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Everything can change! Done for a variety of reasons, ranging from poor ratings to someone leaving the show to network fiat, but basically means everything (premise, casting, setting, tone, writing, general emphasis) can be "tweaked" to take the show in a different direction. Not everything changes; some retools are subtle, some not so much. Drastic retooling runs risk of alienating the current viewership ("change is bad!"), if any.

Many examples of retooling come between when a show's pilot and the episodes made after the series is picked up. Others happen when a show isn't really getting off the ground or is in decline and the creators want to shake things up. When done out of nowhere in the middle of the show, then you got yourself a Wham Episode.

The most extreme form of Retool is the Continuity Reboot.

See also: Ret Con, Revision, Rewrite.

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Examples:

• When Laverne And Shirley moved from Milwaukee to Los Angeles.
• After the first season of Major Dad, the setting was moved to a different military base, with some changes in the cast.
• The second season of War Of The Worlds replaced half the cast, changed more or less everything about the aliens, and changed the entire style of the show from a somewhat lighthearted, highly cerebral communism metaphor into a dystopian near-future proto-cyberpunk survivalist fantasy. The fans were not pleased.
• Earth Final Conflict did more or less the same thing. Twice, at least — more (at least once an episode in the second season), if you consider violent changes in tone to be tantamount.
• Charles In Charge was retooled when it moved from network TV to syndication, discarding Charles' original employers and girlfriend and replacing them without changing the house where he worked — and managing to maintain a single continuity through the process.
• Saved By The Bell was retooled after brief cancellation — the school moved from Indiana to California, and even a name change (it was originally known as Good Morning, Miss Bliss) as well as a few different cast members and a new focus on the students exclusively.
• When Doug was moved from Nickelodeon to ABC, many characters and locations were redesigned, and the show was renamed Disney's Brand Spanking New Doug. There were in-show reasons given for most of the changes.
• For its ninth season, Stargate SG-1 received new characters, arcs, and villains, generally refreshing and refocusing the show.
• Red Dwarf has arguably done this four times in eight seasons: the addition of Kryten and the female Holly in season 3, as well as changes in production staff who made the budget stretch much further; the loss of the eponymous spaceship in season 6, leading to much of the action taking place in a single cockpit; the switch to film-like visuals and a more comedy-drama feel in season 7, plus the departure of co-writer Rob Grant; and the almost complete reboot in season 8, when the whole spaceship and crew were recreated as they had been 3 million years previously.
• After Mystery Science Theater 3000 moved to the Sci Fi Channel with their eighth season, they got new villains, a new setting, and (due to Executive Meddling) an actual ongoing plot. At the end of the season, some of these changes were backed off on, with a move to a setting similar to the first seven seasons and a lack of stories that carried on between episodes (though the 10th season had a subplot that was dropped halfway through).
• Millennium was effectively retooled twice, with the result that the titular Millennium Group is completely different in each of the three seasons; an unassuming law enforcement consultant group in the first season, an enigmatic but good-intentioned Ancient Conspiracy in the second season, and an unambiguously evil Ancient Conspiracy in the third.
• After its cancellation and renewal, Battlestar Galactica was retooled into Galactica 1980, which proved so unpopular that many fans of the original show refuse to acknowledge its existence.
• Ironically, at the same time Galactica was being cancelled, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, which aired opposite it, was retooled to make it more like Galactica.
• The title character of Valerie was killed off, and her place filled by Sandy Duncan, with the name of the series changed to The Hogan Family. A rare case of a retool centered around a Jonas Quinn.
• Spoofed on The Simpsons episode "Homer to the Max" (1999). Watching the first episode of Police Cops, Homer is thrilled to discover he shares the his name with its Don Johnson-like lead character (catchphrase: "And that's the end of that chapter!"); the next week Homer is horrified to see his character retooled as a blundering doofus (catchphrase: "Uh-oh, Spaghetti-Os!"). He seeks out the show's producers and writers.

  Homer: Uh ... so, I just wanna know how come you made your Homer Simpson character so ...

  Producer: Stupid? [laughs] Well, I can assure you, it happened organically.

  Homer: It better have!

