A classic.
Twelve bottle episodes
I think the idea is that you’re going to be paying your main cast anyway.
If I’m being cited then I must be an authority on this topic.
Therefore I’m calling it; “The Trouble with Tribbles” is not a bottle episode.
So let it be written. So let it be done.
I saw that Maude ep a few years ago, and, boy, was it painful! Practially a whole episode of closeups of Maude’s face with that look of perpetual constipation.
FWIW, the first reference to “bottle episode” that I found in press accounts was from 2010 regarding an episode of the series “Community.” While I don’t know how long it might have been industry jargon, it was apparently new enough to the public that the account defined it thus: “A cost-saving measure in which a plot device confines the cast to a single pre-existing set with no guest stars.” Possibly the original definition is evolving to encompass something broader.
No cite, unfortunately, but I seem to recall becoming familiar with the term earlier than that – possibly in the 1990s or 2000s – and specifically in reference to Star Trek episodes which used the money-saving technique.
Google’s Ngram Viewer shows use of the phrase steadily increasing from around 2000 on; there are some interesting bumps in the 1920s and 1940s, too, which I would suspect are some other usage of the term.
I found numerous citations of ‘bottle episode,’ but they were accounts that involved some non-tv-series ‘episode’ involving actual physical bottles.
Right! In fact, if what I’ve read is accurate, they were close to being broke during the final season and cut a lot of corners to produce the season without completely running out of money.
“Set phasers on invisible.”
That meant something entirely different back then. Just ask Fatty Arbuckle.
Now I only know it in context of Star Trek, but the term was used at least as early as Shades Of Grey which was 1989.
Well, Scotty got drunk enough to get into a bar fight, so I’m pretty sure there was a bottle involved in that somewhere!
Can’t forget then the ep. “Mark of Gideon” where an alien society far far away somehow managed to make an exact duplicate of the Enterprise.
“Quantum Entanglement”? LOL
ISWYDT. Well played!
Was that dumb episode where intruding aliens were running around the Enterprise so fast that they were invisible a bottle episode? Seems like they were mostly standing around talking. That was one of the most comic book stories ever filmed.
Not really. They had scenes on the planet and a lot of different sets on the ship. So not a bottle episode.
If there’s a bar fight, it’s a Broken Bottle Episode..
[breaks bottle] Dem’s fightin’ words!
“And also cost-effective!”
“The Naked Time” and “Tholian Web” for sure, but in “The Empath” she is as important as Decker. That is more of an example of the common plot where Kirk, Spock and McCoy are taken off the ship and Scotty spends the hour trying to rescue them, succeeding just after they resolve the problem. “Catspaw” is like this also.
“The Corbomite Maneuver” is pretty much a bottle episode also, though from being filmed first it was before we might have gotten bored of the Enterprise.