This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Crapface Residnt Evil sode be in here.
HeartBurn Kid: I'd suggest you should put it in yourself, but your spelling scares me.
ralphmerridew: Is it correct that Star Trek switched to Bottle Episodes when budget / ratings were low? ISTR reading that they deliberately planned to alternate "Planet Episodes" with the cheaper "Ship Episodes" from the beginning.
Mister Six: Re-wrote the trope to better reflect the "bottle episode" - ie. that it's about saving money, not just about limiting sets and actors (even if that how 90% of episodes do it).
With that in mind, I'm putting the following examples here while the guy who's currently on YKTTW writes a trope about single/limited set episodes:
- Cheers is possibly the best example — only in a very few episodes did characters venture outside the bar.
- Sitcom The Royle Family never left the main set of the family home throughout several series. This included episodes with a Screaming Birth and a wedding.
- The Smoking Room went one better, setting the entire series in a single (though admittedly, fairly large) room.
- X-Entertainment published a theory that the entire Saved By The Bell universe is contained inside the school: http://www.x-entertainment.com/messages/486.html
- An episode of the animated series Invader ZIM, "ZIM Eats Waffles", takes place almost entirely in Dib's room, save a minute of exposition in the beginning, where he watches ZIM eat the aformented waffles using a camera (naturally, really insane things start happening). The episode was originally intended to be one long, continuous shot. It is also one of the funniest things ever.
- Many, many sitcoms are based on the fact that only a very limited number of sets are needed. Empty Nest, The Golden Girls, ALF and Frasier rarely had scenes in any but the same two to four rooms — The Kitchen, the living room, and two workplace sets. (Only the kitchen and living room for Golden Girls, while ALF had the Garage and neighbor's living room.) Sometimes the set builders splurged on plywood and paint and built the outside of the front door.
Film
- In a way, the movie The Breakfast Club is a Bottle movie, with more than 80% of it taking place within the (improbably enormous, for a high school) school library.
Anime
- Cowboy Bebop has a bottle episode, Toys in the Attic, that happens entirely inside the spaceship Bebop.
theShaggy: Seems that the Battlestar Galactica episode "Unfinished Business" is an interesting example of a non-flashback Bottle Episode. Just about the whole thing took place in a boxing ring (which, if my memory serves, the podcast commentary states was actually the hangar deck redressed) with flashbacks to the year on New Caprica. The thing was, all those flashback scenes were shot during the hiatus between seasons and not used, so they threw them into the show. Must've saved them a bundle leading into the two-part cliffhanger.
According to an interview with the producers of star trek TNG, the origin of this term as they used it was is actually "Ship in a bottle", both the name of one of their episodes where they did this and a descriptive term for using sound stages and the existing Enterprise sets rather than a more expensive outdoor location or exterior shots (special effects).
Ununnilium: I think this might well fit under Live-Action TV Tropes.
cg12345: I dunno, I dispute The Sarah Connor Chronicles example. I thought the off-camera final battle was outrageously stylish, myself.
Bring The Noise: Cut "", except for the very last shot of the very last episode." regarding Blackadder - as that was shot on a set, as seen in the documentary about the show that was shown on BBC 1 in December.
Bucky65: NCIS had a bottle episode ("SWAK", s02e22) where parts of the cast were infected with pneumonic plague and effectively had to spend the episode immobilized in an oxygen tent. It is considered by many to be one of the best episodes.
sariasister: would the Seinfeld episode "The Chinese Restaurant" be an example?
Random Surfer: would Star Trek eps which take place in a combination of the main set and on the Holodeck count or not? They never leave the Enterprise/Voyager/DS9, but they're pretending to be somewhere else. I realize they don't live up to the spirit of "Bottle Episode" since the point is to have limited sets/guest cast. But the letter?
