User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-1293767-20151029072618/@comment-24894325-20160604191648

That modern Who does not use the same story format as the classic series is a hard fact of life, which is completely independent of our disputes. So, in a sense, yes, we are trying to compare oranges and apples... and failing to see the similarity.

If you think of it, actually, BBC itself restarted the count calling it "Series 1" instead of "Season 27", so it would be indeed completely fine if we follow their lead and start numbering episodes from 1. We can also call them differently: say, keeping "story" for the classical series and calling it "episode" for the modern one.

Now, call me weird, but I like to see things resolved. There have been two proposals: SOTO's and Tangerineduel's. The discussion of them has reached something resembling an impasse. It seems to me that BWBurke94's suggestion is a reasonable compromise. It implements Tangerineduel's proposal for the modern series where all the disputes originate from. It respects the production team's point of view by making a clear cut departure from the classical format instead of attempting to recreate it from clues. Will it negate the Bus 200 story? No, because we still have to report it. If some people think that a story is 200th or 150th or 300th and make a big deal about it, we will have to report it. We really do not need to have the same count to state the facts. If we're fine having the UNIT stories happening in the 70s or 80s, "depending on the dating protocols", we should be fine with having the same story numbered 200th or 199th or 205th.

I would be happy to support BWBurke94 suggestion. I still like SOTO's carefully laid theory and would be happy to support it too. But going with a through numbering and denying that episodes were grouped into stories in modern Who just doesn't cling true to me, no matter how convenient and simple it would be.