Here’s some fascinating news. Today, for the first time in its 17 season run, South Park has missed its deadline and will not air a scheduled episode on Comedy Central in its designated time slot.

As die-hard SP fans know well, creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone take six days to produce an episode of the show; they come up with the story and the script and the animation and everything in-between in under a week leading up to the episode’s airing so that they can be as culturally current as possible. Parker and Stone gave fans an inside look at their fast-paced, time-crunched process in the 2011 documentary 6 Days to Air: the making of South Park.

So what happened? Two words: power outage. A press release tells the tale: “On Tuesday night, South Park Studios lost power. From animation to rendering to editing and sound, all of our computers were down for hours and we were unable to finish episode 1704 “Goth Kids 3: Dawn of the Posers” in time for air tonight. Trey Parker said, “It sucks to miss an air date but after all these years of tempting fate by delivering the show last minute, I guess it was bound to happen.” Methinks it is time to install a generator, eh? Click here to view images from the dark studios taken last night.

“Goth Kids 3” will be way ready for air next Wednesday, October 23. Tonight Comedy Central will fill the void with a repeat of the classic installment “Scott Tenorman Must Die.”