 When production began on the 1996 Christmas trilogy, it originally  started off as just one episode, where its original script included  all the elements of both "Heroes And Villains" and "Time On Our  Hands", but compressed to fit into one movie. But as the ideas grew,  John Sullivan told the producers that more than one episode would be  needed, so "Modern Men" was written as a filler between the two  episodes, and it ended up being the current trilogy.