35 thoughts on “Reforming the Short Form Hugo: A Guest Post by Dale Skran”

1. Allowing episodes of TV shows to be nominated for DP Short Form has the effect of diminishing the short-form Hugo as an award for innovative short SF works.

   I would not be at all in favor of this proposal.

2. I’m bothered by the casual assumption that “…a single episode from a lesser series being pushed by an organized fan campaign” – we’re not supposed to do “organized fan campaigns”, but perhaps more importantly – who is determining which series is “lesser” if not the voters for the award?

3. So instead of nominating a story, an entire series?
   While there are a lot more SF TV (and TV like) series out there than a decade ago, I think there would still be a tendency to squeeze out individual genius instead of the same old same old. The Best (prose) Series is suffering from this as is, a set of regular nominees coming around each year.
   We don’t want to go back to the bad old days of five episodes of Doctor Who, but I neither want to see a ballot of Lower Decks, Discovery, Picard, Strange New World, Doctor Who + one other.

4. I am not super happy with the current state of Dramatic Presentation, but I think this proposal would make it worse, not better. The Hugos, in my view, work best when they are for specific works: it’s when they go to bodies of work that they tend to become predictable and stale, and rely more on fannish good will than the actual quality of an individual work. This proposal seems like it would almost inevitably lead TO the same shows being finalists every year.

5. This may be harsh but before the reform I would rather have no DP Short Form at all than that.
   I few questions:
   1. Would an award with an eligability of the last 5 years even be a Hugo anymore?
   2. I have a problem with the minumumepisodes, She-Ra from last year would have one season that would have nearly failed, but that season was good, longer season don’t mean better.
   3. The stuff with anthology series seems a solution in search of a problem. There aren’t that many shows that fit the discription Black Mirror(2 nominations) and the original Twilight Zone(where I think whole seasons were nominated and won?)
   4. That stuff that more people consume is nominated and stuff that is perhaps better is a problem that is imanent in the Hugos and I doubt that it will chance. (I am also not such a big fan of For all Mankind, and don’t see the problem with the episodes of Loki or the Wheel of Time that much)
   5. I would have no problem with Doctor Who beeing nominated again, if it gets a lot better again, (I don’t think the episodes are at the moment good enough to see the show nominated) actually it would make me happy to see a deserving nomination for this show again.

6. Looking at the proposed changes, I don’t think they work for me.

   The existing “Dramatic Short” is not explicitly for “an episode in an episodic work”, it is for “a dramatic presentation lasting up to 90 minutes” (enough for both halves of a “double episode” and coincidentally enough for at least some movies).

   I think it is actually good for the diversity of the finalists that it’s not explicitly just episodes of serials.

   And as-is, an entire season (if plotted sufficiently tightly, with enough continuity and no “filler” episodes) could (as seen with, say, WandaVision) qualify as “Dramatic Presentation, Long Form”. FWIW, I think all of “Loki”, “Hawkeye”, “WandaVision”, and “Moon Knight” are coherent enough that I’d be OK with each season fitting in “Long Form”. I would not ,when it was in a suitable time frame, have been OK with Babylon 5 seasons 1, 2, and 5 fitting in “Long Form”.

   I also don’t think that “season fits in long form” precludes individual episodes fitting in “short form”, but that if a series would have both a season qualifying for “long form” and one (or more) episodes for “short form”, they’d have to pick one, but not both, races.

   I think that if you want to abolish short form in favour of a “series” Hugo, you would by necessity have to drop “long form” for a “standalone” Hugo. And that then gives rise to the problem of “but what if there are multiple films in a single cinematic universe” (like, say, the Indiana Jones films). Would a Batman film winning preclude (say) a Wonder Woman film from being eligible?

7. This doesn’t work for me. As Ingvar has noted, a coherent season of a tv show can be nominated for BDP Long Form. Limiting BDP Short Form eliminates the possibility that short films could get nominated for the Hugo. While it doesn’t happen often, given the way social media works, I could see one catching on and getting a nomination.

   And honestly, just because stuff you don’t like keeps getting nominated, doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with the award category. I find the body of people nominating in the short form literature categories or Best Related Work rarely agree with me, but I don’t see that as a flaw in the categories or a conspiracy or anything. It just means my preferences differ from the majority of the people who care enough to nominate for the Hugos.

