A lot of people thought the series was better than the movie in that the movie created these great characters who were barely seen; there were so many of them that other than in two sequences they didn't really get a chance to be played. Story structure-wise, they get all cozy and friendly and then they become enemies. Near the end of the film they actually pull a gun on Milo and that's a hard image to overcome, even though at the climax they're on his side.

JS: I remember loving the beginning of the film. It really took off and then it went into a middle section of them trudging through caverns that seemed to go on forever.

TS: If they had called it Journey to Atlantis maybe it would've gone better because then people would expect the journey as part of the movie. But when you talk about it as Atlantis the Lost Empire you can't help but think, "When are we going to get there?"

JS: `Are we there yet?'

TS: Now after the climax they're definitely good guys again, they're friendly, and now we get to use them. We weren't going to use all of them in every episode. We said, "That's silly, in a half hour they're going to have missions all over the world and we'll take who we need, whoever's best for any given story. Now who are the best pairings to give us comedy?" If there's a certain theme you'd use certain characters because they'd play out that theme better.

The series was going to be about Kida [an Atlantian princess] in our world trying to see how Atlantis affected the history of mankind. We thought with a little more animation we can make her question what they did — was it right to bring this crystal out of Atlantis that her father had kept hidden for millennia? She's not sure she did the right thing by exposing it. The studio wanted us to make a few minutes of connecting animation — "and then we did this." Instead we animated a considerable opening and connecting material, and actually re-storyboarded and reanimated some of the stuff that was already overseas just to make those themes work better.

JS: A more organic continuity.

TS: When you watch the sequel you don't say, "What a great feature story," but you do slip into each adventure before you realize what's happening to you, the transitions are pretty smooth. Everyone had favorites of the three stories — mine was the last one that featured two giants — a frost giant and a fire demon. They could've come right out of the pages of [legendary Marvel Comics artist] Jack Kirby. We added some effects to them and they really were nice.

The creatures in Milo’s Return were like ones from the mind of comicbook legend Jack Kirby.

JS: Was the cancellation a catalyst in any way to your leaving Disney after close to 30 years?

TS: No, it was just that I actually had one of the last term contracts in television animation. When I started at Disney, you assumed you were going to retire at Disney. The television division was started with the same feeling of, "Let's get the best people in the industry, sign them to contracts and keep them." That started slipping away with the artists, but you would still keep your directors, producers and story editors under contract, because they're your key people. But then the Animation division caught up to the rest of Hollywood.

I've been told Clint Eastwood uses the same crew on most of his movies. It doesn't mean he pays them a salary inbetween movies. They go out and get jobs, and then he gives them a call when he's doing another movie, and they come back.

The idea of carrying a crew on contract was an aberration. You can argue the pluses and minuses of it, but it used to be there was a show coming up and they'd say, "Oh, let's see if Tad is interested in working on this one." So even though I was trying to develop a science fiction show, Gary Krisel would come to me and say, "You've got the comedy and the adventure background, I want you to do the spin-off of Aladdin." It was in terms of casting: who would be great to do this?

Now that no longer happens, and you can argue, "What a waste of experience." On the other hand you can argue that television is made fresh new ideas. If you keep going back to the same people, are you getting the best ideas? I'd say that on the production side experience pays. On the creative side, I would hope I still have some stories to tell. I understand this is how things work now, and there's nothing to keep me from going back and pitching a show to Disney. If they take the show I would develop it, and if it goes, boom — I'm back at Disney doing a show.

JS: No hard feelings leaving? It must've felt funny —

TS: I didn't leave right after Atlantis. I had a little more time on the contract where I developed some shows. And then because I had some shows action-adventure shows in contention for ABC Family they extended my contract another six months while they were waiting to see if those shows went. They claimed they wanted to do boys' action adventure, which means at the very least Jonny Quest, if not G.I. Joe or robots or Batman. But ultimately that's not what people are comfortable with, because the same people run ABC Family and the Disney Channel, and even though they're supposed to be putting on different hats what seemed to be happening is, "Let's make sure we get the most value out of these things, so if we put something on here, it can be played on ABC as well or maybe even on The Disney Channel."