alt title(s): Pilot Episode
Vincent: What's a pilot?
Jules: Well, you know the shows on TV?
Vincent: I don't watch TV.
Jules: Yes, but you're aware that there's an invention called television, and on that invention they show shows?
Vincent: Yeah.
Jules: Well, the way they pick the shows on TV is they make one show, and that show's called a pilot. And they show that one show to the people who pick the shows, and on the strength of that one show, they decide if they want to make more shows. Some get accepted and become TV programs, and some don't, and become nothing.
A pilot is a "test run" of a series concept, filmed and assembled to give the network an idea of what it will look like, how it will play, and (via viewer testing) what kind of demographic it will appeal to. Usually the network will turn down the pilot. Sometimes it will throw it back to the producers and say, "try again". There are probably ten pilots made for every series that actually makes it on the air, at least in American TV — some insiders have snidely claimed that Hollywood is more about making pilots than actually making shows.
(The term "pilot" is used in this sense outside the entertainment industry; a "pilot plant", for example, may be a smaller-scale power plant that's used to test some new generation technology.)
Even when a show is picked up and given a timeslot, there is no guarantee that a pilot will ever reach the air. They often do, usually as the
premiere. Sometimes — usually with those shows whose producers were told "try again",
the original pilot is so different from what reached the air that they don't try to use it (as is the case with
Gilligans Island), or they reuse it in an innovative manner later in the series. (A good example of the latter would be "The Cage", the pilot episode of
Star Trek The Original Series, which was recycled into the two-part episode "The Menagerie" in the show's second season.)
Pilots often have somewhat larger budgets than a typical episode of series, but fewer purpose-built sets. A hospital or school or graveyard in a pilot is likely to be the real thing - no sense building an elaborate set for a pilot that probably won't be picked up.
The writing in a pilot can be significantly worse than in regular episodes. Introducing all the characters and setting up the situation in a limited time can be difficult to do in a natural way, and pilots are therefore notorious for
clunky expositional dialogue.
Animation often does the same thing, except it is usually a 5-10 minute example of what the series is going to be like: action, characters, dialogue, setting. This may give way to an actual television series, but the pilot itself is not considered a part of
canon.
Live Action TV may do the same thing.
Should a pilot be integrated into another series, it's a
Poorly Disguised Pilot.
Most pilots fall into the category of the
Welcome Episode or
Everyone Meets Everyone. It'd make more sense to list the exceptions than the examples.
Many, many pilot episodes are simply named "Pilot", making "Pilot" the most common episode title among all series.
Notable Pilots
- The Pilot Episode of Seinfeld is not only considered the worst in the Series, but the Producers can't even agree on the Title. The current decision is The Seinfeld Chronicles, which was the original Title for the Show. TV Guide gives it as Pilot, but that was changed to avoid confusion with the 2-Part Season 4 Finale The Pilot. The most unusual name for it is Good News Bad News. Don't ask me how they got there.
- Also, this pilot aired over a year before the first season began, which kind of showed how much hope NBC had for what would later become one of their biggest cash cows.
- South Park has three pilots. In the first one, Cartman is called Kenny, no name is given to the other three, and both "Kenny" (Cartman) & Nameless Kenny die. In the second pilot, used with the signature Cutout Animation, the town of South Park is firmly established and the characters have personalities, to the point where Kyle is Jewish. All of the characters have the names they currently have, and Kenny's the only one who dies. Kyle even starts the Catch Phrase, "Oh my God! They killed Kenny!", although "You Bastards!" had not yet come into existance. This could be considered Canon, but in Season 4, the kids made it themselves, to provide example of something kids would make. Comedy Central saw the second pilot, and they asked Trey Parker & Matt Stone to make a 22-minute pilot. They made it with cutout animation, and it was accepted (although alterations were made before it actually aired, such as dropping Kenny's Back From The Dead stunt from the ending). Later episodes used Maya instead for Conspicuous CG.
- Executive Meddling forced the Pilot Episode of Robot Chicken to be broadcast as the 11th Episode.
- The Pilot Episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force was 16Min instead of the usual 11. Frylock was more robotic & subservient to Shake.
- The Pilot Episode of The Drinky Crow Show is the only episode not in HD.
- Bones: Notable in a bad way, with dialogue that clunks like a jackhammer and lead characters that come off as completely psychotic. These problems rapidly improve in the regular episodes.