8. I think the “short form” category absolutely needs reform but this proposal is going i. the wrong direction.

   The issue is that the majority of nominations lately have not been short form works; they have been chapters of long for works. The same way we wouldn’t allow a non-stand-alone chapter of a serial to win Short Story, we should be requiring short form works to be intended as stand alone stories.

   This would not limit it to only shows like Black Mirror; many episodes of shows like The Mandalorian or Dr. Who are complete stand alone stories. But because of the way voting currently works, even they often end up nominating non-stand-alone episides that are clearly meant as stand-ins for longer arcs – and aren’t effective for people who haven’t seen the whole arc.

   A single story told over multiple hours should be nominated in long form whether it’s a movie or a season of a serial drama. ( The question of eligibility years might be solved by also allowing serials the first year they are released as collections, ie on dvd or on demand streaming.)

   Meanwhile, the emphasis on long tv dramas means a lot of the really innovative short dramatic SF works (for example, music videos like Janelle Monae’s, or independent animation shorts) are completely shut out of awards.

   We need to enforce that short form is for complete stories under that length. (and then maybe consider adding ‘very long’ for TV series arcs and ‘very short’ for actual shorts.)

9. I’ve been “nominating wrong” for years precisely because of the concerns being raised. Storytelling in a dramatic format has changed over the years. There aren’t as many one-shot shows. There aren’t many series/properties where each episode is a discrete/self-contained story. Episodic programming has mostly switched over to telling larger story arcs over several episodes.

   As a result, I’ve been nominating entire series under the long-form category.

   I’m not sure that I buy the solution being offered.

   Might it be workable to say that each property/franchise (given enough votes) can only appear once as one of the six finalists? If there are three episodes of a franchise that might otherwise be finalists, only the one with the most votes gets a slot?

   Perhaps to minimize the dilution due to nominations for several episodes in one series, all of the nominations for other episodes could be attributed to the one episode that got the most votes. That would reflect the broader base of support for a franchise that gets diluted due to the nominations being spread across a larger number of episodes. It also might bump out of contention a nominee that is a stand-alone program that would not get that additional support given to episodes from a series.

   Regards,
   Dann
   There is no substitute for a militant freedom. The only alternative is submission and slavery. -Calvin Coolidge

10. I think the article does identify some problems but as other people have said some of the suggested solutions would actually make things worse.

    The only quick fix I’d support would be to give Counterpart It’s very well deserved Hugo despite Starz determined attempts to prevent anyone seeing it, particularly in the UK.

    If you are going to have an annual award like the Hugos it is bound to have problems associated with that annual nature. I’d like to see a completely separate set of awards which could be voted on 5 or 10 years later. These would be more suitable for series items, both in television and books and for more minority items, like filk songs, which take several years to become more generally known. While I’d like to see this I don’t think it is necessarily the responsibility of WSFS to set them up.

11. So… the award should change because only the works seen by lots of people and getting lots of nominations end up on the ballot. I think our proposer doesn’t understand popular vote awards. De facto, works need to be seen by lots of people. If you want works you think are best to get the award even though no one sees them, you need a juried award system. Popular votes work by having a lot of people familiar with the works (or whatever) eligible for the award.

    Is that a flaw? Yes. Juried awards have big flaws too. No system is perfect.

    Also, nominating full seasons of a TV series was how things started out. It was decided that the Hugos “achievement award” perspective is better represented for single dramatic works rather than multiple works with shared elements but many, many different writers and directors with differing perspectives and abilities.

    I fear the proposer of this change didn’t really look into the history or philosophy of the Hugos and the Dramatic Presentation categories and just wants to change things so their own favored works get nominations.

12. Consider 2017 as a case study.

    The GoT folks disqualified one of their entries but still had two other entries on the ballot. The sixth position nominee was the album Splendor & Miserty by Clipping with 91 ballots and 72.45 points.

    There were three episodes of Stranger Things nominated. Individually, none of them made it as a finalist. The total number of ballots for all three episodes was 157.

