Board Thread:The Panopticon/@comment-1293767-20151029072618/@comment-4028641-20151029083736

This is an absolutely odd rule. A rule of thumb that was created before the Matt Smith era had even started based off of the stories of the 9th and 10th Doctors.

To Be Continued means only that the episode ended on a cliff hanger and that it would be resolved next week or "this Autumn" or "in December", etc. It doesn't mean "this episode and the next one are two praters" or anything of the sort. That rule of thumb certainly works for most cased pre-2010 but since then the rule has been broken many times.

Name of the Doctor and Day of the Doctor are not a two parter. I don't think that this a think that we need to debate. It's just not. Neither are The Almost People and A Good Man Goes to War. They're inherently separate, stand alone stories that are connected in that one follows after the other and the first one has quite a good cliff to hang off of.

When you then attempt to add in 'The Doctor will return in' as fancy 'to be continued's, then you enter into a new plain of insanity. By that means, almost every series finale, Christmas special, and series opener are three parters. At at that point, what's the difference between 'The Doctor Will Return in' and 'Next Episode'? There is not really, one's just fancier.

By that logic, to be continued = the Doctor will return in = Next Episode. Episodes aired months apart are two and three-parters, episodes with different production teams, actors, and Doctors are two-parters, and the first Hartnell season is one serial!

Standing by the policy is standing by something which is destined to be wrong all of the time!