), I do love fussing over stats where anything of interest is concerned, Fimfic included. Happily, I’m not alone (because duh Unused Season 5 MLP Episodes – Part 1 (Jayson and Jim's Episode Ideas) · 7:24pm Jan 19th, 2022
Pinkie: Wait… so you're telling me there were other adventures we got up to in between Twilight getting her castle and Starlight joining our harem posse?!? And our audience never got to see them?!?
Stop the presses! This calls for an emergency cupcake! And perhaps an emergency party. Okay, definitely an emergency party.
So… where do I start?
It may not be obvious, as even around here I'm not the most socially active person, but I am endlessly fascinated by how a film/tv show/episode/insert-type-of-fictional-media came to be. The directions not taken, how something rough morphed into something grand, who contributed what and at what stage, and so forth. Oh, a lot of it can be fluff that doesn't tell us much except the process works (or, alarmingly, doesn't). But what's there, when it tells us more, tells us a lot.
It's for that reason that, despite the moral and legal boundaries massively overstepped with the 2019 Hasbro/DHX leaks, I cannot help but be drawn to the mounds of content available therein. There's all manner of things in there, but most amazingly, we have the standard creative documents for every single episode. A finished script (before they started drawing to it, so it still differs from the final episode), earlier scripts of at least a 4-draft process (usually more), an outline laying out the episode scene by scene, and right at the beginning, an episode premise spanning a few paragraphs. Oh, and feedback from Hasbro to DHX on the episode's initial animatic, and if any additional changes are required. And those are just the regular parts that are interesting! Some episodes changed only marginally through this process, others changed a lot.
Really, it boggles the mind that these have barely been discussed at all by the MLP fandom in the 2+ years they've been available. This fandom used to eat up production info and behind-the-scenes nuggets. Many questions we always wanted the answers to lie within. Yet there's been, basically, crickets. All the more reason to discuss them now.
[NOTE: I did not source the leaks myself, but had the folders on the season documents provided to me through safe means via a colleague. Two things of note: they're unquestionably real beyond a shadow of a doubt, but I lack any visual/audio assets or sources to go with them. The leaks did contain audio and video files – it's how we have full version of some cut songs on YouTube, among other things – but I only have the text-based files.]
Over the past year, as I've continued to rewatch Seasons 4 & 5 of the show, I've gone through each episode's premise, outline, scripts and animatic feedback, noting down what I find and getting a full picture of how it changes along the way, by how much, whether we got a superior episode out of it (we usually do, the process does work more often than not), and the most interesting different or unused bits. Especially as regards what I call 'animatic cuts', meaning bits in the final script not in the final episode, cut for time to fill 22 minutes. They're largely invisible, as FiM is largely based in light plots interspaced with comedy and asides, making it quite easy to remove little snippets here and there without the viewer ever noticing. Well, mostly – Twilight saying to Sweetie Belle "Remember a moment ago when you asked me to give you a chance? towards the end of "Twilight Time" calls back to a line not present in the final episode. But instances like that are rare.
Some of you will know that as Loganberry has been rewatching the show as part of his blog series, My Little Repeats, I have posted summaries of these notes per episode in the comments. His blog series acts as motivation for me, after all, and it guarantees at least some eyeballs on them. Though frankly, it's not the best place for them – the lack of any formatting and the comment character limits (even when spread across 2-4 of them) severely hurts their interest and readability. I'll continue to post the most interesting parts per episode there, but I've been leaning towards doing so here too, keeping my unabridged notes in separate links for those curious enough to read them. More details about that, and how I format the notes, and how the script and other documents of the episodes even work and what they tell us, may follow at a later date.
However, it was while browsing through these documents again recently that I noticed a folder in Season 5 I hadn't seen before: 02_Rejected_Scripts. And what do I find in there? A dozen folders each housing a Premise for an unused episode, plus one document of episode ideas specifically from Jayson Theissen and Jim Miller up at DHX. This struck me as the most interesting part of all. Changes to existing episodes is all well and good, but even "this episode focused on x initially, and had more lines for y character in the script that got cut for time" is only minimally interesting next to whole stories that never saw the light of day.
