The original post: /r/television by /u/NAveryW on 2025-11-11 22:15:32+00:00.
I was thinking about how, from 2022 alone, I know of two TV shows that had one episode each which totally broke formula and featured none of the regular characters.
One is “The Primal Theory” from Genndy Tartakovsky’s ‘Primal’, which, instead of being set in prehistory, is set in 1890. It has no sci-fi or fantasy elements and is the only episode that heavily features dialogue. Tartakovsky initially considered turning ‘Primal’ into an anthology series for season 3, but that’s not happening after all, making this one episode completely unique as yet.
The other is the ‘Atlanta’ episode “The Goof Who Sat by the Door”, which is a mockumentary chronicling a completely fictional version of the making of ‘A Goofy Movie’.
I can’t think of any other episodes of any other shows that break formula so extremely. The closest I can come up with are the ‘Doctor Who’ episode “Mission to the Unknown”, which doesn’t feature any of the main cast, but does feature Daleks and sets up the serial “The Daleks’ Master Plan”; the episode of ‘The Prisoner’ “Living in Harmony”, which seems to be a totally different show for its runtime (even disposing of the usual opening credits sequence) with the only connection being Patrick McGoohan as the lead, until the ending reveals the connection with the series as a whole; and the ‘Hercules: The Legendary Journeys’ episode “Yes, Virginia, There Is a Hercules”, which is a fictionalized behind-the-scenes story about trying to get the show to work with Kevin Sorbo missing. There are also occasional absorbed pilot episodes for failed attempts at spinoff series, which do go off in different directions from usual, but I can’t think of any that don’t also feature some of the main cast.
Does anyone know of any other good examples of this sort of thing?