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It’s #Halloween! Here’s an all-new #millenniumgroupsessionsredux interview with Michael R Perry, writer of the weirdest Halloween-themed episode that Ten Thirteen produced, “…Thirteen Years Later”, in #Millennium. Perry joined MM during season 2, his first episode was “The Mikado”, followed by four episodes in season 3. Some highlights:

• Before working on MM, he saw Carter in the Fox lot and congratulated him for making the MM pilot, he was impressed.
• Unmade “Dirty Snowball” episode: during s2, Morgan & Wong had an idea to focus on a suicide cult like Heaven’s Gate, have Frank Black investigate it, have Roedecker be in love with a girl in the cult. The episode got approved, he did the outline and wrote the script, then they decided to do “Owls” & “Roosters” instead. As a result, he did “The Mikado” to write a banger quality script that he could show as proof even if it got cancelled.
• At the end of s2 everybody thought the show would be cancelled, everybody had moved on, were surprised it was renewed.
• The writers room was just a construction trailer in the Fox lot.
• They had an office assistant that would answer the phone in the voice of Frank Black.
• Nothing but praise for Chris Carter (the importance of forcing writers to produce their episodes, he would go to Vancouver for casting, locations, tech scout), for director Tom Wright (meticulously prepared with a shot list with drawings in the script, thinking of lenses, involving all production departments in preparations), for Mark Snow’s music.
• On “Thirteen Years Later”: it came to him just by the rotation of scripts among writers. A Fox executive decided on doing a Kiss-themed night and put Kiss references during many shows. Hilarious stories of Kiss behaving like rock star divas. If he were to change one thing: if the whole episode were the ravings of a lunatic, they had the opportunity to kill the main characters. Lance initially was not into doing the episode, eventually he came around when he saw it was going to be a break between serious episodes. Standards and Practices were worried that they were violating all the norms!
• MM cancellation: happened despite good Lance/Klea chemistry, they probably learned about it after the sweeps (March/April).
• During the recent writers strike he saw Glen Morgan (who probably still hasn’t watched s3!) and Chip Johannessen.

Millennium after the Millennium