    There were two episodes of Westworld nominated. Again, neither made the cut individually but collectively they had 134 ballots.

    If the rules only permitted one series episode, then one of the GoT episodes would have been cut and the Manifest episode of Luke Cage would have been a finalist.

    If the rules allowed the total accumulated ballots to be designated for the episode from a series with the most ballots, then The Bicameral Mind from Westworld would have had 134 ballots while Chapter 8: The Upsidedown from Stranger Things would have had 157 ballots. Splendor & Misery along with The Door from GoT would have been displaced.

    I’m sure there are reasons why aggregating ballots in that manner might not be the best choice. I think it more accurately reflects fan interest in episodic dramatic presentations. The current approach dilutes fan support/engagement in a way that seems to keep worthy works off of the shortlist.

    FTR, I listened to Splendor & Misery. The music wasn’t my speed, but it was well written and well performed. I don’t think it was a bad piece to have on the shortlist. I do think there were other works kept off of the shortlist by the current method of tabulating fan support.

    Regards,
    Dann
    “It used to be said that it is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness. Today, we admire those who curse the candle—because it is not perfect, not free, not whatever the complainers want it to be.”–Thomas Sowell

13. I appreciate the issues pointed out here, but strongly oppose the solutions proposed. We are living in a golden age of media sf and fantasy, produced at every level from creative micro-budget semi-pro efforts to effects-laden megabuck corporate franchises, with more good stuff out there than can be covered in only two awards, and accordingly I would split the Dramatic Presentation Hugos into four categories – Short Episodic (up to 30 minutes), Long Episodic (31-70 minutes), Feature (71-210 minutes), and Extended or Serial (longer than 210 minutes).

    The Episodic categories would be primarily for TV episodes and short films of any origin, from Oscar-contending animated shorts to amateur or semi-pro productions such as Julie Nolke’s YouTube video series “Explaining the Pandemic to My Past Self”. The Feature and Extended/Serial categories would mostly showcase feature films and entire seasons of TV, respectively. Keeping in mind those intended functions, one might provide for certain exceptional cases whose length might otherwise place them in the “wrong” category (e.g., some of the later episodes of “Game of Thrones”, or seasons of TV cartoons such as “Kid Cosmic” whose short episodes can be viewed in less than 3 1/2 hours). And other media traditionally eligible for DP Hugos (such as the recent album and song nominees from clipping.) would still be eligible in the appropriate categories.

    One issue that deserves further consideration is the difficulties facing “anything that takes a few years to make it to the bigger venues” in connection with the Hugo Awards. This sort of thing has long been an issue for the Hugos, since the voting body is mainly composed of fans and therefore is easier to reach through certain channels (or with certain content or branding), and it may take a while for some exceptional work to make its impact on fan culture. I’d deal with this through reforming or supplementing the Retro-Hugos…but that should be left for another time.

14. This is just wrong, for reasons mentioned above.

    And if “Loki” got in because Marvel, didn’t “Lower Decks” get in because Star Trek?

    The MCU began in 2008, ST in 1966. Over 40 years’ difference in awareness/existence.

    Trek has been on for 3 generations now, everything from old-school networks, to syndication, to all the movies, to P+ . And talk about “a massive fan base”! It won Hugos in 1967 and 1968, the latter of which had the ENTIRE category filled with ST episodes. Various bits of the universe have been regularly nominated for FIFTY-FIVE YEARS. Often against other bits in the 90s. It is the most massive fanbase in Hugo history, IMO.

    “The Expanse” is many novels and shorter works (which have won Hugos), and the show’s been nominated for Hugos both in its Syfy and Amazon incarnations. Yet I don’t hear this proposer complaining about it.

    I mean, I think “The Good Place” is complete shit and never should have gotten within sniffing distance of the ballot, let alone won so much, but you don’t see me agitating to redo the whole category.

    Feh, I say.

15. I mean, I think “The Good Place” is complete shit and never should have gotten within sniffing distance of the ballot, let alone won so much, but you don’t see me agitating to redo the whole category.

    Truth.

    And mind you, there was a proposal at the Business Meeting last year to reduce the maximum number of episodes of the same TV series in Best Dramatic Short to one per series to get a more diverse ballot, but it did not pass.

