Star Trek TNG recycled the TOS ep. “Elaan of Troyus” twice: Wesley in the Kirk role in “The Dauphin”, then Jean-Luc himself 3 seasons later in “The Perfect Mate.”
Is it really recycling a script when you’re just doing Taming of the Shrew over and over again?
This brings to mind the Columbo episode that’s the reverse of that: LAST SALUTE TO THE COMMODORE, where Robert Vaughn finds solid evidence that his wife has killed her father, and so Vaughn does everything possible to make it look like this isn’t a crime scene and nobody murdered anyone — before employing the usual Columbo villain tactic of unconvincingly trying to explain discrepancies away.
So whenever our hero’s default approach turns up stuff, Columbo is building a case against the wrong person — though, yes, if Columbo is smart enough to eventually figure out the guy’s motive, every detail would morph into a case against the person the scene-of-the-crime evidence would’ve pointed to. Only the problem is: no, she didn’t actually kill anyone; her husband just made a reasonable mistake.
Though originally made as theatrical one-reelers, the Three Stooges movies were eventually shown on TV. After Curly’s death they seem to have remade damn near every episode replacing him with Shemp.
I would have been happy if he just came up with 14.
The thing I remember most about this episode (aside from its stupid ending) is that Columbo was convinced Vaughn was the murderer and befuddled when he turned up dead. It must have been a real shock to Columbo to find out he had been wrong all along and had to start over again.
Seems to me Magnum P.I. had a few stories that were pretty damn similar…
Someone hires Magnum for some Red Herring job, when really they are on the island to kill/rob/kidnap whatever visiting dignitary Higgins happened to be hosting on the estate that week. Thomas finds out just in time to foil the plot by having TC fly the chopper down between the assassin and the target.
Hawaii 5-0 (the reboot) and NCIS Hawaii had many variations on a plot where the actual suspect was the person from the Other Government Agency who initially comes in all helpful and friendly. It was to the point where both teams should have immediately suspected anyone from any outside law enforcement the moment they tried to “help” with the case of the week. The only people who ever really helped were the ones who had to be forced into doing it.
Several British TV shows recycled their scripts for radio, such as Dad’s Army, The Likely Lads, and Doctor Finlay’s Casebook. There was no attempt to present it as a new show, the scripts were minimally altered to eliminate visual comedy or sight gags and just performed again.
I recently watched some early episodes of The Lone Ranger, and they were all recycled radio scripts. I suspect this was fairly common when television was stealing audiences of shows like, e.g., Gunsmoke and Have Gun, Will Travel.
Mac and Myer for Hire (the syndicated shorts that aired in the afternoon for kids coming home from school back in the '60s and '70s) used routines lifted directly from Laurel and Hardy movies.
I always thought it was produced by Hal Roach Studios, but looking it up I find it came from Trans-Lux, the same company that made those cheap Hercules and Felix the Cat cartoons I watched as a kid when I came home for lunch.
With all the mentions of COLUMBO here, let me add that, in the ‘70s, they passed on a script where the killer was a dentist-turned-poisoner with an unfaithful wife and a poker-game alibi, and so it got repackaged for Rock Hudson as MCMILLAN.
And then, in the ‘90s, when Peter Falk went back to playing COLUMBO — well, they had nothing better to do, and so they used the script anyway. Yes, right down to the twist of the killer (a) making it look like someone died while driving a car, but (b) intentionally doing a crappy job, to make it look like someone wanted to make it look like someone died while driving a car.
Not just A Christmas Carol, and not just sitcoms. It’s A Wonderful Life got reused over and over. Shows would do either, or both, if they ran long enough. Off the top of my head I remember ol’ Six Mil doing a Christmas Carol episode.
You mean how they named a private club after him? or the giant statue in front of the Hawaii 5-0 building? Run by white guys? 
It wasn’t the same show, but two different Donald Bellisario shows, Magnum (Italian Ice) and Airwolf (The Truth About Holly), used the exact same script.
The 1980s reboot of Mission Impossible had some original (and good!) scripts, but because of the writers’ strike there were a couple recycles nearly word for word from their original 60’s version.
Oh yeah? I was a huge $6M Man fan as a kid, but I don’t remember the show doing a Christmas Carol episode. I’d love to find that ep today, just to see how they managed to shoehorn a CC plot into a show about a crime-fighting cyborg 
ETA: found the episode: “A Bionic Christmas Carol”. Not too subtle or clever with the titling there… 
Unfortunately, it only appears to be streaming on Peacock, which we don’t currently subscribe to. Was hoping I could catch it on Tubi, Freevee or one of the other free streaming channels.
Season 4, ep 10, called, and I shit you not, “A Bionic Christmas Carol”. Ray Walston is the Scrooge standin.
If I remember right (it’s been 49 years since I saw it that one and only time…oh, my!) Steve used bionic fingers as a chisel to carve out Scrooge’s “Christmas future” tombstone. And he took Scrooge “flying” in slow motion bionic leaps.
ninja’d! by you!
Yeah, right after posting ‘I’d love to find that ep today’ as if I’d have to consult a televsion archivist working for the Smithsonian to find such a rare episode, my dumb ass suddenly remembered there’s this amazing thing called ‘the internet’ which provides info on just about everything that’s ever existed.
$10 (plus shipping) used on ebay and Amazon.
And when your done, donate it to a library and share the joy of bionics with a new generation.
“you’re”
criminy!
This happens in movies too. For instance, how many versions of The Parent Trap are there? Your first reaction is to say that there are just two versions, one in 1961 and one in 1998. Well, no, there have been fifteen of them. This doesn’t include movies with small resemblances, just those so close that royalties have to be paid. So how can there be that many? The basic outline for The Parent Trap began as an outline for a film script proposed by a German scriptwriter in 1942. Nobody was interested in the idea, so he published it as a novel in 1949. Then, starting in 1950, fifteen different versions of it have been made as movies in countries all over the world. There was also a theatrical musical version and a graphic novel version. There have also been three sequels made just for television.
So you’re thinking that The Parent Trap must be some kind of record. No, the record at the moment is a movie called Perfect Strangers first made in 2016. It has been remade 25 times so far in countries all over the world. Two more versions are in planning. Again, these are movies so close that royalties must be paid.
Bonanza kept killing off Ben’s wives and all the sons’ girlfriends.
I’ve often wondered whether it was more unlucky to be a crewman on the Enterprise or an attractive woman on the Ponderosa.