Read Part 1 and Part 2 of the Tad Stones Interview in which Tad talks about his early experiences with Disney.

Tad Stones early in his career.

Life After Darkwing
Tad Stones: I learned so much on Rescue Rangers that I felt I corrected on Darkwing Duck. I had just wanted to do 30% better, but my feeling is 70% of what I wanted came through. Even so, we still made mistakes. There were times when DW was a little more rubbery than I wanted him to be. We would do a gag where he reaches out of frame and pulls in something. Well, the storyboard guy instead of putting him next to the frame put him in the middle of the room — and then suddenly he was Super-Stretch. We were writing something we assumed was a small room and layout would come in with a big room, and suddenly it was "this gag doesn't well it would if they drew the room smaller."

I was just chomping at the bit to do another show where we've got the process under control and everyone's trained to think this way, now we've fixed this and we're gonna be even better. I pitched a science fiction series. Everybody on staff loved it except the key guy. Gary Krisel just couldn't see it. We would pitch it, and he would parrot back, kind of saying "so where is this?" "Well, it's right here." It was almost like showing him a piece of black paper and saying "this is how space is going to look," and it was if he were saying "can you make it darker, can you put more black in it?" He just never connected with the material. It never even got pitched to Michael [Eisner] or Jeffrey [Katzenberg]. I never got past Gary, and that was something I had done totally on my time, I think I did 36 pitch cards in full color, and he just didn't see it, so it just kind of died right there.

Joe Strike: What was it going to be?

Stones got his chance to work on a sci-fi series with Buzz Lightyear of Star Command. © Disney Television.

TS: The show's title was Warp Wild. Obviously everything gets reused because Warp Darkmatter reappeared when I finally got to do a science fiction comedy called Buzz Lightyear of Star Command. Warp Wild was about a space trucker who finds himself saddled — it sounds exactly like Darkwing — with kids, but it was a whole different dynamic. There was a robot maid, but she was an ex-military model and would kind of go psycho and drop back into her military model. Even though there were humans and aliens, it was very much a Darkwing-type comedy as far as broadness. Ironically I'm only a little bitter about this because I had done all the artwork on my own time

JS: You didn't have the direct access to Michael or Jeffrey you did in the old days.

TS: Back in the Ron Miller days the studio was so small I used to see Ron. I'd go up for one thing and you'd end up chatting for 15 minutes. That first meeting I had with Jeffrey, it's just on the subject I'm there to talk about and meantime he's taking phone calls, and then boom, you're out. I thought at the time "this is how it's supposed to work — why did Ron have all that time to chat with me?"

JS: You were going to mention something you were resentful about.

TS: I had done all that work on my own. So Gary took me out to lunch and said, "Hey, we're doing this show and da-da-da-da," and I said, "It's kind of like The Jetsons. I don't know why they thought I would be happy — he didn't realize I'd done all that artwork on my own. I didn't make a stink about it either. But basically by pitching it as another show it meant I couldn't go back and pitch Warp Wild either.

Gary showed it to Michael and Jeffrey. The guys said, "This is just The Jetsons — it's been done." Okay, at least my taste is on track. Later, Gary takes me out to lunch and I think it's my last chance to pitch my space show. He said, "No — we'd like you to do Aladdin."