    Besides, the 2022 Best Dramatic Short ballot is actually nicely diverse, even if I personally don’t care for For All Mankind and have zero interest in Wheel of Time. Plus, we have had short films and music videos nominated in this category in the past, i.e. it’s not just TV episodes.

16. I’ll go on the record as liking The Good Place.

    I’ll also go on the record as holding the opinion that this “reform” proposal is a terrible idea based upon the completely false premise that BDP: Short Form is supposed to be about television series episodes. The proposal is so misguided it isn’t even close enough to be called “wrong”.

17. I’ll also go on the record as holding the opinion that this “reform” proposal is a terrible idea based upon the completely false premise that BDP: Short Form is supposed to be about television series episodes. The proposal is so misguided it isn’t even close enough to be called “wrong”.

    To be fair, when we (the Hugo BDP split committee) drafted the proposal, the short form was basically defined as TV episodes, because that was nearly all of the short-form work that was in the market at the time. (And the feeling was that we didn’t want excellent episodes of B5 and Buffy to continue to be drowned out by films.)

    But that was more than two decades ago. The world has changed since then.

18. Do Disney, Paramount, the BBC even care that much when WSFS awards Hugos to their works? There are Oscars and Emmys and BAFTAs to chase, not to mention the financial rewards which dwarf mere print fiction.

    How about “Best Semi-Pro Dramatic Presentation,” and “Best Dramatic Presentation from a Producer capitalized at under $100 million”?

    ( 1/2 🙂 Maybe.)

19. To be fair, when we (the Hugo BDP split committee) drafted the proposal, the short form was basically defined as TV episodes, because that was nearly all of the short-form work that was in the market at the time.

    That’s an odd position to take, since prior to the split in the category, there had already been non-television episode works (such as albums) that had been nominated for Best Dramatic Presentation. Anyone who thought that the short form version would not have such things nominated was either willfully ignoring the history of the award or simply unaware of that same history.

20. I would say that I am surprised that 90 minutes is the cut-off between “short-form” and “long-form” dramatic presentation, and I would probably be OK with moving that from 90 to (say) 70 minutes.

21. Aaron Pound: He meant what he said in that quote, he wasn’t claiming what you want to argue against.

22. I would say that I am surprised that 90 minutes is the cut-off between “short-form” and “long-form” dramatic presentation, and I would probably be OK with moving that from 90 to (say) 70 minutes.

    90 minutes was chosen to include two-part television episodes in short-form, since most of of the US TV shows ran less than 45 minutes each, once the ads were removed.

23. That’s an odd position to take, since prior to the split in the category, there had already been non-television episode works (such as albums) that had been nominated for Best Dramatic Presentation. Anyone who thought that the short form version would not have such things nominated was either willfully ignoring the history of the award or simply unaware of that same history.

    Yes, very rarely non-film or TV episodes had been nominated in the past at that point.

    But the vast majority of short-items available then (remember, this was 20+ years ago) were television episodes.

24. Yes, very rarely non-film or TV episodes had been nominated in the past at that point.

    From a realistic perspective, only moderately more rarely than television episodes getting nominated, since the issue was the movie-length material dominated the BDP award to such a great degree. In the 25 years prior to the split, a television episode had won a total of four times. In the 5 years before the split, there had been a grand total of 2 television episodes nominated.

    The point here is that “very rarely” applies pretty much as much to television episodes as it does to any other form of media prior to the split. If you did a percentage breakdown over the history of the award, the “non-television non-film” percentage would certainly be lower, but not a lot lower than the “television” percentage.

25. Personally, I’d like to see a dramatic presentation category specifically for non-film or tv works. I don’t think it would need to have any length restriction and would include full cast audio dramas but not audio books.

26. I would love to see a way for smaller indie dramatic presentations to have more of a shot at the ballot, but I’ll be honest, it’s gonna take someone way smarter than me to sort it out. (I rarely vote in Dramatic Presentation because I stopped watching Doctor Who.) I don’t know the solution.

    I do know that it seems rare that any of the huge shows even care that they won a Hugo, and I’d be lying if I said that doesn’t rub me the wrong way a little, but Lord knows, rubbing me the wrong way is not a good reason by itself to overhaul a category.

