Abandoning the premise needn’t mean replacing the entire cast, as both ER and Law & Order did several times, although that can be an element of abandoning the premise. It means either ignoring the logical consequences of the original idea, or taking the series in a direction so utterly different than it was when it started that, except for keeping the same title, it’s basically a different production.
If I’d meant to restrict the discussion to television series, I’d have written “TV series” in the thread title. You may note that such is not the case.
Zounds!
Rate the abandonment on a scale of 0 to 10. Firefly would get a zero for reasons left as an exercise for the class; Voyager probably gets at least a 7; L&O, probably a 3.
I understand there’s very little cougaring in Cougartown.
“It’s About Time” only lasted one season but managed to flip its premise on its head. Originally it was about two modern men stuck in prehistoric times. It ended up being about cavepeople stuck in the present.
First in with the Discworld. The first few of Pratchett’s series were just parodies of Sword & Sorcery books. They then evolved into something quite different, moving into Serious Literature territory on occasion. But they became so much more in the process than the Abandonment Score has to be in the realm of negative numbers.
Also Star Wars, which abandoned the idea of being entertaining movies midway through RofJ. Score: 8 at least.
MAS*H so allowed Alan Alda to overtake the role of Hawkeye Pierce that the whole point of the show–that war is so insane, the only way to deal with it is to be even more insane (in a positive way)–was not only abandoned, but set running in reverse.
“Lost in Space” started as a space-age Swiss Family Robinson and quickly devolved into a camp series centering on the pathetic, whiny, scheming, sharp-tongued Dr Zachary Smith.
Lost in Space- Dr Smith was supposed to be a one-shot.
Instead after a while the show turned into the Billy & the Robot and Dr Smith show.
Barney Miller was supposed to be half squadroom, half Barney at home with his wife- the actress playing his wife (Barbara Barrie) got high credits for two seasons, despite hardly ever appearing after the pilot.
The whole concept of Starfleet and Maquis crews forced (via isolation and heavy casualties to both) to work together was pretty much dropped, with the crew becoming pretty much the same as any other Starfleet ship and the effects of long-term isolation reduced to occasional episode MacGuffins.
How about Family Matters? Didn’t the family pretty much stop mattering after a while, as it became the show about Urkel?
Grace Under Fire was about a strong woman starting a new life with her kids after leaving her abusive husband. By the time the show ended, we found out he was just a “lovable” redneck and she apologized for making him hit her.
Well the original premise of the Doctor Who reboot – that the Doctor was the last of the Time Lords – keeps getting tromped upon. As did the idea that the Cybermen were in a different dimension and the last of the gates there was permanently closed. Let’s give it a 3.
Originally, The West Wing was to concentrate solely on the White House staff; the president would only appear in one out of every four episodes. That changed quickly.
Family Matters was a family-oriented comedy the morphed into Love that Urkel.
In the sense that it never followed through on the logical consequences of the idea that the ship was stranded a huge distance from home with no support. Early on, for instance, Janeway declined to use photon torpedoes against an enemy because they had only a small number (50?) and no way to replenish them; yet soon they used that weapon with the same abandon as any Enterprise. They kept using the holodecks, with an idiotic handwave that their power grid was incompatible with the rest of the ship. The ship never got run down or ragged for more than a couple of episodes. In short, it was just Next Generation with a less-likable captain.
They also made a huge deal about having to strictly ration the use of the replicators and the crew would need to get used to eating real food made by Chef Neelix. They kept Neelix running an actual kitchen, but seemed to forget about the replicator rations (except as something to gamble over). Oh, and speaking of the holodeck IIRC the early episodes hade the crew just wearing their Starfleet uniforms or civies whatever the program, but in later seasons everyone seemed able to replicate whatever costumes they wanted.
Seinfeld. The show originally intercut with Jerry’s standup act, and plotlines often played off the observations he made in his act. Later the standup act was largely dropped, and after the fourth season (about Jerry’s planned TV show) the fact that Jerry was a standup comic rarely had much to do with the plots.
The Buck Rogers TV series. In the first season, it was Buck and the survivors of an Earth ravaged by war fighting off Princess Ardala and various attackers. In the second season it was a voyage to rediscover Earth’s lost colonies in t he company of a birdman. But since both seasons were written by morons, the change did not matter.
The 1960s soap opera “Dark Shadows” started as a young woman raised in an orphanage hired as a governess by a family that had some unknown connection to her. It morphed into a supernatural show with ghosts, vampires, werewolves, time travel and parallel time.
Bosom Buddies with Tom Hanks and that crappy actor was based on two guys who had to crossdress to get a room in a cheap all-female building. Serious premise restriction ensued and they eventually dropped it. (And then the show died. Because they also changed the best thing: they worked in an ad agency with a great evil boss, but then formed their own agency, and kept the now less-than-evil boss around. Not nearly so interesting.)
Pretty high up on the scale of the OP. 7-8ish.
Go to tvtropes.org and look up “Cousin Oliver” for a whole slew of shows that were effectively destroyed by cast changes that messed up the original premise. E.g., on “My Three Sons” near the end, Steve Douglas got married to a gal with a little girl. Goodbye all-guy household. About a 2000 on a scale of 1-10.
(And I’m not going to provide a direct link to tvtropes cause I don’t want to waste too many people’s days.)
I am not a Star Trek fan or especially knowledgeable about the show, but I saw it when it was first broadcast and it occurred to me at the time that the show quickly abandoned its original premise that the ship was on a bold mission to go where noone had gone before to discover and explore unknown worlds and turned into a Federation ship visiting Federation colonies to help them solve ltheir problems, sort of a galactic Lone Ranger.
