"CUT!!"
We see a picturesque blue sky, dotted with white clouds…
As a hot-air balloon descends from on high…
A beautiful soprano wails the opening lines of the theme song…
MY LITTLE PONY, MY LITTLE PONNNYYY…
Which indicates another 20+ minutes involving a feast of friendship, fun and finicky Flash Animation…
On board said inflatable heat-powered craft is Spike the dragon…
The most loyal, unselfish and shrimp-ish firebreather to hatch from his batch…
Then of course there’s Celestia’s favourite teacher’s pet Twilight Sparkle…
The magical phenom who is destined to one day change the course of Equestrian history as we…
WAIT!!
Hold up, hold up, hold up!
Let’s rewind the tape a bit, shall we?
Spike didn’t plan this trip alone, did he?
No of course not, he’s far too young!
Because, instead of a purple unicorn by her favourite reptile’s side…
Instead of an intellectual equine eagerly looking out over the wicker basket…
Instead of our main character about to start her new life in Ponyville…
There’s nopony at all. Zilch. Bupkis.
Spike looks oddly ill at ease, twitching his claws nervously as if he knows something’s up…
Rainbow Dash, the next to appear, hesitates for a second before clearing the clouds away…
Even the tuneful female vocalist’s voice seems to crack briefly as the intro moves on…
Somehow the usual lines don’t quite carry the same emotional impact…
With an embarrassed tiny dragon jogging solo to a group of five visibly confused ponies…
Who ‘wonders what Friendship could be’?
What are they ‘sharing their magic with’?
The casual viewer would have no idea.
And as Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, Rarity, Applejack and Fluttershy do their little individual scenes, we’re left to wonder…
What are the ‘big adventure, tons of fun, beautiful heart, faithful and strong, sharing kindness’ Main Five supposed to do…
Without their mare of ‘magic’ (aka Miss T Sparkle) to ‘make it all complete’?
Not so much an ‘easy feat’ now, is it?
We see this in the ending montage, as the quintet of remaining ponies awkwardly pose for their picture…
The image looks pretty weird with a great big gap in the middle, doesn’t it?
And with a visibly frowning Spike blowing off the incomplete photo to Canterlot palace via flame mail…
Instead of seeing Princess Celestia looking delighted at her protege’s progress in enhancing her meagre social network…
She looks as utterly perplexed as the rest of us at the gaping hole where her prize student should be.
And she was gonna hang that portrait on her bedroom wall, and all!
Where is the unicorn of the hour?
Where is Twilight Sparkle?
Her 'very best friends' (plus a few other befuddled ponies) would like to know!
“Cut, cut, cut!!” An apoplectic brown stallion in a director’s chair and wearing a foppish black beret leaps off his hooves to yell raucously at his cast and crew. “That was wonderful, everypony! Just super, smashing, sublime… perfect, even! There’s just one minor hiccup that I’d like to address before we carry on though, which I’m hoping you can help me out with…”
Silence. Absolute quiet. You can briefly hear one of the extra’s knees knocking in the background, but the cute filly adjacent to him knocks the guy out with one punch, and total tranquillity is at last restored.
“Where the Tartarus is my main star? Where the heck is Twilight Sparkle?!” The words come thick and fast in a hail of spittle, drenching the director’s assistant nearby whose only crime was trying to change the camera lens before the next reshoot.
“Here I am, here I am… and I’m not happy!” The purple diva herself emerges from her trailer sipping an organic smoothie, flanked either side by her lawyer and bodyguard and with a huge hunk of papers in her hoof which can only be the upcoming scripts. “Before we carry on, I’d like to discuss the… changes made to my future role which you’ve inserted into the show without my prior approval.”
Mr Director’s natural dusky colouring suddenly took on a much more crimson hue, and the rigging crew nearby instinctively ran for cover as it seemed like their boss was in the final stages of a devastating nuclear eruption.
“Changes?” he growled, eyes narrowed and front molars about to be ground to dust.
“Yes, ‘changes’.” If Twilight was intimidated at all by the director’s underlying fury she didn’t show any sign of it whatsoever, and nonchalantly flipped through the pages of the files she’d brought along while her bodyguard held her guava and lime juice. “Isn’t it bad enough I have to apply this tacky six-star tattoo every single day, and glue an upside-down traffic cone on my head in each scene? Why do you also expect me to stick on a pair of fake wings in the next season, to hoof? It’s too much to ask for, it’s just too much. I won’t do it, and that’s final!”
“I understand your concerns Twilight, and know that we all share your pain and trauma. But if me and Fluttershy here can wear them, what’s stopping you… if you don’t mind my asking?” That gentle voice, believe it or not, was Rainbow Dash, who contrary to her depiction in the show, was a real sweetheart.
“Nonsense! What a load of crap! I say we pin her down, force them on her, then start filming immediately! Who does she think she is, holding everypony else up? Some of us have bills to pay and lives to go back to, you know!” That harsh voice, believe it or not, was Fluttershy, who contrary to her depiction in the show, was a real jerk.
