So something on my mind today from my old TV screenwriting push is the concept of a story engine

Which was the mechanism, in episodic writing, by which your cast got into new plots each outing. That, more than any ideological issue, is why there are so many cop shows. Same as medical shows, or lawyers, or P.I.s, problems with stakes just show up. A patient is delivered to the ER, or our crew is dispatched to a crime scene, or a client walks in the door with a case.

They don’t even have to be that logically weight-bearing: while puttering about, an elderly mystery novelist hears of a murder, or The A-Team becomes aware of an injustice.

One thing I realized trying to write a spec script for it, Firefly has basically no story engine.

Plenty of characterization and backstory, but like, no consistent mechanism for things to happen. You have to individually justify each plot and each character’s role in it.

Like, Buffy. “Buffy Summers goes to high school, and it’s her duty to fight monsters of the week.” Even Star Trek, a setup for sci-fi short stories of any variety, you could answer “why are they there?” with “they’re on an exploratory mission” and “why are they doing this?” with “Kirk’s the ranking officer, they follow his orders”.

Whereas even putting forth a “‘cause Mal’s the captain”, you’d have to account and write for the fact that Zoë would accept that blankly, Wash would be pulled along by his emotional dynamic with both of them, Kaylee would extract emotional collateral, Jayne would expect to get paid, Simon would want an intellectual justification, Inara would have to work the right side of her push/pull dynamic to overcome her autonomy, Book and River???

That “thick characterization, weak engine” setup seems to work better for sitcoms, which might have engine-like recurring bits that usually set theme more than plot, like Frasier’s callers. Night Court isn’t about the cases, it’s about the interplay of the characters. In contrast, though there are character dynamics, House is really about the pathology cases.