Pilot erroR - Earth *Star Voyager (1988)

1987 saw "Star Trek: The Next Generation" hit the small screen to much rejoicing, and kickstarted a renewed interest in TV based sci-fi in general.
Disney, wanting a slice of that pie, decided to have a go at making a sci-fi TV series aimed at the teen/young adult market in the form of "Earth *Star Voyager", which originally aired as a 2 part TV movie in their "The Wonderful World of Disney" programming block...

The story begins in the year 2082, where the deep space exploration vessel "Vanguard Explorer" (dunno why, but for some reason all the ships in this film have really odd/complicated names) is drifting in space following a mutiny by its crew. The ships captain, Jake Brown, manages to get to an escape pod and flee his now crippled and useless spacecraft, leaving the mutinous crew to their fate, and probably impending death by suffocation (that's how we deal with mutinous scum round 'ere, ah tells thee!).

Six years pass, and one of the probes launched by the Vanguard Explorer returns data to Earth showing that a planet it has found, which is named "Demeter", could support human life.
As the Earth is now a polluted and overcrowded festering shit hole, the prospect of finding a new Earth type planet appeals to the world government, however the probes data is far from completely accurate, so it is decided to send a specialist deep space explorer ship to the planet..the titular "Earth *Star Voyager".

Thanks to the invention of the "Bauman drive", the round trip time will be a mere 25 years, with 1 year to be spent doing a full planetary survey, making for a total time away of 26 years. With this in mind, the space authority decides that the Earth *Star Voyager will be crewed mainly with cadets and recent graduates, none of whom are over the age of 25, with the ships initial commander being an experienced space commander who will be expected to relinquish his command to the 21 year old Jonathan Hays once he gets a bit too old to effectively command.
Once the survey has been completed and the ship returns to Earth, the long term plan is for a fleet to be constructed to evacuate most of the planets population to Demeter, however it will take about 40 years for all the ships required to be built, so therefore if Demeter isn't suitable, the Earth *Star Voyager can also survey any other planets it comes across on its travels.

With this in mind, the Earth *Star Voyager sets off, but, mere hours after its departure, the captain is killed in an "accident" involving a faulty airlock, and as they later find out, the ship is actually part of an evil plot by traitorous military officers to build the ULTIMATE DOOM WEAPON OF DEATH!!!11!!one!111!!11.

From the minute this film begins, you can easily tell this was a product of the 1980s.
For a start, the Earth *Star Voyager comes complete with extremely complex push button keyboard controls, poor quality vector graphic CRT display screens, hell, two crew spots are reserved for the ships aerobics instructor and the ships psychoanalyst...and then there are mullets, and lots and lots of "big hair" (it can be taken as written that at least one cargo bay on the ship is set aside for storing cans of hair spray and styling mousse).

Because the crew of the ship is made up mostly of teenaged children, the writers made sure they introduced romantic subplots nice and early too, and had the ships original captain mention he could perform marriage ceremonies (they probably had the ships entertainment officer arrange for a prom at some point as well, cuz we all know that all teenage Americans care about is dating, getting married and going to prom with a hot date, you know, cos thats totally bodacious dude).

One thing that wrankled me was that for a large and important mission, using one of Earths newest ships and traveling into unknown space via known hostile territory, the people at the space navy decided that including weapons on the ship wasn't really required above a few hand held laser guns, meaning that when the ship gets attacked, the crew have to cobble together some makeshift weapons, but thats ok, because the crew are all super geniuses and the bastard offspring of B.A Baracus and McGuyver, meaning they can take some spare parts and a roll of duct tape and turn it into a super powerful laser gun or something.

All that said though, I think that should Earth *Star Voyager have been made into an actual series, it would have been a fun watch and somewhat of a guilty pleasure. The pilot episode is a bit of a damp squib, as it seemingly tries to pack in three or four episodes worth of storylines into a 3 hour feature length episode, and doesn't adequately explain some of the things that are going off.