27. I am entirely in favor of a dramatic-series nomination instead of the existing short-form drama. I have railed many times at the sight of separate episodes from the same show competing against each other.
    But the dramatic series nomination should not replace the short-form; rather the short-form should be redefined to exclude single-episodes of a series, and should focus on actual one-shot short pieces–such as Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog in 2009. (If we wanted to quibble and quarrel at length, we might cobble together some means of exempting episodic shows comparable to Twilight Zone from the restriction on single-episode nominations within a series on the condition that those series would then be ineligible for nominations for the whole series.)
    I don’t think any of this, or anything else, will stop the problem of accessible material having an advantage over expensive or hard-to-find material. The Hugos have traditionally tried to level the bar by making printed material available to the members, but even that had to be limited by the consent of the publishers. (I have never forgotten that in 2009, Neal Stephenson’s publishers declined to make Anathem available. Until my dying day I will believe that Anathem, with its wonderfully clever and original SF premise, should have won. But none of the fans had read it.)
    I cannot begin to imagine any of the cable or streaming services agreeing to make their material available for free to WorldCon members. So the accessible remains the favorite. Your only hope of defeating it is engaging in some activism. Like you’re doing now. Good for you. Keep it up!
    As for organized fan-groups combining to push their particular preferences through, that–too–has always been there. It’s not a new and sudden threat, now that we have video streaming. Nor is it limited to nominees with a strong financial backing. It’s limited to really aggressive and determined fans networking on social media. (Which in fandom, means almost anybody.) I’ve also railed at Hugos going to schlocky but popular works that JUST DID NOT DESERVE IT! But unfortunately, in a democracy, even stupid people (who disagree with me!) are entitled to vote. So far, it beats the alternatives.

28. 3. The stuff with anthology series seems a solution in search of a problem. There aren’t that many shows that fit the discription Black Mirror(2 nominations) and the original Twilight Zone(where I think whole seasons were nominated and won?)

    I see “Love, Death & Robots” is gearing up for a third season.

29. I read Anathem, but in all honesty looking at the nominees I’d put it fourth on my ballot. (I don’t remember where I actually put it at the time.)

30. Evelyn: Yes, but Love, Death & Robots has not been nominated for a Hugo yet.
    So I stand by it nomination for this kinds of shows are rare.

31. David, And there’s no accounting for, I guess. you are entitled to your taste–of course. I thought ‘Saturn’s Children’ was the only other serious contender. (Very fine book!) Of course that didn’t win either. It went to ‘The Graveyard Book’, which struck me as a comic book with pretensions.

    Evelyn, I, too, was disappointed not to see ‘Love, Death. and Robots’ on the ballot. It looked to me like it got squeezed out by series that should have, like WandaVision, been treated as a long-form. Let’s hope for next year! Episode 1 of the new season was good.

32. My point about “Love, Death & Robots” was not that it should have been on the ballot (it didn’t run in 2021), but that it was another of those rare anthology series.

33. Quite interesting post which adds to previous discussion
    http://www.concatenation.org/articles/hugo_awards_dramatic_short.html

34. I am late, but to make it clear, I have no problem with having an episode of Love, Death and Rockets on the ballot or another great anothologyshow.
    My point was more that the history of the award doesn’t really seem to favor anothologyseries that much. (Episodic storytelling is a different matter, but this was for a long time more than norm, than it is today)

35. Re: My point was more that the history of the award doesn’t really seem to favor anothologyseries that much. (Episodic storytelling is a different matter, but this was for a long time more than norm, than it is today)

    I understand your point, and it’s fair. But I think one of the reasons that awards don’t favor the anthologies is that many fans see the ‘short form’ as their only option to nominate a beloved series, so the nominations get filled up by the episodic entries from continuing series.
    Perhaps I’m misremembering, but I think this year was the first time an entire series was nominated as ‘long form’. Because TV is perceived as ‘short form.. One of the main reasons the ‘short form’ was created was so that TV wouldn’t have to compete with movies.
    Which is part of why I believe that ‘short form’, ‘long form’, and ‘episodic form’ should be 3 different categories

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