Well, actually, I'm not entirely sure that that's true, that's all.
"The Quality of Mercy" is a smaller, character-based story, not a big blow-
out; in fact, it has virtually NO CGI, and no arc stuff. It's a nice, fairly
enclosed little story.

The problem that one encounters, given the specific kind of series we're
doing here, is that the major stories have to have every single little detail
dead right, and they're filled with zillions of little clues that only I know.
To usher a freelancer through that process would require VAST amounts more
hand-holding than on the personal stories. And as a result, the freelancers
*prefer* to do those stories (from wha they've told me) because they have a
LOT more latitude to pursue the story where they might like to take it; if
they do a major arc story/blowout, the parameters are MUCH more strict.

One other aspect to all this is that big EFX stories can be hideously
expensive, unless you know exactly how to write it to avoid that. You can
write it one way, and it stays in budget; you can write it anther way and
literally be tens of thousands of dollars over budget. Because I work very
closely with the production people, I can turn out a first draft that is
generally spot-on, money-wise; with a freelancer, who doesn't know the
parameters, you have to *massively* overhaul the first drafts of a big story
to bring it down to something you can produce. (Even Larry has this problem;
"Deathwalker" in particular was originally 'way beyond what we could do, and
had to be made producible.)

Anyway, those are the reasons you generally tend to see my name on the
Blowout episodes. But in many ways, I prefer the smaller ones, and this
coming season I'll be doing more of those.

jms