O.k., I get that the vast majority of television shows never make it and just end up as dead pilots, but what happens to them once they are shelved? There was even an article on Digg today about potentially interesting Sci-Fi pilots that never made it:
So why hasn’t someone found a way to archive and show these? I understand the audience would be limited, given that they didn’t test well, but surely a then-nobody actor who starred in a flopped pilot would be of great interest all this time later now that they are famous. I’m hoping the answer to my question isn’t “lawyers cause the problem because of the way the contracts are written”
I realize actors are supposed to get paid for their work and get residuals when their material is shown somewhere, but does that not expire after some number of years of these failed pilots sitting on a shelf? While I could certainly foresee a small number of actors complaining about this, especially if their acting was really bad or their part was highly controversial, I would think most would just be thrilled to have their otherwise dead material shown to build buzz and interest. What about a pay-per-view type set up? I for one am a fan of the comedian Adam Corolla, and I know he has done two failed sitcom pilots and a previous failed pilot for a U.S. version of the show ‘Top Gear’. I would be willing to pay to see those, but there is no where for me to spend my money. Why is that?
If the studios spent the money to make the pilot, and I as a fan of one of the actors wants to see the pilot and is willing to pay to do so, surely there is a market here, right?
I know a lot of studios archive their shows now, but do they archive pilots or do the production studios keep them, decide later to toss it or simply go out of business and it’s out with the trash? That maybe one of the problems. Also, some studios may keep them for the DVD/Blu-Ray collections.
I’ve only seen two full pilots, “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” with a different Willow and an TLC show about people spending a day in a house they’re thinking of buying. “Buffy” I saw after the show was on the air. The latter show I saw as part of a test audience (I gave it a bad review) and it was never picked up.
There are museums of television history. I think that some of them have tapes of pilot episodes that didn’t become regular TV shows. It may be necessary to be a TV scholar to get permission to watch them there though.
The original Star Trek took their first pilot and used scenes from it to make 2 episodes. I wonder if that was done for other series. Most of the actors changed from the pilot to the real series, Nimoy was in both.
A lot of times they just wind up on YouTube. Just search for “unaired pilot.” You may get a few fakes, but those are pretty obvious. Most studios seem to see them as free advertising.
Sometimes the DVD releases have the original pilot for the show. The Munsters DVD contains the pilot with a very different look than the Munsters we are used to. If you are a fan, you can download this as a torrent.
In 1983 a friend of mine in the dorms in college dragged me to see Gene Roddenberry speak on campus. I was never a big Trekkie but I had seen enough episodes to appreciate it. It was a little depressing because the place was only a third full or so but Gene was gracious and even made a joke about how all those people who didn’t show up would regret it.
Anyway, as part of the event he showed a blooper reel and the full original pilot as it was intended to be aired. I’m afraid I don’t remember much about it but one funny thing was Spock seeing a flower, picking it and smelling it and breaking into a huge grin.
There is a place at the MGM Grand in las Vegas that you can go watch and rate new tv shows that have not been aired yet. It’s kinda neat, and free to do.
The “Combat!” tv series of the 1960s took the pilot, added an opening with the platoon members talking about D-Day and then shows the episode. It aired as the 11th episode in the first season. Some cast members are different. Rick Jason was a sergeant in the pilot, later promoted to a lieutenant for the series. Series creator Robert Pirosh was a sergeant in World War II and Robert Altman (MASH, Nashville) did the first season and since he was an officer in WWII, he thought it was ridiculous to have a series without officers. Pierre Jalbert played different named soldiers of Cajun ancestry.
I have the first season of “Lost in Space” on DVD. As part of the collection they include the original unaired pilot. It has the same characters, except there was no Dr. Smith and no robot. And, the ship was called the “Gemini 12” instead of the “Jupiter 2”, and a few other minor differences. Parts of this unaired pilot were reedited and used in the first four episodes of season one.
Per the post from Wendell Wagner, I just checked out the Paley Museum of Radio and Television, which has a collection of TV and radio programs that is searchable:
And yet, no mention of the Adam Corolla pilots I was looking for. Sure, I suspect a handful are out there in their archives and a few on Youtube, but I don’t even know where these get categorized to know what I’m searching for. Is there somewhere they list ‘failed pilots’ on IMDB? It might be nice to search for projects from obscure actors I like that may only exist in failed pilot form, or to watch interesting pilot ideas that never took off just to see how they were executed, even if done badly. For example, I love the show The Walking Dead, and Blastr.com mentioned that CBS tried a zombie show back in 2007 called ‘Babylon Fields’ that never aired, with a link to the pilot. The idea was definitely interesting, just badly executed. I’d love to find more content like that…
Irwin Allen (“Lost in Space” creator) in his TV series “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea” reused the plot from the original movie with Walter Pidgeon, Peter Lorre, Robert Sterling, Joan Fontaine, Barbara Eden and Michael Ansara. Van Allen belt catches on fire and Admiral Nelson defies world opinion to put it out with an atomic missile exploded in the atmosphere on a certain date in a location far far away, dealing with saboteurs and mutinous crew. It was used in the series in an episode “The Sky’s on Fire”. Some of the other scenes used in the movie, such as the minisub accidentally detonating while clearing a minefield were used in episodes. Not to mention that monsters in both “Voyage” and “Lost in Space” often were the same costumes.
I’m pretty sure they aired that as part of the original Batman series. If not, I know I’ve at least seen it as part of the syndication package. (It may have even been a backdoor pilot, don’t remember.)