Title says it all.
Something Is Out There - about an alien (Maryam D’abo–yummm) who teams up with an Earth cop to track down a homicidal alien. The pilot was a two-parter, and then I believe they released a handful of subsequent episodes in syndication.
I’m really hoping that SciFi will make a series from The Lost Room. That miniseries was one of the best things I’ve seen on television in a long time.
** Judge Dee and the Monastery Murders** – Nicholas Meyer adapted Robert H. Van Gulik’s novel about the T’ang dynasty sage (who really did exist) into an ABC TV Movie of the Week. It’s great, but hard to get (I taped mine from a TV broadcast). He clearly wanted this to be a series. They used period sets and an all-Asian ancestry cast (Except, curiously, for Dee himself, who was played by the oriental-looking but African-ancestored Kheigh Dheigh), and were pretty faithful to Van Gulik’s vision. I suspect the network suits balked at the price of a costume drama every week, though, and they nixed it. It was repackaged as a modern-day detective drama, still starring Sheigh, and setr in San Francisco (Hey, it’s got a Chinatown, right?), called Chang! (with an exclamation point). It flopped. There was a six-episode British series that preceded Meyer’s effort, and may have inspired it, that I’d dearly love to see. I heard rumors that Paul Veerhoeven was going to do a Dee movie, but it never happened.
Barefoot in the Park – this ran, as many potential pilots did, on the anthology series “Love American Style”. It starred David/Al Hedison and I don’t recall who else. It was, like “The Odd Couple”, based on a Neil Simon play and much better-written that your typical TV sitcom (and was better than the Movie version of BitP). It clearly stood out, head and shoulders above the usual Love American Style crud. But when they finally greenlighted it they not only changed the actors, they changed their race from white to black, and I really don’t think the creators knew how to do Black right, because it didn’t work at all.
The Questor Tapes – Gene Roddenberry tried his post-Star Trek hand at a couple of other SF series. This one involved a robot named Questor, and featured a pre-MASH Mike Farrell. The pilot was interesting, but they never followed up. Roddenberry’s other series, about a guy who, Buck Rogers-like, falls asleep and wakes up in a vastly-changed future, got three different pilots with three different casts (and gave us the sight of Mariette Hartley with two belly buttons), but never really clicked.
I thought Generation X had potential
I was just talking about that the other night, I remember it well. Would have been fun. Much more so than Holmes & YoYo.
No, it actually made the NBC schedule, but ratings were dire, so it was canceled after about 8 episodes.
I have heard that Campo 44 – a Hogan’s Heroes knockoff starring the great Vito Scotti* – was not picked up as a series because the network executives thought it was too funny. I would have liked to have seen that.
*If, during the 60s and 70s, a TV show needed an Italian character (or Mexican or any non-WASP with an accent), Scotti got the job.
I miss Manimal.
Running Delilanh–Kim Cattrall as a cyborg secret agent.
Oh God, the *Something is Out There * television show was horrid. Absolutely horrid. The **mini-series ** was great, but the show…shudder…
The one I was really pulling for was White Dwarf. I think I’ve still got on VHS. Might be something to watch this weekend…
The Return of Sherlock Holmes. It was a TV movie that aired, gosh, 20 years ago and was about Holmes reawakened in the 20th century. It was very good and had some amusing moments of Holmes dealing with modern life (i.e. he deduces that the police chief’s nickname is “Noodles” because the chief obviously went to the great expense of having it embossed on a cup). Obviously meant to be a pilot, I always wondered why it wasn’t picked up.
Blood Ties (1991) was a surprisingly intelligent take on modern vampires – not as supernatural beings, but as a slightly different breed of humans (with their roots in Carpathia), living in the modern world.
Wasn’t the “Star Trek” episode with Gary Seven supposed to be a pilot? Could have been an interesting show (especially if we got to see Terri Garr in a miniskirt every week.)
Comedy Central used to run fake trailers for something called “Sexy Justice.” With a little tweaking and better-looking leads, that just might have taken off…
I forgot the title but I do recall this. I thought it was earlier than 1991, though. I see on the IMDB that various people thought this was somehow connected to the series KINDRED: The Embraced (which was essentially from the RPG VAMPIRE: The Masquerade.)
I’m delighted to see that people remember Questor. Another made-for-TV science fiction movie that would have made a good series was Prototype, which starred David Morse (Tritter from “House”) as an intelligent and sensitive android.
Yes, Assignment Earth. The idea was later revived as a series of Star Trek novels (none of which are canon).
You forgot the Roddenberry pilot “Spectre” which could be said to be like hybrid of Sherlock Holmes and “The Dresden Files”.
Heat Vision and Jack. A show about an astronaut with super brain powers played by Jack Black, and his talking motorcycle (voiced by Owen Wilson). See the 30 minute pilot episode here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lWgXDOAJ5s
Fox-Force Five.
Lifetime’s running a series now called Blood Ties, but it’s based on the Tanya Huff books, so it’s apparently not quite the same thing.
I think the earlier one sounds interesting too.
I caught most of F/X: The Series. Great show! I bet it would have lasted longer had it been on in prime time instead of being syndicated and (typically) aired after the late news.