Remember all those catchy Star Trek episode titles, "The Naked Time," "Dagger of the Mind," "A Taste of Armageddon. "You know they were high-fiving--did they high-five back then?--when they came up with a clear winner.

It's just like editors when they think up a great headline. It is a magic moment, though it doesn't happen often enough to let you get cocky.*

CSI has some great episode titles, too: "Sex Lies and Larvae," for example, or "Scuba Doobie Doo." You know they are having too much fun over there among all the fake blood and faux gore. I was fo' Gore in 2000, but that is another story.

Anyway, I was thinking that there is neither the thrill of victory for 24 writers of coming up with great titles, nor the agony of defeat of hitting a dry hole. At least if the Emmy winner for drama writing from 24 is any gauge.

The title of    statue-snatching prose exercise was, according to the Emmy award-show graphic Sunday night: "7:00-8:00 p.m." I checked an online episode guide and, sure enough, the titles were all like that, just numbers (plus an "p.m.," of course). Even CBS' show, Numb3rs uses words, though mostly labels--"Dirty Bomb, "Judgment Call"--rather than wordplay or allusions.

I guess since each 24 episode is one hour of a 24-hour day, that suffices to separate one from another, but I can't see any high-fiving over, say, "5:00-6:00 a.m.," unless it wins an Emmy, I guess.

* My all-time favorite of my own headlines--a few cats eyes that shine in a field of aggies--was probably for a story on the brief controversy a few years back over a miniseries that showed the U.S. taken over by the Soviet Union (which shows you how long ago that was). My headline: "Tempest in a Samovar." Now that I think of it, my favorite may actually be the headline when Fox sued Disney over the Anaheim hockey team: "Fox Attacks Mouse in Duck Suit." then again, there was the headline for...