So! Why not present these episodes ideas to see? There's enough in there that I won't try to do all of them in one go. For this post, I'll keep purely to the word doc "MLP5_Jaysons_and_Jim_Story_Ideas_01092014", dated to January 29th, 2014, which houses the ideas contributed by the series' initial director, Jayson Theissen, and its later director, Jim Miller. That's enough to be getting on with.
Introduction and Context
Dangnabbit, Sugarcube, get to the rejected episodes already!
Yeah, yeah, I know, there's already a lengthy enough buildup. But trust me, without a bit of background context as to the time, the format of these ideas, and how they compare to the shape of actual produced episodes from the same point, they won't make nearly as much sense.
The interesting thing to note about Season 5 is that, excepting the anomaly that was "Pinkie Pride"*, it's the first and only time some episode stories were credited to DHX staff. The artists up in Canada are fully responsible for so many facets of the show, but it remained the case that the actual writing, dialogue and stories, with only tiny deviations, were produced under Hasbro's roof in Los Angeles. DHX was kept in the loop as episodes developed, which was necessary to start to design new characters/sets once it was certain they would be needed, and to advise against certain story decisions that would be expensive to animate beyond their purpose for the episode. But actually writing? Nope. This is par for the course for both toy commercial shows like MLP and shows outsourced to animation studios like DHX, not worth commenting on.
* Jayson Theissen was the one who contacted Weird Al Yankovic and asked if he's be interested in being on the show. Presumably, he came up with enough of a nugget of an episode idea, and being responsible for getting Weird Al onboard, they felt he deserved the "Story By" credit.
So what changed with this season? Lacking as I do saved emails and other correspondence, a few possibilities present themselves. We must remember that getting credit for these sorts of things is usually tied to unions (around this time, something changed that prevented DHX staff from occasionally voicing incidental roles – to that point, Jayson Theissen had voiced some early single lines of Bulk Biceps, and Jim Miller had voiced King Sombra and would voice Trouble Shoes this very season), which makes it all the odder. Signs point to an infrastructure change for the show around this time, with many personnel moving up the ranks both in Canada and Los Angeles, as pre-production of the 2017 movie started ramping up. Other signs of this include Meghan McCarthy weighing in on animatic feedback where she hadn't before at the end of Season 4, and from the middle of Season 5 onwards, plus her getting "Story By" credits in Seasons 6 & 7 when her contribution was no more than earlier episodes she didn't get such a credit for. Many Season 4 episodes started out written by writers that received no credit on the final episode, so standing does make a difference. Personally, I believe it was something of an obligation – of the three produced episodes the two are credited for, all received major changes from their initial pitch, as we'll see.
Why they pitched episodes now, and so many, I can only theorise. Maybe the shift in Story Editors and a cramped production schedule that season led Hasbro, Meghan and co. to ask if they had anything. Maybe they were present at the writer's retreat and these are just the minutes from there. Could be anything.
In any case, the document lists eight one-paragraph episode ideas (along with tons of suggestions for "Slice of Life", at the stage when that episode was more of a "22 Short Films About Springfield" anthology-type episode – I will be skipping that). These are similar to the episode premises written by the LA-based writing staff, though with unmistakable signs of being written quickly and not by writers. They're shorter (episode Premises usually mostly fill a page) and are more of a baseline idea than an abbreviated sypnosis.
At this point, it's probably easier if I show you what I mean, by using the one episode in the document that was made. Here is their episode idea for "Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep?"*
“Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep?”
