to air as a hold-over in the upcoming tenth season. It was decided that "The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace" would be the premiere episode of season ten. As a result, the annual premiere party was held at the Museum of Science and Technology in Los Angeles – it was a tradition for the premiere party to be related to the premiere episode. Kirkland cites his assistant director Matthew Nastuk as a big influence on the episode. He became heavily involved with the animation because he had grown up in New Jersey, where the Thomas Edison National Historical Park that Homer and Bart visit is located. To help make the museum look as authentic as possible, Kirkland and Nastuk visited it and took a large number of photographs that they brought back to the animation studio. At one point in the episode, Homer writes complex math formulas on a chalkboard. The producers wanted them to be actual formulas, so writer David X. Cohen got in contact with a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who were able to provide them. The episode features a guest appearance by actor William Daniels as KITT, a character from the Knight Rider television series of which Homer is a fan. KITT is an artificially intelligent electronic computer module installed in an automobile. In the episode, after failing to cheer Homer up with a film reel of his life, the family shows him a video featuring KITT. The automobile, seen driving in the desert, tells Homer the following: "Hello Homer. It's me, KITT, from TV's Knight Rider. Your family has asked me to invite you to a very special ..."; the film reel breaks just before KITT finishes his sentence. This of course leads to Homer becoming even more depressed. Daniels' appearance in "The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace" was the first and only time that he voiced KITT outside of Knight Rider and the film Knight Rider 2000. He recalls that "when I told my son in New York that I was going to be on The Simpsons, I think that was the first time that he was really impressed with what I was doing! The Simpsons is a great show and I'm glad they thought of KITT in one of their jokes." Reception In its original American broadcast, "The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace" finished 25th in the ratings for the week of September 14–20,