It does get annoying though when you get the smart arsed super kids finding solutions to seemingly impossible situations by more or less pulling ideas out of their assholes, and then getting all smug about it, and, with this being a Disney offering, the few fighting scenes in the film are non violent and a bit rubbish.

Its an entertaining enough way to spend 3 hours though, if you don't have anything else worth doing.

Overall - 7/10

Pilot erroR - "Dafuq?" shows.....

Something a little different, but still within the spirit of this subject matter.
Sometimes, a TV show will be made, and indeed aired, which really shouldn't have been for one reason or another. More often than not, these shows will be pulled from schedules and archived, never to be shown in full again, and only referenced in the odd documentary here and there. Suffice to say that said shows are never given a second series either, and it makes you wonder sometimes as to exactly who gave the green light for these shows to be paid for by TV networks....leading viewers to wonder "what dafuq did I just watch?".


Heil Honey, I'm Home! (Noel Gay TV/Galaxy Channel - 1990)

Probably one of the more well known "dafuq?" TV moments. "Heil Honey, I'm Home!" was a 8 episode series that aired in the early days of what would go on to be called Sky Television.
The premise of the series was that Adolf Hitler and his wife Eva Braun were living in an apartment block with Jewish neighbours, and the shows humour, if you could call it that, was derived from a combination of Hitlers anti-semitic rantings, usually followed by him being outsmarted by the Jews in some fashion.
One episode aired at 9:30pm on the 30th of September 1990 before Galaxy channel (the station on which it was broadcast), quickly removed it from the viewing schedule, due to the massive number of complaints received from viewers who cited it as being tasteless, crass and anti-semitic amongst other things.
The writer and creator of the series, Geoff Atkinson, stated it was his intention to examine the process of the pre-war appeasement of the Nazis in an entertaining manner, so he decided the best way to do this was to create what he called a "farcical sitcom which lampooned American style 50s sitcoms in a satirical manner".

Viewers, and the board of executives at BSB didn't find it funny, and to date, the series has never been shown in full or released for home consumption.

World Series of Dating (BBC Three - 2012)

BBC Three had been trying, with a questionable degree of success, to recapture the BBCs dominance over the comedy genre, a position which BBC 2 had enjoyed for many years throughout the 1990s, but had fumbled and lost to SKY and Channel 4 as the millennium came and went.

One show which the Beeb hoped would be successful was "World Series of Dating", being as it had fly on the wall elements mixed in with a kind of quiz show atmosphere.
The premise of the show was that 6 men would attempt a "speed date" with 6 women, with the winner of each episode being decided by two faux-American accent sporting commentators who would make quips "in the style of" American sports commentators. During the various rounds, points would be awarded and penalties would be given by a man dressed as a baseball umpire.

Quite honestly, having personally watched a few episodes of this series whilst waiting for family guy to come on,  i really, really, really fail to understand what BBC Threes controller was thinking when they gave the green light for this show. Quite literally there was not a single laugh to be had from anything said or done on screen while this show was taking up space on the schedules, with the male contestants visibly uninterested in what they were supposed to be doing, and the female contestants either looking bored or revelling in the attention they were getting from strangers, all while two dickheads with dodgy fake accents talked about their own supposed sexual prowess etc.

After one production run of a dozen episodes, most of which were shunted to post midnight airing slots, and scathing reviews, the show vanished, never to be heard from again.

Show Me The Funny! (ITV - 2011)

