One thing I think some people don’t realize is how many TV shows never make it past the pilot. Even getting a network to greenlight a pilot for your show is a major accomplishment, as sometimes, a show will be scrapped before it even gets to air, or never makes it past production For every show that gets picked up, many more shows don’t even get past the pitch.
So, let’s have a thread discussing shows that didn’t make it past their pilot episodes, and faded into obscurity.
There was going to be an animated Buffy series called, appropriately enough, Buffy: The Animated Series. Unfortunately, it never got to air.
Early '70s: Gene Roddenberry’s Genesis II and Questor. The pilots were made and aired, and they were excellent. Unfortunately, they were never picked up as series. In the case of the latter, it was said the network thought it was too much like The Six Million Dollar Man. :rolleyes:
Yes. It eventually morphed into the first motion picture a couple of years later, riding the popularity of Star Wars.
There was also a retooling of Genesis II after it wasn’t picked up. It was called Planet Earth and starred John Saxon.
“Assignment: Earth” was the final episode of TOS’s second season. Roddenberry came up with it because at the time, he wasn’t sure the series would be renewed for a third one.
Below is a link to my favorite pilot that never became a series because of why it was rejected. It seems the suits believed the two leads didn’t have the right stuff between the two of them to headline a TV show.
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(I wonder how they felt shortly after that decision when Magnum P.I. and Spenser For Hire were top shows)
Among attempts at translating a hit movie into a family-friendly series include “Black Bart” (the original title of Blazing Saddles, of course) and “Mother, Juggs & Speed” (the extra “g” because her surname became “Juggston” and to deemphasize her assets). Neither got past the pilot stage.
Honorable mention goes to Adrian Cronauer for trying to create a series which combined WKRP and MAS*H.
This show made it to production, but holly crap was it a bad idea.
Basically a con artist gives his viewers step by step instructions on how to pull off some of his easier scams. Like how to get a free meal from McDonald’s. Or how to have two hot models clean your house for free.
I can’t believe that show ever made it on the air even if it was short lived.
I’ve never seen it, but I have heard of Campo 44, which Hogan’s Heroes ripped off. There was a pilot and nothing else. Not only did the similarity kill it (Hogans Heroes got on the air first), but another issue was that the executives thought it was so funny that they couldn’t keep up the standard.
TOS was on NBC. And the third season was very important because back then they normally did not syndicate a show unless it had 3 seasons. No 3rd season and they could have been the end of Star Trek.
On January 21, 1978, a pilot for a new series aired. Once. And never saw the light of day again. But for those of us who saw it. . . Oh, we never forgot it.
But none of us could remember the name!
A couple of decades ago, a website sprang up called “IMDb,” which had a message board forum for most of its life before they decided to pull the plug a few years ago. (A scaled down version of it still exists at moviechat.org, though.)
Anyway. . . one of the forums was called “I Need to Know,” in which you could post a question about some fragmentary memory of a movie you had seen, and the movie/TV history buffs could weigh in on what it probably was.
One question surfaced every few months (paraphrasing):
Everyone remembered it, but no one could remember the title. This went on for a couple of years until. . . someone actually dug it up.
Respectfully submitted for your approval, the episode “Monster” from a series that was not picked up. . . The World Beyond, featuring a youthful JoBeth Williams.
The story I read was that Ruddy (or Fein) was on the way home after the original concept (set in a US prison) was rejected. On the plane, he saw someone reading the book Stalag 17 (the play, I presume), rewrote the proposed script overnight, and headed back the next day. It was originally called Stalag 13, but the title was changed to avoid charges of plagarism.
I’ve never heard of Campo 44, but I find it odd that it’s dated 1967. Hogan’s Heroes debuted in 1965, meaning the other series would have been in limbo for at least two years.
Vito Scotti played an Italian officer on Hogan’s Heroes (Major Bonacelli). He agreed to work for the Allies before he went back to Italy. I wonder if Campo 44 wasn’t an attempt at a spinoff.
Was that the one where the kid and his older friend got free pizzas from a Domino’s dumpster? All they had to do was order them over the phone, not pick them up, and then wait for them to get tossed out.