A Luna-centric episode. Once day is done in Equestria and all the ponies have gone to sleep, Luna raises the moon and her tenure as Princess of the night begins. She makes her rounds, surveying the dreams of her sleeping subject, ensuring that all is in order. That night, it seems an unusual number of ponies are having nightmares. Through her investigations, she discovers that the Baku, an elephant like being, has entered her dream realm and is feasting on the fear energy generated by the nightmares. After confronting the Baku and losing, Luna rounds up the Fellowship of Harmony from their own dreams and unites them and their unique dream abilities to defeat the Baku and return the ponies of Equestria back to a restful slumber. Upon the dawning of the day, Luna relinquishes the sky to her sister’s sun, never letting on that she has fought an epic battle that no pony knows about.
* There was a revised Premise dated to March 7th 2014, but it's just the above paragraph with a few extra lines specifying some extra details (Luna knows the Baku should not be fought alone, but her own hubris compiles her to do so anyway; Luna training the Mane 6 before they confront it; Luna admitting after the battle tat though she is used to dealing with things alone, there are some battles that cannot be won without friends). Giving a sense of more scenes lets one visualise the full episode a little more, but still not quite.
Light in detail, isn't it? You could honestly sum it up in one or two sentences: "While patrolling dreams, Luna finds a Baku feasting on ponies' nightmares. Unable to defeat it alone, she enlists the Mane 6 to help her defeat it." That would fit in a short description for a fanfic!
I'm sure you'll agree that it's very hard to read the above and visualise it filling 21 minutes (I think of episodes as 21 minutes, due to the minute allocated to the title song and credits). Trust me: it's normal for episode premises to read light on detail like this, though the ones written by writers would have about 2-3 times as much as the above. Especially for Jayson and Jim, episodes are going to change substantially down in LA, no need to go overboard, it's not their job. Regardless, when looking at the following episode ideas, do not judge them for being light on content. Most of them start out this way. This episode lacked anything regarding the dream creature being Luna's creation, after all. That angle was likely added because the episode felt light on content. I have some… thoughts about that decision, but I'll save them for another time.
Anyway, now that you've seen how a premise from those two looks compared to its finished episode, you're hopefully in an ideal position to read ideas for un-produced episodes (which I haven't touched, right down to the occasional spelling and grammar errors within) and filter through the lack of detail and individual scenes to see how they might have played out.
Word of warning: these premises use character name abbreviations frequently. They're pretty obvious, but for sake of clarity:
TS: Twilight Sparkle 
SP: Spike 
AJ: Applejack 
PP: Pinkie Pie 
RD: Rainbow Dash 
RY: Rarity 
FS: Fluttershy 
Rejected Episode 2 – "Applejack Pony's Equestrian Vacation"
After a particularly busy harvest and canning season Applejack is EXHAUSTED. Her friends decide to do something nice for her and get her an all-expense paid trip to LIO PO’O BEACH Spa and Resort for a little R&R. (Lio means‘horse’ and po’o is ‘head’ in Hawaiian). AJ politely accept their gracious gift, but doesn’t dare hurt their feelings by telling them that there’s nothing more she hates in the whole world than being idle. Upon arriving at the resort AJ discovers that her friends have each picked out a particular treatment for her to enjoy (RY – retail therapy, PP – Full body frosting massage, etc…) Not wanting to insult the generosity of her friends, AJ goes along with them, but really dislikes being waited on. At one point she’s told she can sit in a deckchair and just enjoy the view for a full four hours! ‘Ya mean, I’m just supposda sit here and do NUTHIN?’ AJ tries to help out around the resort to feel useful, but her attempts are constantly rebuffed. When a problem arises that suits her particular set of skills, AJ defies the staff and solves the day and feels the degree of relaxation she was looking for by being useful. Ultimately, AJ learns that while it’s good to take a break every once and a while, she’s the most comfortable being at home and working, and that sometimes it’s best to accept a gift with grace than hurt somepony’s feelings. (alternate moral – not every pony relaxes the same way).
