The very first episode of a television show I ever wrote (that got made at least) was called “The Curse Of Endless Halloween!.” The plot had changed so drastically that when I sat down to script it, I asked if I could change the title too. They turned me down. They said paperwork with the original title already existed, so we were locked in. Sure enough, episode 1 of the first season of Surge City remains “The Curse Of Endless Halloween!” to this day.
Since then, I’ve found television titles to be less written in stone than I was first led to believe. In order to receive royalties for my episodes beyond the five-year buyout detailed in my contracts Since getting heavily into animation writing a few years ago, I haven’t sent in a single form concerning those episodes yet. It’s not just laziness on my part. Increasingly, I’ve had to wait until my episodes air to confirm what they ended up being called. Sometimes it’s just a word or two that gets switched, sometimes the title is completely unfamiliar. To give one example, the episode “Connor Who?” I mentioned in yesterday’s blog was “The Nobody” until I learned different searching through the official Connor and Sparky website.
If you’re having a hard time keeping track of all the various names of shows and episodes I throw at you, just do what I do. Wait for a geek out there on the web to write an episode guide. There’s always some fan willing to keep track of it all for us.
Some of you have already noticed that my blog entries have increased dramatically of late. If you’re having trouble keeping track of that was well, scroll to the very bottom of this page. There you’ll find a new RSS feed option designed for people who are too lazy to go visit a web site regularly. I’m not exactly sure how it works, what you do with it, or how you go about getting it to do whatever it is it does. What can I say, I’m not twelve anymore. But I’m sure you crazy kids can figure it out, what with your hippy-hop music and your iPods and your internets, which, I’m told, is a series of tubes.