ITV has always had a bit of a "hit and miss" relationship when it comes to stand up comedy. On the one hand, shows such as the "An Audience with...." series allowed many successful British stand up comedians to get an hours worth of airtime on a Saturday night prime time viewing slot, whereas ITVs numerous attempts to make a successful copy of the hit US Show "Saturday Night Live" have always been doomed to failure due to their over reliance on unknown or unpredictable alternative comedians.
"Show Me The Funny!" was an attempt to marry up stand up comedy with a fly on the wall type "documentary/journey" series, with he premise that 10 unknown (although this was most certainly NOT the case as it turned out) stand up comedians would compete for a place in the live final to be held at Hammersmith Apollo, with one of the unsuccessfuls being voted off each week by a panel of judges. The grand prize for the eventual winner being that they would receive a nationwide tour (backed up by the two runners up) and a DVD released before Christmas 2011.
While the concept was new and had the promise to be somewhat interesting, the main problem was that for a show which was centred on comedy...it wasn't actually that funny.
The majority of the shows hour long episodes, which ran over 7 weeks during the summer of 2011, focused mainly on the "journey" of the contestants, as they were taken to a new place each week and then expected to come up with a new 5 minute long routine based on their experiences of that week, in essence, limiting their material to purely observational and anecdotal comedy.
By week 3 viewing figures for the series had plummeted to almost nil, as viewers weren't interested in watching what was supposed to be a comedy program which featured little to no comedic content, other than from heavily edited down sets shown at the end, before the judges voted someone off.

The show was eventually won by the Irish/Iranian comedian Patrick Monoghan, who by the time he won, had already performed several times at the Edinburgh fringe festival, and had received several comedy awards.

The show was, understandably, not picked up for a second series.

Australia's Naughtiest Home Videos (Nine Network, 1992)

Produced as a spin off to the show "Australia's Funniest Home Videos", the show attempted to show some of the more "risque" clips sent in by viewers which would not normally be shown by the more family orientated version.
The story goes that on the night of transmission, the Director of Nine Network, Kerry Packer, was out to dinner with friends when he spotted the show on a television, and was so offended by what he saw, he rang the station up immediately and told them to "get that shit off the air now!". The show went to a commercial break at the halfway mark, and was then hastily replaced by a repeat of an episode of the American sitcom "Cheers".

Osbournes Reloaded (Fox - 2009)

Hoping to cash in on the success of the Osbournes previous docu-drama show, as well as the somewhat reknewed interest in variety shows, this strange program had members of the Osbourne family presenting a musical variety program.
After one episode had aired, reviews were scathing, causing many Fox affiliate channels to either shelve the show or play the remaining 5 episodes of the series in late night slots.
Fox themselves never aired any of the remaining shows.

Married...For Life (ITV - 1996)

The US sitcom "Married...with Children" had garnered a cult following in the UK (where it was most affectionately called "The Bundys" in our house and the homes of several friends) however in 1996 ITV decided to try and make a British version of the show. This concept had previously been successful in the form of "The Upper Hand", which was a British remake of the American show "Who's The Boss?", so, what on earth could go wrong?....
Starring Russ Abbott as "Ted Butler/Al Bundy" and Hugh Bonneville as "Steve Hollingsworth/Steve D'Arcy", the series lurched through seven painful episodes which saw gags from the original series "Britishified" and failing miserably, as well as the other members of the "Butler" household having little to none of the dynamic that the members of the "Bundy" family had in the original.
The series got shunted around as is the norm with these things, before never being mentioned again...but ITV didn't learn their from their mistake of trying to "Britishify" American sitcoms.....

Days Like These (ITV - 1999)

An attempt by ITV to remake the successful American sitcom "That 70's Show" which took the basic premise and characters and transplanted them from 1970s Wisconsin to 1970s Luton.
Needless to say, it lost a lot of what had made it funny in the transatlantic journey, with many jokes being recycled from the original, albeit with some slight name changes to link it to 1970s Britain, and one big mistake in making the character "Rasmussen" into an extremely racist stereotype of east European people.
Originally airing in a prime time Friday night slot, the show was quickly moved to a less conspicuous graveyard slot, before vanishing altogether with only 10 of the 13 filmed episodes being shown.

Minipops (Channel 4 - 1983)

A rather bizarre program which came about after a novelty music album, the titular "Minipops" was released featuring preteen children singing versions of popular songs was released in 1982.
Consisting of 6 30 minute episodes, the show featured children aged between 5 and 10 singing and dancing along to various pop songs.
Although initial viewing figures were somewhat encouraging, it soon dawned on the public, critics and network executives alike that the concept of a show featuring preteen children dressed in provocative clothing and singing various adult themed songs was somewhat disturbing, and soon enough, the show was quite rightly being described as a "paedophiles dreams come true".