I'm sure you instantly realised this unused episode idea was later dug up and overhauled into "Applejack's Day Off". Most of us feel… mixed on that episode, not least for it being a stretch that Applejack could overlook problems like that on her farm for that long. But it's enlightening to look back on the initial version, which can only read as "half the episode is vignettes of AJ being frustrated at doing nothing" (reminds me of how much wheel-spinning "Common Ground" does). Point of fact, it reads like an 11-minute episode idea, the kinds of cartoons Jayson and Jim would have spent most of their career working on.
Even given that, it reads as kind of tepid, doesn't it? Probably it didn't proceed further because no one could quite imagine what extra idea to graft onto it to justify a full episode. And the Fox brothers eventually came along and bungled that up too.
Rejected Episode 3 – "The Substitute Twilight"
Twilight is fed up with all her princess duties consuming so much of her time that she no longer seems to have time for her own pleasures and pursuits. She decides that she deserves a DAY OFF and locks herself in her room to read for the day, but not before informing Spike that under no circumstances is she to be disturbed. SK, ever the faithful assistant, agrees. At first, SK is effective at deferring any requests for TS’s time for another day, encouraging towns-ponies to come back tomorrow or pointing out that their requests aren’t something that really requires TS’s attention. But then something comes up that really would require TS’s input. Sk is torn. He knows TS has told him not to interrupt her for anything. But this thing really needs TS’s approval. In a fit of panic, SK decides to decide on TS’s behalf. Things escalate throughout the day, with SK stepping in for TS on bigger and bigger decisions, with SK doubting himself and freaking out more and more, worrying that TS will be so upset with him once she finds out. At the end of the day, TS ends her self-imposed exile, and comes out of her room to see SK in the throes of panic. She reviews all the decisions SK has made on her behalf for the day, with SK assuming the worst. In the end TS reveals that all of SK’s decisions are exactly what she would have done if she had made them herself, and that she chose SK to be her assistant for a very good reason. Because friends know what their friends would do!
Truth be told, I'm not quite sure how this ended up here when "Princess Spike", which this idea is clearly the precursor to, was already in development. Regardless, we see another common thread to these early episodes, a lack of the amount of conflict needed to fill 21 episodes, such that it feels more anticlimactic and less funny than an episode would need to be, as they foreground the fuzzy positive feelings from the learn moral.
But, it's not too hard to imagine ways of beefing this up to fill 21 minutes. Make more meat of the problems and decisions Spike makes, truly build up to a pretence of some of them being possibly wrong. Maybe involve some of the Mane 6/CMC (Spike episodes usually go worse when lacking inter-character chemistry, after all) in the proceedings in organic ways. Certainly, it might have resulted in a bland and padded episode still. But probably better than "Princess Spike" dumping on Spike even worse than in many past seasons, no?
Rejected Episode 4 – "Toot Sweet"*
Ponyville receives word that a terrible parasprite infestation has decimated Saddle Arabia’s sugar crop for the year, and the whole of Equestria is put on sugar rationing. Ponies begin stocking up on the sugar that’s left. Pinkie Pie panics and decides the best place to store it all is inside her own stomach. PP eats as much sugar and sweets as she can get her hooves on, and ends up getting very sick. She is feeling so terrible that she decides to give up on sugar altogether. After going through a bit of a sugar detox period, PP is a changed pony. Gone is the fun loving goof, and in her place is a much smarter, and somewhat more serious pony. At first, her friends are encouraging of her change, given how much damage her sugar overdose caused to the town. But they soon realize that they miss all the things that made Pinkie Pinkie. The friends intervene and introduce PP to a new concept; nutritional BALANCE.
* Similar to "Do Princess Dream of Magic Sheep", one of the folders of unused episodes is a longer premise of this episode (there called "Sugar-Free Pie", split across a few paragraphs. It changes more than that episode did, elaborating on specific character thoughts and feelings throughout and how Pinkie acts, plus that her sharp and logical mind was also a help to her friends at first. Still not different enough to dwell on beyond that.
