I know this episode technically isn't an actual episode, but, Ten Minutes to Doom?
First off, I absolutely DO consider the unfinished eps to be "actual episodes"! Just because the crew didn't have time to finish them doesn't mean they aren't canon. Same goes for the episode ideas that don't have scripts!
Anyway! Ten Minutes (I almost never bother to add 'to doom' or 'of doom' for any of the episode titles) is a GREAT episode that would've been at least Bolognius Maximus level had it been finished! (To be clear I consider Bolognius Maximus a pretty dang good episode, but not Backseat Drivers level.)
It's got a LOT of PAK lore (it kinda has to based on its premise haha)! Aaron Alexovich made a piece of concept art showing just how much Zim deteriorates in those ten minutes:
look at him he's so GROSS. HIS HEAD IS SHRINKING, LOOK, HIS WIG IS SLIDING OFF. it's just..EUGH.
anyway what was I saying? oh yes! PAK lore! The timer being exactly ten minutes is fascinating.
I've heard at least one theory that irkens should be able to survive without their PAK (for over 10min), but they were specifically engineered to not be able to. Because the PAK (supposedly) controls their emotions, makes them loyal to the empire, etc. If an irken took off their PAK, they've basically gone rogue and the empire wouldn't be able to control them at all. So, naturally, the empire made it so irkens COULDN'T SURVIVE without their PAK. That's why it's exactly ten minutes - because it was engineered that way.
I'm here to tell you that is complete and utter bullshit! One simple reason: minutes are an Earthian unit of time. There is NO reason for irkens to measure in them. In fact, there's some canon evidence that "timethings" are the wider-used unit, or at least the unit in Moo-Ping 10 (comic issue 35):
So I hc that either the ten minutes thing is just a weird coincidence (there've been weirder), or it's actually something like 10.0004 minutes.
"But Pants, Zim's lifeclock was showing in minutes!" yeah and I bet you also think all alien species always converse in perfect English in IZ. It's being converted for the benefit of us, the viewers!
Moving on from that now! It'd probably have been REALLY annoying for the storyboard artists to plan this one, since Zim's lifeclock is in real time, so they couldn't do any time skips (even a couple seconds long).
What else? Oh, right! We get the first appearance of Foodio here :D This also means that Membrane, rather predictably, solved world hunger between now and Florpus.
Dib's speech patterns with the PAK on him are interesting! Instead of simply having Richard do Dib, they had Andy try to mimic Richard, which is a much better idea really - Dib's still got the same vocal chords. It kinda sounds like Zim's robot Dib in Future Dib, haha. It's also how I imagine Zib sounds, or pretty close to it!
SCREAMY IS DECENTLY FUNNY AND SERVES TO FURTHER DRIVE HOME THE POINT THAT THERE ARE A LOT OF SCREAMING CHARACTERS, AND A LOT OF STUPID CHARACTERS, IN IZ!!!
this must've been VERY confusing for the Skool with all the places Zim and Dib go, hehe. They've both been to several different places in space as well as Antarctica off the top of my head. It's also..like..if you have the money to buy HOMING CHIPS, why couldn't you buy desks in Door to Door? the skool has got to have, like, the worst budgeter ever.