The show was not renewed for a second series.

Pilot erroR - Roddenberrys Fails...

TV Writer/Producer Gene Roddenberry is best known as the man who created Star Trek, which, although initially not thought of too highly, went on to become one of the most successful sci-fi franchises of all time.

Star Trek was not Roddenberrys only attempt at creating a Sci-Fi universe though, and during the 1970s he had many ideas for other TV shows, most of which were given the go ahead for a pilot to be filmed....Unfortunately, it is difficult to beleive that the creator of Star Treks subsequent TV projects all ended in failure, as all of them failed to recapture the recognition that Star Trek had garnered for itself, and thus, most of them ended up being put down as mere footnotes in TV history.
It wasn't until the 1990s that any of Roddenberrys ideas hit the small screen again, and then only airing after his death in 1991.

Genesis II (CBS 1973)
Its a bit like -  Buck Rogers in the 24th Century, Stargate SG-1

Premise -
In 1979, scientist Dylan Hunt (Alex Cord ) volunteers to be the first human to undergo an experimental suspended animation procedure, intended to be used for deep space flights at some point in the future.
He is successfully placed in stasis, however rather than being asleep for a mere 7 days, he instead awakens to find it is the year 2133, and the Earth as he knew it has ceased to exist following a global nuclear war.

Plot of Pilot -
Following his awakening, Dylan finds himself amongst a community of people who call themselves "Pax", who are the descendants of scientific personnel that managed to escape the war by hiding in underground bunkers. The people of Pax tell Dylan that they dedicate their lives to rediscovering the knowledge of the past and using it for peaceful exploratory purposes.
The people of Pax are strange to Hunt, as they live in a true meritocracy with full equality between males and females, to the point at which there are literally no distinctions between them (this is referred to in the show as "unisex"). This has led to a decreased birth rate amongst them, however some of the older members of the society note that the younger members have begun returning to "the old ways" (that is, to pursue heterosexual relationships and begin reproduction via sexual means).
Hunt is persuaded by Lyra-A, a woman who comes from an area which was formerly known as Phoenix, Arizona (The people of Pax are said to occasionally allow "outsiders" to enter their society, provided that they adhere to Pax's strict laws regarding non-violence), to leave Pax and travel with her via sub-shuttle, a series of underground high speed trains constructed in the 1970s to counter air terrorism, back to her homeland to repair their failing nuclear fission reactor, as none of her people know how to fix it, but do know that if it breaks down completely, it will cause a disaster. Lyra-A explains that her people, the Tyranians, pleaded with Pax to assist them, as Pax is the only place that has the right knowledge to fix it, but they refused, Lyra then lies to Hunt and tells him that the people of Pax are tyrants who want to conquer the world using their advanced science and knowledge of ancient weapons.
Dylan fixes the reactor, but is then horrified to learn that the rulers of Tyrania intend to use the power generated from it to reactivate and launch several ICBMs they have in their posession. Hunt manages to escape and sabotages the reactor so it explodes before the mutants can begin attacking their enemies, but the ruling council of Pax, whom he returns to once he has learned the error of his ways, explain that they knew that the Tyranians had access to the weapons, and they knew that should their reactor be fixed, they would immediately begin attacking people, thus setting in motion another war which would finally kill everyone on Earth. Knowing that Hunt was unaware of this, and had been tricked, they make him promise to never again use his knowledge of science or the past to harm another life form, to which he agrees. Hunt is then assigned to an exploration team and begins his new life rediscovering the reborn Earth.

Why did it fail?
This project failed quite simply because the TV people didn't like it, both because they found the storyline to be uninteresting, and because the series special effects budget would have been quite high.
The premise of this series is similar to Star Trek in many ways, as each week we would have seen Dylans exploration team visit a different region of Earth and interact with any people they found there. Roddenberry had already created several draft ideas for episodes when he submitted his original idea for consideration, but many of the plots were pretty much samey-wamey with the only variations being that each "new" people that the team met would be similar to but different from civilisations we are already familiar with.