Characterising Pinkie's a tough cookie, isn't it? I'm getting disturbing 'Nam flashbacks (or would that be flash-forwards?) to Seasons 8/9, when a character's prior cooky episode (e.g. "Lesson Zero") was used as the basis for the whole character. This isn't that, but it's hard to avoid the sort of 'doing a fanfic followup to "Party of One"' feeling here. I'm sure there is a way to do an episode like this and have it transcend its gimmicky premise, but it's not hard to understand why they didn't proceed with it.
Rejected Episode 5 – "Holey Moley"
Twilight’s castle seems to be struck with a series of structural issues; pillars falling over, missing stairs and holes in external walls. TS calls in FS for an assist in discovering the nature of these issues, thinking it’s due to some kind of creature. Through their investigations, they discover that Spike is the culprit! He is unable to control his hunger for gems, and the castle is just too delicious a temptation to pass up! FS and TS endeavor to help him control his impulses lest he consume the entire Castle of Friendship! SK learns a valuable lesson about restraint, and TS decides to put SK’s predilection for gem eating to good use by remodeling a section of the castle (she wants to take out a wall to expand her library).
At this point, maybe the show should have just considered allowing itself an episode comprising two 11-minute episodes. It's hard to see something like this working at 22 minutes regardless of how much content is grafted on, not without being largely a retread of "Secret of My Excess".
One idea presents itself: It's easy to see a sitcom with subplots that don't necessarily feed into the main plot using this as a B-plot fine (I'm thinking of how The Simpsons used Bart owning a factory as an offset to the heavy story about Frank Grimes in "Homer's Enemy"), but that wasn't a mode Hasbro was likely to ever sign off on, being a bit above what they would feel is appropriate and comprehensible for the target audience*. So, yet another easy cut.
* I remember now that this did technically happen in "Between Dark and Dawn", though that B-plot was superficially feeding into the seasonal arc, so it's not quite the same as what I'm proposing here. And now thanks, Jayson and Jim, for inadvertently reminding me that episode exists.
Rejected Episode 6 – "Alicorn for One and One for Alicorn"
Twilight is summoned to attend some royal duties by Celestia et al, leaving the care of the Castle of Friendship to the remainder of the Fellowship of Harmony. While she is away, Sleipnir, leader of the nomadic pony tribe of the North, arrives in Ponyville demanding to speak to the Alicorn princess. Knowing that TS will be away for quite some time, and that Sleipnir is low on patience, the remaining members of the Fellowship scramble in a tizzy to figure out what to do. They turn to Zecora who gives them a potion that will temporarily turn them in to an alicorn in appearance only. RY choses to be the one to take it due to her ‘regal demeanor’ but soon the Fellowship degrades in to jealousy and bickering and all of them take the potion. Sleipnir is attended to by a delegation of FIVE alicorns! But during his audience, the potion begins to wear off. The Fellowship are embarrassed, and admit their deceit to Sleipnir. They expect him to be offended, but he is overcome with the lengths they went to to try and keep him happy and feel honored and respected.
Three Musketeers references are a thing, apparently.
I'm sure I'm not the only one seeing vague hints of the "establishing ties with far off lands" thread used in "Party Pooped" here, no? Otherwise, it's a very strained episode idea using impersonations sitting alongside another very fanfic-y one in the Mane 5 as temporary alicorns (what if the potion has lasted the whole meeting and Sleipnir spread word of these alicorns after he left?). I think an episode like this would require a very deft hand from someone who could really handle the comedy without cheapening the characters or plot (so, not Dave Polsky).
