Board Thread:The Panopticon/@comment-1293767-20151029072618/@comment-5918438-20161209230619

And that's exactly why we can't consider all continuous events one story. The Beast Below leads directly into Victory of the Daleks as well, but those are two separate stories.

If you look at the production side of things, The Christmas Invasion was directed by James Hawes, while The Parting of the Ways was directed by Joe Ahearne. (Not to mention they don't belong to the same run, either.) And don't forget you'd have to make those a three-parter to allow for the Children in Need Special.

Utopia was directed by Graeme Harper. The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords was directed by Colin Teague. Time Crash was directed by Graeme Harper. Voyage of the Damned was directed by James Strong.

And even in vague terms of the "story", a story is something that is not just continuous narratively, but generally is also organised in terms of a beginning, middle and end. While the Doctor experiences all those stories one after the other, there's no narrative progression overarching the whole thing. Imagine reading all those stories together as a book. You have this nice conclusion to the story, and then suddenly this whole other thing is going on in the final chapters that has nothing to do with the overall plot of the novel.