The database is currently very limited in scope. It contains data only for the series:
Every episode is based on a story. Each story may have been adapted many times by different writers for different series.
An episode is created by a writer/adapter, but the story is written by an author.
Usually the episode has the same name as the story upon which it is based, but sometimes not.
Sometimes the writer is the same person as the author.
There are two types of searches available - they are both powerful, but they are very different.
he Keyword Search -- in the upper right-hand corner -- will search through:
A keyword search will look for each instance of each word you type. The more words you type in the more results you'll get. But it only looks for entire words, not parts of words. So your spelling needs to be correct. If you are looking for mutants, but can't remember if it's "mutant" or "mutent" and just type in "mut" the search won't return anything.
On the other hand, if you type in "green" you'll get "The Green Hills of Earth" (story title), "Joseph L. Green" (writer), and "Cephes 5" ("green space officer" in the plot summary). "Long" returns even more results: 10 plot summaries, 3 series summaries, 2 reviews and 1 writer!
Because the Keyword Search searches through so many different parts of the database, it skips over small words and common words - it will not return articles, prepositions, and conjunctions or words with fewer than 4 letters: "a", "an", "the", "before", "through", "between", "without", "gun", "went", "car", "eel", "man", "fog", "Ray", "Eve", "Lin", "Lee", or "H.G.".
The Detail Search -- in the center of the page -- will search for parts of words as well as whole words, but the exact string must be found.
A search for "mut" will return matches for "mutt", "mutant", "mutineer", and "Mutual" (if they are actually in the database). A search for "th a g" will return "Affair with a Green Monkey", but "Monkey Green" will not return anything. In contrast with the Keyword Search, the more you type, the fewer results you will obtain.
If you left the search box empty you would get every result in the database. You can't do that with "Series", "Cast", "Writer" or "Year" but you can with "Episode/Story". The reason for this is so you can add modifiers to limit your search... searching for every title in the "Horror" genre, for example. Or any stories that I (zM) have given a rating to. Or any story with a review. Or a combination of any of the above.
Try both searches and see which one you like!