Rejected Episode 7 – "The Make Up Shake Up"
Rarity has been toiling away on a new set of design drawings for days in advance of her upcoming meeting with Hippo Cavalleria, a big time fashion magnate from Phillydelphia, who is looking to potentially carry RY’s work in her catalogue. On the day of the big meeting, RY awakens to realize that she is all out of her usual make-up. Since it is an Equestria-wide holiday, all of the shops are closed for the day. Whatever will RY do?! In a panic RY rushes to her friends to see who can help her out. RD simply laughs hysterically until RY leaves when RY asks to borrow some make-up. TS is shocked to discover her castle has a whole room for make-up, but none of it suits RY’s coloring (TS is a Spring, and RY is a Winter, you see…). PP suggests using frosting. Through a series of events, in her desperation RY becomes even more frazzled and haggard, even accidentally ripping out a huge hunk of her mane. Ultimately, RY runs out of time, but decides to meet with HC anyway knowing it will likely cost her the opportunity. Strangely enough, it turns out Hippo appreciates RY’s ‘down to earth’ and ‘raw’ appearance! She comments on how so many young designers try to impress her with their own flash and personal style, that it ends up taking away from the talent of their work. RY gets the job and learns a valuable lesson about her own talent being more important than how she looks.
Might we have an origin for the title of the Season 8 episode "The Break Up Break Down?" Maybe!
Because Rarity (once we step past Twilight in the first few seasons) is the most consistently entertaining character for much of the show, it's actually quite possible to see this being fleshed out to fill 22 minutes. The inciting incident would have to be changed, of course (why not have it be just to do with her mane from the get go? Makeup wouldn't work well for the animation anyway, given other than eyeliner, we don't "see” it). And some matter to fill up the episode's middle with proper substance beyond "Rarity checks with all of her friends individually" – it would be a mistake to fill up several minutes with that the way "Maud Pie" did, rather than just a few minutes or confining some to a montage.
I still do see why this wasn't used (plus, the longer unused Rarity episode I'll cover next time is far more interesting), but it's not as obviously a rudderless episode as most of the others have been thus far.
Rejected Episode 8 – "Celestia's Day"
Twilight is in Canterlot job-shadowing Celestia and learning what’s involved with being a princess. It’s a lot harder than it looks! After seeing how Celestia raises the sun, reads all her mail and runs an entire kingdom, TS is more impressed than ever! But suddenly a guard bursts in with some alarming news. Apparently Celestia has accidentally sent the wrong letter to the wrong dignitaries, and now the two parties are angry with each other! Celestia and TS fly out to the affected area to deal with the situation. While there, TS sees that Celestia struggles with the same types of self-doubts and fears that she does, and that despite her position, Celestia doesn’t always know what to do. TS ends up mediating between the two parties and helping Celestia repair her error. On their trip back to Canterlot, and a heartfelt discussion.TS learns that just because you’re a princess, you’re not always perfect, and you’re never too powerful to not need help from a friend.
I don't doubt many viewers would have loved this, a proper Celestia episode, even if it's tackling the most obvious not-a-perfect-pony angles with her. But when you couple this and also proper Twilight-as-a-princess development, it's not hard to feel a little longing.
It's still just an idea, not really a story, of course. Beefing up the conflict with more scenes that feed into it would be needed, and I would also change the specifics of what Twilight sees in the early going-ons: more elaborate, fun things to watch – if not to do – akin to those Luna does in "A Royal Problem", possibly. And I can absolutely see this going wrong, or at least boring, which may have been why it was abandoned (well, actually, we know Hasbro tended to look down on Celestia-starring episodes, thinking they'd be boring for the target audience, so that might be why).
Concluding Thoughts
Jayson Thiessen and Jim Miller are undeniably talented and clearly know and get the characters (well, Jim Miller maybe less so, given the evidence to him just seeing the show as being fun wacky antics not meant to ever be taken seriously). But looking at the above, it's hard to deny many of these episode ideas feel rote, shallow and very "typical cartoon episode idea" (look, supporting cast pretending to be main characters!; Taking the endpoint of a prior Pinkie episode and flanderizing her personality change in a different direction!). I wouldn't be surprised if these were just supplied in an emergency due to a shortage of workable ideas.
