NeighboursEpisodes.com - back catalogue complete

[Hawker]

I am thrilled to announce that we now hold a summary for every single episode of Neighbours - all the way from Episode 0001 in 1985 to the present day.

Our regular summarisers will, of course, be completing 2022 in the coming weeks - and therefore, the archive as a whole.  However, most of you will be aware that we've long had some gaps in the mid 90s.

Several of us have had a major push over the past 12 months, with accelerated efforts over the past 18 weeks, to ensure that these gaps were filled by the time the show finished.

I am very pleased to say that the final missing episode summary was uploaded today.

I have to admit, I sit here today, completely astonished that I am even writing this message. 

This has been a long running project for the site - taking over 2 decades, and with hundreds of different participants over that time.  I am deliberately not namechecking people below - because the key element to me about the archive is that it's a production of the entire community, showing what we can achieve when we all work together.

I've said over and over, it's not 'my' site; it's our site.  It's the site that so many have had a hand in, whether it's been writing one or two episode summaries, or one or two thousand episode summaries (and I am not exaggerating with those numbers!) - whether someone capped an episode as a one-off back in 2003 or whether someone has capped a thousand episodes as a regular contributor for years.  

It has been a cumulative effort from us all, and demonstrates what a community can do together.

It took several years for the archive to evolve.  Our oldest 'original' summaries are from 1999 - and when the forum was finding its feet in 00/01, our Australian members would write up spoilers from the daily episodes, which our UK members devoured as we were a few months behind.  Over time, these grew into more complex summaries - storyline by storyline.  

There were also old episodes airing in the UK and in Australia at the time, and from time to time, members would return the favour by summarising historical episodes - episodes that we assumed would never see the light of day again.

Most of these early summaries are lost to time, just posted on the forum for people to read - but eventually, they transformed into the scene-by-scene breakdown that's more familiar, and we started to archive them separately from the forum.  There were a couple of non-Neighbours websites that I frequented which also added screencaps, and I was very excited at the prospect of emulating this.

Both of these sites, alas, are long lost to time - which makes it all the more incredible to me that we have kept the archive going with such continued enthusiasm for so long.

The real turning point came in the early 00s, when we settled into a rhythm of the current episodes being summarised and the UKGold episodes being summarised simultaneously.  I think there was something particularly exciting about seeing so many episodes being uploaded per week, and so many members put their hands in the air and offered to write a summary or two or ten themselves.

This collective effort meant that, a couple of years later, the 80s were worked through, followed by the majority of the 90s - and just as importantly, all whilst the back catalogue was being filled, our regular summarisers kept writing up the new episodes as they aired.

As this project has demonstrated to us all, two decades goes by very quickly, and it would've been easy to have lost an occasional episode along the way - but the determination and commitment shown by all involved has been incredible.

I know that a good number of those early summarisers are still involved in the site - and I think we're all quietly devastated that there aren't really any episodes left to write up, as it's something that's been a constant in our lives for so many years.

But most importantly, we all worked together as a team and we've created something wonderful - something that was beyond all of our wildest dreams when this first started.  I know, secretly, we hoped it would be possible one day - but to actually achieve it feels surreal.

And although I said I wasn't going to namecheck(!), I really do have to mention @Sayaka- who has written all of the code behind the scenes, and who listens to, and attempts to implement, every off-the-wall idea that I come up with.  Also, to @Grahamfor (amongst many other things) keeping the front page updated - and then to everyone else, from those with literally 1000s of summaries to their names (you know who you are, my friends) to those with just 1.  

You have all been part of this - and I am so incredibly grateful for all of your efforts.

Of course, a project like this can always go a little bit further - so we'll be posting soon about how you can help us to add a little polish to the archive.

I am so proud of us as a community; I think this project really embodies the spirit of the show, and is a great fan legacy to leave as the show draws to a close.

From the bottom of my heart, I really do thank everyone who has been involved.  I hope you all continue to find it a useful resource over the years to come.   

