1981 Spider-Man cartoon (the solo one, before Amazing Friends) had a story arc, stretched across five episodes, surrounding Doctor Doom's attempts to conquer the world and the developing situation in his home country of Latveria.
- Gargoyles had a subtle arc about Brooklyn's coming of age that for this troper became a flaring beacon of story awesomeness in the episode, "Kingdom," when you realize this is what the previous Brooklyn stories have been building toward.
- The second season of Sonic The Hedgehog's "SatAM" cartoon started off more continuity-based to begin with, then kicked into full-on, development-a-week arc mode with the launch of the Doomsday Project.
- The Secret Saturdays basically has this:
- Season One: The Kur Stone Puzzle
- Season Two: Finding Kur
- Season Three: Zak IS Kur
Video Games
- In City Of Heroes series of missions are actually referred to as story arcs, another way to capture the feel of comic books.
Webcomics
- You'd be hard pressed to find a Sluggy Freelance strip that doesn't lead up to or follow up on another strip. Most of them do both.
- In the tradition of old-style Newspaper Comics serials (the author/narrator has mentioned a fondness for Lee Falk's catchphrase, "Next—New Adventure!"), the story arcs in The Inexplicable Adventures Of Bob each have a clear beginning and ending, usually with a couple of stand-alone strips in between arcs. These arcs run for months, although they usually only cover a day or two in-universe.
- Everything except filler in El Goonish Shive. Also has a Myth Arc that has possibly been abandoned at this point.
- Nope. It just takes LONG.
Web Original
- The web fiction serial Dimension Heroes has an ongoing story arc, broken up into several smaller books.
- The Epic Tales series Shadow Hawk has an ongoing arc about Shadow Hawk wanting to get revenge on the Shapeshifter, who killed his father. It also has a subplot arc about how he got a girl pregnant in the first story.
- Each 'chapter' of The Mad Scientist Wars is usualy a self contained storyline- but as the gae has been going on, more and more storylines will run somewhat through other chapter. For instance, 'Chic's Family' has been going on since the Mad Sci Con chapter.
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