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| - One of the important things to do when planning a series is to consider how the budget should be spent. Rather than spreading it evenly over the episodes, most producers allocate more money towards the start, middle and end of the season (and if it's an American production, towards the Sweeps, wherever they may fall). That way, you can keep the audience's attention by letting big stories (be they huge battle scenes, exciting explosions or just big-name guest stars) flare up every so often, rather than having a run of episodes that are equally flat. Examples of Bottle Episode include:
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| abstract
| - One of the important things to do when planning a series is to consider how the budget should be spent. Rather than spreading it evenly over the episodes, most producers allocate more money towards the start, middle and end of the season (and if it's an American production, towards the Sweeps, wherever they may fall). That way, you can keep the audience's attention by letting big stories (be they huge battle scenes, exciting explosions or just big-name guest stars) flare up every so often, rather than having a run of episodes that are equally flat. Of course, this means that there's less budget to go around the others. To compensate, the producer will then commission a 'bottle episode', which is designed to take up as little money as possible. The easiest way to go about this is to use only the regular cast (or even just part of the regular cast) and set it in a single location, especially if you have a main standing set. This keeps production costs down, because no-one needs to scout locations, build new sets, or create fancy CGI graphics of the outside of the spaceship. Bottle episodes are often a chance for a slow, characterization-filled episode after a big, special-effects-laden action ep. Of course, all this doesn't mean the episode will be cheap, just that it's meant to be - like any regular episode, unforeseen complications can cause the show to run over the scheduled budget. Note that the term has become synonymous with "single-location" episode, even though bottle episodes can (theoretically) have as many locations as a normal episode. All that matters is that it costs less, because the money is having to pass through a "bottleneck". The Star Trek cast and crew call this a 'ship-in-a-bottle' episode, which is where the name originated. Typically, effects-heavy shows such as Trek will hold off on the bottle episodes until near the end of a given season, saving the Big Money for mid-season cliffhangers and special guests. Bottle episodes are known as a challenge and/or a chore, depending on the writer. Since most/all of the episode is set in a single location (sometimes even entirely in one room) with a smaller than usual cast, the dialogue (regarded as one of the harder things to write) needs to be better and tighter than in other episodes since the writer can't really do anything else with the cast. Sometimes, writers create single-location episodes just as an exercise to see if they can, like in the case of one of the first bottle episodes, Seinfeld's "The Chinese Restaurant", which actually ended up costing as much as a regular episode due to the expense of the new set. In any case, this generally results in either one of the most boring episodes of a series, or one of the best. In britcoms especially, they tend to be one of the better episodes. Some plots lend themselves to the nature of a Bottle Episode, such as Sinking Ship Scenario, Groundhog Day Loop, Locked in a Room, or Episode on a Plane. Die Hard on an X, though limiting the episode to one location, rarely fits this trope, since the other elements of that trope often negate the budget-saving aspects of a Bottle Episode. Also, a bottle episode may or may not involve a Minimalist Cast. Almost all Clip Shows (and, by extension, Recap Episodes) fit this trope, despite not strictly being an actual Bottle Episode. Not to be confused with Drowning My Sorrows, nor with sending out messages in bottles. Examples of Bottle Episode include:
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