“Don’t you two wannabes know anything about me at all? Haven’t you read my main profile, watched my feature length documentary, seen my bestselling autobiography which was out for all of last year?“ A clearly outraged Twilight Sparkle rounded on her co-stars, whilst gesticulating wildly at their apparent blithe ignorance. "I’m allergic to feathers, you dunces! Along with lactose, liquid detergent and stupidity. Do you think I want to trot about with a giant red rash on my back for the rest of the week? Oh, the sheer incompetence…I can’t believe I left dinner theatre for this absolute trainwreck…"
“Well, personally I think you’re being very unfair, Ms Sparkle. The director is doing his utmost to stage a professional production that generations of children will enjoy, and your constant delays and demands are making it very difficult for the rest of us to adequately perform!” That mini-speech there was courtesy of the far-more-articulate-than-you-thought Applejack, who actually didn’t have a drop of country in her before filming commenced.
“I’ll be darn tootin’! I be havin’ the solution roight 'ere! Why don’t ya put on a pair of them synthetic thingamajiggers an’ then we can lickety split get back to shootin’ this darn movin’ picture 'ere ‘til the cows come home!” That mini-tirade there was courtesy of the far-more-inarticulate-than-you-thought Rarity, who actually didn’t have a drop of elegance in her before filming commenced.
“Hmm. If I heard that correctly… and it’s a big if… that could work, I suppose.” Twilight paused her divaish meltdown to acknowledge Rarity may have made a halfway decent suggestion there. “But the unfeathered wings must be made only of the finest quality artificial materials… I’ll only wear them for four hours shooting time a day total… and I want word to be spread to all the gossip rags that I’m saving at least half the worldwide bird population by not stealing their plumages. Are we in agreement?”
“Yippee! We get to carry on filming! Woo-hoo! Let’s have a party, jump around like lunatics and then have a massive group hug afterwards involving everypony!” Pinkie Pie ecstatically announced the end of the standoff, and as you may have figured out by now, was the only main cast member to vaguely resemble her onscreen counterpart. After all, no pony thespian could fake crazed randomness that well.
“...Oh, alright, fine. Have it your way.” Realising that the cost of procuring a pair of inauthentic wings was far cheaper than seeking a replacement for his main actress, Mr Director caved relatively fast. “Now, are you ready to get on with the rest of the day’s shooting?”
“Hang on a tick. If Twilight’sss gonna be making ssssuggessstions, I’ve got one I’d like to put to you.”
Before Twilight could say ‘yay’ or ‘nay’ to the director’s power play, Spike removed his head to reveal underneath none other than… Twist.
Basically, after so many parental complaints about her lisp supposedly mocking kids with a speech impediment in her sole appearance and her subsequent removal from the show, they had to find a part for her somewhere. And after the real Spike quit due to a protracted wage dispute towards the tail end of S1 (dragon’s love their gold, you see) the perfect chance fell the bespectacled filly actress’s way to fulfil her nine-year rolling contract after all and not be left advertising nerd products on various home shopping channels to eke out an existence.
“How about, instead of ressshooting the intro for every sssingle individual episssode, why don’t we just reussse the firssst footage and repeat it over and over again?”
“By gum, I think she’s got it! And the bits we’ll save… will more than make up for the time we lost today and sourcing a fake pair of wings for Twilight!” If the director was mildly impressed at Twist’s ability to play a male character in costume without a trace of her slight speech quirk, he was positively thrilled at her budget cost-cutting ideas. “Okay, we’ll do just that; and as a reward we'll preserve your legacy by having a mute cardboard cutout play you in the background until the show either ends or is cancelled. Let’s get straight into shooting today’s main episode then, and we can carry on safe in the knowledge that we’ll never again have to listen to that nauseous song…”
“HURRAY!!”
“...Until S4 with Twilight’s new look, then we’ll have to do it all over again!”
“GROANS!!”
“...And don’t forget Twilight, in addition to the wings, you’ll have to be wearing stilts; Alicorn Princesses are bigger than regular ponies, after all!”
“Hold on, I didn’t read that part… I can’t possibly do that! I suffer from the most awful vertigo; even climbing up the stairs is almost impossible for me. Wait. Stop. Hold everything… get my agent on the phone, stat!”
“OH NO NOT AGAIN!!”
And that just about concludes today's gripping expose of what goes into making every single episode of MLP the best it can possibly be. I hope you’ve learned something about the fractious nature of the television industry; how careers can skyrocket or end in a flash overnight, why it’s best to not be blinded by stardust, and the really important things in life will always be your family, friends and health… a healthy bank balance that is.
Alternatively, you may believe this has been just a gigantic waste of time you’ll never get back. In which case, all I can say is: “Hey, you read it, not me! That's showbiz, baby!”
*Narrator dude laughs maniacally and bounces off on his head into the background, Pinkie-style.*