• The Jeff Foxworthy Show explored this in a series of commercials between seasons. Jeff and his TV son are discussing where they have been recently and why everything is so strange. Jeff calmly explains that the network is retooling their show so it will be even better and his son shouldn't worry. When the boy asks where his Mom is, Jeff tells him that she is being recast.
• The 5th season of Sabrina The Teenage Witch moved Sabrina to college, introduced several new characters and dropped others. The 7th season dropped the college setting and again dropped and added significant characters.
• This has been done several times in Alias.
• The original series of Doctor Who thrived on this. The most comprehensive and obvious retool was between the 6th and 7th seasons when all three regulars decided to leave at the same time, the show changed to colour from black and white, and the Doctor was given a whole new backstory and exiled to Earth. The wiping-out-from-all-of-existence of the Time Lords between the show's 1989 cancellation and its 2005 resurrection might also be considered a retool. (Actually, the introduction of the Time Lords counts as a bit of re-tool in itself. Originally the Doctor simply came from a mysterious alien civilization, with no more details offered.)
• Speaking of Doctor Who, the second season of spin-off Torchwood lightened the tone (and made the tone more consistent overall). Ianto started to specialize in wisecracks and Owen got a personality transplant.
• Thomas The Tank Engine had a minor retool in Series 5 when it stopped adapting the Railway Series stories it had previously been based on. A further retool was in Series 8 when a new theme song and story format was bought in, and many characters such as Duck were dropped with no explanation.
• Throughout the three series of Chef!, only three actors remained constant, although this was explained in the first episode (Le Chateau Anglais had a high turnover rate), but the third season seemed a real departure from the previous tone, as Gareth's wife left him, a man from Oop North bought the restaurant off of him, an American was added to the primary cast, the soundtrack got a bit worse, and the entire kitchen staff started to develop personalities. Nevertheless, managed to be an example of a successful Re Tool.
  • Technically, this wasn't the first time an American character had appeared on the programme, as the first season contained Piers from Vermont. However, he had little to no personality, and wasn't particularly (read: obnoxiously) American.
• The 2007 Flash Gordon series was retooled during a mid-season hiatus to combat highly negative fan reactions; the Monster Of The Week format was abandoned in favor of an arc-based storyline, Flash's Black Best Friend was dropped from the cast, and much more screen time was spent on Mongo in general. Arguably, the show got better as a result.
• The first season of Blackadder had Blackadder as a simpering coward and borderline Butt Monkey, and Baldrick as The Radar - his "cunning plans" actually tended to be cunning. From the second season onward, Blackadder became the Deadpan Snarker that the show is best known for; and Baldrick became, well, Baldrick. The result was a much funnier show.
• The Pokemon anime began doing this after the Johto saga, when Ash would leave most of the Pokemon he carried with him at Professor Oak's and travel to the new region with just Pikachu, a tactic meant to create room on his team for Pokemon from the latest generation of games.
• The '80s-'90s cartoon version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles went through significant changes in audiovisual style for its eighth season. Due to these changes, episodes from seasons 8-10 are commonly known as "Red Sky Episodes". Two openings linked below show some of the differences in style:
  • Original opening
  • Opening during "Red Sky" period
• The 2003 TMNT series went through this as well, twice in fact with Fast Forward, and Back to the sewer. Some fans don't even consider the last 2 to be in the same continuity as the first 5 seasons of the 03 series.
• Star Trek Enterprise was retooled twice in response to bottomed-out ratings, and consecutively no less. The first retool occurred in Season 3 and abandoned the Plot of the Week for a season-long "epic" story arc. When that failed, the show was retooled for Season 4 by bringing in new creative staff and focusing the season on two or three-episode long mini-arcs. Although the quality of the show improved significantly (Season 4 is usually considered the best of the show), it was too little too late and said season proved to be its last.
• An early Fox network offering, Second Chance, was about a man stuck between Heaven and Hell, who got the chance to visit his younger self (played by a pre-Friends Matthew Perry) to alter the course of his life. The series failed miserably, but the network attempted to build on Perry's charm by retooling the series as Boys Will Be Boys, dropping the afterlife angle and instead focusing on Perry's character and his best friend. The retooled version didn't fare much better.
• Struggling soap Loving moved from its suburban setting to New York City and became The City. The retooled version wasn't any more successful than the original, and the show was soon cancelled.
• The anime adaption of Ranma 1/2 was cancelled after 18 episodes, but then it was retooled and brought back in October 1989, though starting with the second season ,and during the third and fourth seasons, the animation and music quality went to hell (although all of the music from the first 18 episodes was retained), as well as suffering from fillers, as well as a bad ending, apparently Japan has a short term broadcasting system. This troper thinks that Sunrise should go ahead and remake the series as OVA's more in line with the manga

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