TMDB doesn't seem to understand the important difference between bonus features and specials that are vital to a show's narrative, and this makes it really difficult to track one's progress on some shows.
The best example is the modern "Doctor Who." Hugely important narrative episodes that are required viewing to follow the show's overall arc have been dumped into a clutter-filled "season" of 199 "specials" by TMDB.
Anyone counting on TMDB or Trakt to make sure they see "Doctor Who" in its entirety will be wildly misled, to the point that they will suddenly have an entirely new main character several times without knowing how it happened.
Of those 199 "specials" fully TWENTY-THREE of them are absolutely vital to the show's overall arc. They aired between the "seasons," but they need to be watched in order, along with those seasons.
I use Reelgood instead of TMDB or Trakt specifically because Reelgood has included these episodes at the beginnings and/or ends of the nearest seasons, so they appear at the correct point in the narrative, and users don't miss anything.
Please look into finding a solution for this. "Doctor Who" isn't the only show with a utterly screwed up chronology on TMDB — "Futurama" might be even worse, and there are others.
There are few ways to go about this:
But please do something, because what TMDB has now is such a mess that only someone who is already a super-fan can tweeze out which of those 199 "specials" are important to watch. (If you'd like help with that, I am one such super-fan.)
(BTW, another 20-30 "Doctor Who" "specials" are shorts that take place within the larger narrative, not vital to the story, but definitely something completists won't want to miss. And the rest are peripheral content, like making-of stuff.)
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Reply by SoCalGG
on January 26, 2025 at 3:22 AM
Totally Agree Babylon 5 is another show that has similar issues , am sure there are others Am still not sure why the latest Incarnation of the Doctor is being listed as a separate show with new season numbers even though it does continue from the Jodie Whitaker Doctor
Reply by 100WattWalrus
on February 26, 2025 at 6:19 PM
Yeah, the renumbering of seasons doesn't exactly help with this problem, that, again, would be easy to fix in a number of ways that TMDB doesn't seem interested in doing. But the reason for the Season 1 is pretty simple: the worldwide distribution deal with Disney. It would be a pretty hard sell, getting new viewers to watch Series 14 of a show -- especially if the previous 13 series aren't available on Disney.
For the casual viewer, there would be every reason to think Series 14 would be a bad point to come into a show, so that's a huge barrier, which would be made worse by having to pay for an entirely different streamer to "catch up."
It makes complete sense to renumber 2024 as "Season 1" for the sake of onboarding new fans. If they become Whovians, they'll figure it out.
...and in that sense, TMDB still isn't helping, even though -- again -- this is a very easy problem to fix if anyone at TMDB could be assed to try.
Reply by Banana
on February 26, 2025 at 6:53 PM
Just use an episode group?
Reply by 100WattWalrus
on March 6, 2025 at 2:28 AM
That's a workaround, yes. But that's only helpful if you're already a "Doctor Who" super-fan who already knows how to put the episodes in the proper order — in which case you don't need an episode group.
The fact that TMDB has shunted off 23 arc-vital episodes — vital to continuity and major story arcs — into a "specials" category full of non-essential bonus content means anyone who_ isn't_ already a superfan can't use TMDB data to accurately track their watch-through — and they don't know that.
ReelGood doesn't have this problem. TV Time doesn't have this problem. It's easy to fix. So why not fix it? :)