- Babylon 5: Name a problem a Pilot Movie could have, and it's there. The creator re-edited it several years later to make it stink less. (The radical changes in characterization and the transformation of Delenn from an androgenous Uncanny Valley dweller to exotically attractive female are the major differences.)
- Batman The Animated Series: The famous opening sequence where Batman foils some bank robbers is similar in the general style of their animated pitch.
- Doctor Who had a pilot episode (actually several, since they re-made it several times, using the same script) which, despite being a British show from 1963, survived. It was similar to the first episode, but with different costumes, a scene with Susan drawing a bizarre inkblot, and a statement that the Doctor and Susan come from the 49th Century. Because it was produced after the series was accepted rather than to sell the series, it may not technically be a pilot by some definitions.
- "Invasion of the Bane", the first episode of another Whoniverse series, The Sarah Jane Adventures, aired as a stand-alone story like a pilot, but, again, the BBC had already agreed to make the first season.
- ER: Written in 1974 and filmed in 1994 with only minimal changes to the script, this is an extreme example of the gap between pilots and regular episodes. A male doctor was even changed into a woman - without altering his dialogue.
- Lost: One of the most expensive pilots ever made, but worth every penny for both the critical reaction and the ratings success.
- My Name Is Earl: Somehow manages to painlessly explain a convoluted backstory in only 22 minutes and still be funny.
- ReBoot: Did not have a pilot because of the expense of CGI hardware back then. It was an entire season or nothing.
- Star Trek: Two pilots, which was unusual back then. The first one (The Cage) didn't sell because Gene Roddenberry produced a dramatic show instead of the action show he had promised. It was later worked into the two part The Menagerie. The second pilot Where No Man Has Gone Before lacked Dr. McCoy and was aired as an episode of the series.
- The Invisible Man: Though the pilot showed the events that set up the show's premise and is definitely considered canon, it was much more over the top in terms of violence and absurdist comedy than the rest of the show. For example, a scene had Fawkes and Hobbes sitting in a café when the latter points out to the former there is a "threat" in the room. Fawkes thinks he's talking about a couple of South American looking mercenaries fondling knives sitting behind them but it turns out he was referring to a Canadian couple making out. As soon as he claims they are from the "Free Quebec Militia", they start shooting up the place only for Hobbes to break out a machine gun and start fighting back while screaming "SCREW THE EXPOS!!!!". .
- 30 Rock: Rather mediocre pilot and quite possibly the worst episode of the whole series. Tina Fey herself has said "if I never see that pilot again, it will be too soon". The show's ongoing struggle in the ratings may well be due to people having dismissed it after the pilot. Also notable in that the scenes with Jenna were refilmed before it aired, replacing Rachel Dratch with Jane Krakowski.
- Inspector Gadget's pilot had the inspector himself with a mustache and a british accent (provided by Gary Owens). When the show was picked up as a series, they had to throw in a Hand Wave in the aired version explaining the mustache. You can watch the pilot intro here
and a clip of the episode itself here.
- Kids Incorporated shot a pilot featuring most of the actors who become the first season cast but very different sets and a radically different format, using only the flimsiest of plots to link together not entire songs, but a series of medleys, mostly not by the main cast. The pilot was never aired, but it was intercut with some new footage in the form of bridging sequence with Rassan Patterson (who had not been cast for the pilot) and released as a direct-to-video feature with a framing story of how his character came to join the band — in the final sequence, quite obviously filmed much later than the rest of the episode, we're offhandedly told that three members of the pilot cast had suddenly moved out of town, leading to the Kid's invitation to join the band (No similar explanation is given for Stacy and Renee, who in the pilot had clearly been meant as supporting characters rather than band-members).
- Heroes' pilot was an hour and a half long, and many of the "lost" scenes and characters that didn't make it into the premiere were recycled in modified ways (the Terrorist character of The Engineer was changed to the neurotic Ted Sprague, for instance)
- Virtuality is an unfinished Mind Screw of a pilot which I can only describe as 2001 meets Serial Experiments Lain meets Big Brother IN SPACE (with some Ghost In The Shell and Ex Is Tenz for flavor) from the producers of Battlestar Galactica. It's bad enough the crew has to pilot an experimental ship and be Reality TV stars in space for 10 years, but then mysterious "malfunctions" kick in, the VR goggles start to blur the lines between fantasy and reality the captain gets killed yet his consciousness seems to have survived; a crew member gets raped in her own simulation by a man who may or may not be a computer virus.
The Futon Critic has reviews for many of the successful pilots and now the unsuccessful ones.
