I just read another post which mentioned Once’s budget, which made me suddenly wonder about this. Once’s budget must be fairly high; there’s all the CGI, special effects, location shooting, on top of all the actors salaries. Now my favorite TV show in the entire world is Stargate and they had similar demands on their budget.

You could always tell if they’d overspent on another episode when they did an episode that entirely took place within the standing sets of the SGC. Then most seasons they had a clipshow, where basically any new footage was just characters in a room talking, and everything else was clips of previous episodes. Why hasn’t Once done one of those?

They have so much material in terms of events that have happened, they could easily fill an episode with flashbacks. I know the plot of Once is complicated, so was Stargate’s, so the clipshows don’t really work that well in terms of “catching people up on the plot” as you really need to know the plot in order to fully understand the clips. However, I know that the promos use to try and claim that those were good introductory episodes.

Anyway, clipshows are good because they cost barely any money to make, they get to re-use the shots of expensive CGI/special effects so they get more out of them, and it’s a bit of a nostalgia trip for long-time viewers. Once is on it’s sixth season, I think Stargate had it’s first clipshow in season one, so it’s long overdue.

I know clipshows usually aren’t popular. I think it depends whether the new footage that ties the clips together is compelling or not. An example of a good clipshow in my opinion is SG1′s 7.20 Inauguration, which didn’t even have any of the regular characters in the new footage. However, it advanced the plot of the season quite nicely and helped evolve some minor characters.

So thoughts on a postcard. Why hasn’t Once done a clipshow?