One thing's for sure – as much as we may complain about directions the show took at times, and about individual episodes, writing them under its production constraints is HARD. The schedule, the demographic and rating restrictions, Hasbro's demands… can't be easy! Honestly, it shows Jayson and Jims commitment to even suggest these eight ideas. That one of them did end up being used, while vague notions from others were absorbed into two other episodes (“Princess Spike” and “Party Pooped” – though these two also wrote the proper Premise for "Princess Spike"). Some stuff in there sat well with Hasbro, Meghan and co.!
The good news – the remaining unused episodes were proposed by the LA-based writing crew, and therefore give much more detail, a proper story, and a very definitive impression of how they would play out on screen. Much more to work with and discuss, beyond "yeah, it's a bit light and flimsy, easy to see why it wasn't used". Next time, I'll see about covering a few of those.
Let me know what you thought of this little introductory post to the world of unused MLP episodes! Hope the introduction and context setting didn't bog it down too much. Won't need that kind of lead-in again, I reckon.
Part 2, discussing unused episodes revolving around the Cutie Map, can be read here.
Honestly, I was surprised by their comparative lack of coverage myself. I've always been fascinated by the cutting room floor (albeit more so in musical and video gaming contexts), but I've never really had the wherewithal or know-how to delve into the leaks' depths (at least, not much deeper than the Season 1 Polsky outtake "Fancy Meeting You Deer").
With that in mind, I definitely appreciate the deep dive you're doing! Even if a lot of these outlines seem they might've wound up as nothingburgers in execution, it's fun to imagine what they could've become, let alone the ways some of their elements were ultimately recycled. As lampshaded, I'm especially intrigued by the Twilight-Celestia outline, though that could just be because it vaguely resembles an idea I came up with in early 2020, then discarded when I couldn't come up with the actual disagreement Twilight was supposed to resolve (as an aside, I honestly wouldn't be all that surprised if that was one of the real reasons "Celestia's Day" itself got canned). I'm kinda surprised they didn't think to resurrect it for Season 9; "Celestia teaching Twilight" fits that season's overall goal like a glove, and even as one of those vanilla idiots who's only ever been miffed by a microscopic handful of episodes, I have to imagine all of us would've found it a lot more enjoyable than, say, "Trivial Pursuit".
Rambling aside, kudos on the entertaining writeup!
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Something I’m sure you remember is how the adverts and promos for Season 5 really played up both the angles of the Mane 6 going on adventures beyond Equestria to spread friendship, and, to a lesser degree, Twilight growing into more responsibilities and duties as Princess of Friendship. And then, of course, both of those ended up being much smaller in the season we got.
Well, in going through these documents, there’s been evidence of these original directions everywhere. On top of other map episode ideas, the Mane 6 originally had a name for themselves in their newfound duties. It kept changing before it got discarded: “Fellowship of Harmony”, “Guardians of Harmony”, “Guardians of Friendship”, etc. You’ll notice that last one got resurrected for the prologue of A New Generation (as did the Billy Elliot pun, which was originally used for the musical in “Rarity takes Manehattan”, though I’ll grant it’s possible that was arrived at independently).
Another angle was that all map episodes originally ended with the camera focusing on the ground, where a little Tree of Harmony sapling sprouted up, in an identical manner to the shots at the end of the Season 4 Key episodes. This direction, which made it to the final scripts, was a setup for initial plans for the season finale, but when that went in a different direction (oh boy… I could fill multiple posts with the development hell that was writing that monstrosity, and probably will at some point), they removed those setups at the animatic stage. Unlike the unexplained foreshadowing at the end of “Castle Mane-ia”, they at least had enough time to remove these.
As for Twilight’s increasing duties and responsibilities, there were not only more episodes with this as background plots, but they didn’t trivialize them as a joke so readily. In particular, the original version of “Brotherhooves Social” went through four iterations of a totally different episode where Big Mac became Twilight’s first guard, and in most of these, she had castle staff! Yes, the thing the fandom always wondered why it never happened, did originally happen! The rest of that episode is a story for another day.