[Neil]

Well done everyone x

[Tracy C]

What a fantastic achievement and so glad to be able to contribute to this. 

[Neighboursfan1982]

Well done Hawker and Tracy plus any others who have contributed.

I myself have just been inspecting the summaries of 1995 episodes.

[Tractor Girl]

Absolutely amazing achievement, thanks so much to all who have contributed. 

[RamsaySt1]

I've posted before about how much I love and appreciate this incredible archive so I won't go into that again but congratulations to everyone on such a huge achievement! 

[Bagpuss]

This is such an amazing achievement.    Very, very well done to all involved, and especially to you, @Hawker for the site, and to @Sayaka and @Graham - you - and all the summarisers - are incredible. 

[Sayaka]

Well done everyone. I've been involved in it since 2004, it's great to be at Journey's End (although not really as there is a still quite a lot of polishing and screencapping to do - we'll post here in the coming weeks with more on this)

Feels a bit bittersweet with the show coming to an end yesterday, feel a bit  now. 

But, we have the archive for posterity and it will help us to continue to enjoy the show into the future.

To everyone involved -

[Rob_P]

Amazing work, thank you all. I do use the archive for reference surprisingly a lot! 

[Tracy C]

That is one great feature of the archive is being able to search for things either to refresh your memory or if someone is looking for an answer to a query. 

[Graham]

An amazing achievement.  

Having written 972 summaries of Sons and Daughters episodes in the late-90s and early-2000s, I'd pretty much vowed never to summarise an episode of a TV show ever again(!), but somehow I got dragged in to the wonderful community that was producing the archive, and I wrote about 500 Neighbours summaries before focusing on caps.  It's fantastic to see the archive complete after all these years and everyone's hard work.  

[wizardt™]

Well done, everyone - a marathon effort! A truly incredible resource for Neighbours fans, and it's been so much fun to be involved over the last 10 years.

[Llywela]

Amazing work - well done, everyone!

[83ray1]

Are they available in every other language? 

Only kidding of course, Google translate can take care of that now! 

Well done! I spend half an hour or so a day on here and sometimes it's easy to forget the work that goes into all this. I love being part of this family though (even as a weird cousin ) thank you and well done again everyone! 

[eviltwin]

An absolutely amazing achievement! Well done everyone involved! Summarising and capping episodes is a lot of work, but it's an incredible resource, and so good that all those summaries are now available to fall back on when the show is gone.

[Steppenwolf]

It is an absolutely invaluable reference, and a huge thank you to everyone that ever contributed.

I have a number of episodes that do not have screen captures so would be happy to help fill in any blanks, or replace the earlier episodes with DVD screencaps to replace the VHS ones?

[Atli]

Truly an amazing achievement, well done everyone who's been involved, past and present!

It's true what you wrote in the opening post, that this is an excellent example of what a community of people sharing a vision and working together towards a common goal can be capable of, and quite honestly a great example of how the internet can connect people to create something extraordinary. Many people like to go on about how spending time online and using social media is inefficient, wastes people's time and holds people back in this modern era, but community projects like this demonstrate how connecting people can be used productively to create something that's simply invaluable. To have reached this milestone in time for the show ending is just brilliant, congratulations.

[Ash]

Superb work, everyone! I have been reading so many episode summaries recently, partly due to a random classic episode re-watch in light of the show coming to an end, (in that way, it's not such a random re-watch is it? ) and partly to fill in some blanks from episodes I have missed over the years, making sense of some of the clips I haven't recognised, and this catalogue is absolute Godsend to have as a resource! 

I'm an episode guide fiend, what can I say? And this is the best one available on the internet for any TV show  

Thank you to everyone who has contributed! 

[IAreSam]

A massive achievement. Well done to all involved!

[Clare]

Well done to everyone who has been involved in completing this achievement to date.  A wonderful and amazing achievement.