The Sacrifice of Innocents

 

Original Premiere: December 15, 2001

Rating: «

 

Everyone is welcome to contribute to TFF.  So when Pete Tzinksi approached me with a decent idea for an episode, I encouraged him to develop it.  He had cranked out several excellent pieces of writing for his own myriad series, and I had faith that “The Sacrifice of Innocents” would be another.  But… in this instance, the episode wavered.  “It didn't waver,” Pete quickly corrects.  “It fell over like a cow. I REALLY should have gone with my better instincts… and just made it entirely a character episode. I tried to explore an idea and it MIGHT have worked if it had been with my own bunch of characters, in my own universe. As it was, it was flawed to begin with. I regret that story to this day.”

 

So do I. 

 

When I first got my hands on the story, I nearly crapped my pants.  I didn’t know what to do…  It was December 13, and the episode on my computer screen was a smoldering pile of dung.  For a fleeting moment, I considered canning the episode and posting “Eleventh Hour” ahead of schedule—but much to my chagrin, there was no way I could have the episode prepared in time to meet the deadline.  TFF is like an out-of-control freight train; it just keeps going and going… sort of like the Energizer Bunny.  And when the deadline comes, SOMETHING has to be posted.  And in this instance, that something was “The Sacrifice of Innocents.”   So I decided to salvage what I could.  Yes, believe it or not, the episode was worse before I got my hands on it.  …And though I made numerous alterations to the episode, for obvious reasons, I kindly decided to give Pete the sole writing credit for the episode.  And despite my alterations (which are too many to recount—not that I even want to), the episode was still pure crap. 

 

I hated it.

 

Pete hated it.

 

And overall… so did everybody else.  It was the first episode in the history of TFF to receive multiple negative comments, and to top it all off, it was also the first episode to score a “PURE CRAP” rating in the episode poll (this was also the last episode to feature a poll; it DIED in the aftermath of this episode… probably due to shock).  TFF readers also recently voted this episode “Worst Episode of All Time,”  believing it crappier than the slovenly “Containment.”  Now, to his defense, Pete has begged and pleaded with me on NUMEROUS occasions to let him rewrite the episode, but I believe all of humanity will agree with me when I suggest we just forget about this little… “incident.”