I bring this up to note that, in the context of “Celestia’s Day”, the season’s staff (possibly because of Hasbro, possibly because of themselves) scrapped the majority of more direct serialization on both of these angles, reducing it to largely background filler that barely registers. Among that direction, it’s little wonder an episode who’s premise was irrevocably tied to that didn’t survive. It’s flatness, difficulty in fleshing out, and focusing on a character we know Hasbro doesn’t like being focused on probably all contributed to that.*
* Again, “Between Dark and Dawn” got away with this because Hasbro was paying far less attention to the show by that point, what with the new generation on the horizon. Plus, they had executives managing it directly in the form of Mike Vogel and Nicole Dubuc. In fact, since Hasbro’s focus was either on the 2017 movie or G5, Seasons 6-9 had far less oversight and micromanaging than Seasons 3-5, which overflow with “buy our toys!” marketing inserts Meghan McCarthy didn’t even have the energy to integrate organically.
As for why “Celestia’s Day” wasn’t resurrected for Season 9? The staff of Seasons 8/9 clearly did not give a flying feather about even canon material from before that point, given how frequently they contradicted it. No way we’re they going to use an UNUSED idea from that time over making up their own tales. The Season 6 reuse of one of the above ideas into “Applejack’s Day Off” occurs early enough before than to be different circumstances.
So… hope that extra info satisfied your curiosity, and whetted your appetite for next time!
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I joined the fandom either right before or right after the rough prints of Season 8A leaked, so I'm afraid I actually don't remember that. Sorry.
I'll take your word for it, though!
It's possible that the Guardians recycle was purely coincidental, but having it pop up in both the old documents and ANG must've been quite the jolt! I've never watched Billy Elliot, so I can't really speak for those puns.
Ah, that age old question! I've checked out a few fanfics that tried to answer it, but it would've been nice to see the show do it itself. I guess it just become one of their low-priority things that got kicked further and further down the line as time went on, up until that time ran out. Pour one out for the would-be fandom darlings that never were, I suppose.
I'll happily wait for that "another day" to arrive!
Makes sense. I can get why they decided that kind of serialization wasn't the right call at the time, but you naturally have to wonder what could've been and if it would've been better than what we got. I'm sure you have your own opinions in that regard; as for me, I feel woefully unqualified to provide my own (see the "vanilla idiot" quote from my original comment).
Ouch, man, way to stick it to my home team.
:P
So glad I finally got some time to read these posts! I love looking into the mechanics of the series.
Overall, it just goes to show that taking a task seriously, and trying to do the best job possible is what makes for good storytelling, no matter how "trivial" the property. Too bad that attitude did not hold sway through the complete run of the show.
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Great to see you here! I knew when I started doing these as a little experiment that interest and responses would be less about the initial period after the blog, and more the long haul, for people to come across when they do at any point in the future.
I do wish less of the episodes in these were just “yeah, that’s clunky, easy to see why it wasn’t used”, but what can you do, sure. The messenger only has so much control over what he reports.
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Still, it's neat to see the details of the process, even the false starts.
Hm, some of these sound like they could've been interesting episodes if they had been pursued and developed further. Some of them even sound like they would've been better takes on episodes than what we got in later seasons. Granted, some of them sound like they would've been really bad if they'd been turned into episodes (Pinkie Pie's sugarless and Rarity fretting about a lack of make-up come to mind).
Weird how these weren't talked about and haven't been featured on the fan wiki that mentions other scrapped episode ideas and concepts.
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If you mean the main MLP Wiki, they have a rule that they can only mention things they have official linkable citations for (we'll ignore some of those lead to removed tweets and the like; they were legit at the time). Thus, saying they come "from the 2019 leaks" won't fly there.
Regardless, as mentioned at the top, yeah, the relative crickets on the wealth of info from the leaks is baffling (the only thing that gained traction were the more notable demos/alternate takes of some songs). The fandom's appetite for behind-the-scenes info sure did dilute, eh?