Although I quite liked Genesis II, It didnt really have enough entertainment factor for it to be considered for a full series. The limitation placed on it by having Pax be a totally pacifist society would seriously hamper the chances of any action scenes, and, like Star Trek Voyager ended up being, most of the series' "drama" would come from long scientific and/or philosophical discussions between the main cast members, something which 1970s television wasn't really interested in.

Overall - 5/10


Planet Earth (ABC 1974)
Its a bit like -  Genesis II, Stargate SG-1, Star Trek

Premise -
In the year 2133, the people of Pax, one of the few cities to have survived world war 3, send out teams of explorers to make peaceful contact with other surviving communities so they can rebuild and reacquire scientific knowledge. One of these teams is led by Dylan Hunt, a man who was revived by Pax after being placed in stasis in the late 20th century, the series follows their adventures in the post apocalyptic Earth.

Plot of pilot -
Dylan Hunt (now played by John Saxon ) leads his team into the wilderness in search of a missing doctor, whom they need to perform a very delicate operation on a high ranking member of Paxs ruling council, who was injured during a conflict with the Kreegs, a race of warlike mutant humans descended from the military survivors of the war.
They find the trail leads to a small country which calls itself "The Confederacy of Ruth", a society which has adopted a matriarchal model and where men are treated as little more than beasts of burden.
Two members of Dylans team, The former savage Isiah (Ted Cassidy), and field medic Baylock go missing while attempting to make contact with the people of the Confederacy, so, Dylan and his remaining team member, the woman Harper-Smythe, infiltrate the settlement by masquerading as a woman with her male property looking to leave Pax and settle in Ruth.
The pair run in to Marg, one of the rulers of the Confederacy, who challenges Harper-Smythe to a fight and wins, thus taking possession of Hunt.
Hunt is placed into a slave pen, where all the males, referred to by the women as "Dinks", are kept prior too being sold to other mistresses. Hunt finds Isiah and Baylock, but they seem to be drugged in some fashion, being absolutely terrified whenever he tries to speak to them, it is only by way of using Baylocks latent telepathic ability that he finds that the food the men are given is drugged with something that induces terror in the men, this way Hunt manages to avoid eating any of the drugged food he is later served, and manages to fool the mistresses into thinking he has been "trained".
Marg decides to keep Hunt for use as breeding stock, as for several year snow, the Confederacy of Ruth has suffered from a decline in the number of pregnancies, as more and more of the men they have there become sterile for some unknown reason, Hunt notices that one of Margs slaves is the man they are looking for, and finds out from him that the reason the men are becoming sterile is because of the drug they are given to keep them docile, but, he has found an antidote for it but has as yet had no opportunity to be able to distribute it amongst the men.
Hunt tricks Marg into getting drunk and passing out while she is attempting to seduce him, having led her to believe that back in Pax, he has several wives and has fathered over a dozen children. Hunt then assists in putting the antidote into the food intended for the men, so that all the men are no longer in a permanent state of terror.
Meanwhile, Harper-Smythe has managed to ingratiate herself into Confederate society, and wins Hunt back after challenging Marg to a duel. Hunt explains what he has learned and they agree to organise a mass break out the next day, however it doesnt go according to plan as the Confederacy comes under attack by a group of marauding Kreegs, who decided to pick on the town because they knew that the men wouldn't fight back, and the women were too few in number to effect any resistance.
By the time they launch their attack though, all of the towns men have received the antidote, and much to the Kreegs surprise, they find themselves being attacked by the towns men, while most of the women stand back surprised as they never thought the men would fight for them, seeing them only as being savages fit only for work or breeding.
The Kreegs are successfully repelled, Hunt manages to get the doctor back to Pax, where he carries out the surgery, and the men of the Confederacy decide to stay and continue their lives, but this time free from being drugged or abused.

Why did it Fail?
Roddenberry, still smarting from being told that "Genesis II" was boring, reworked one of his draft scripts, titled "Poodle Parlour", into this show, adding on more action oriented scenes and even including the Klingon-like Kreegs to act as an enemy for Dylan and his team.
Unfortunately though this change did little to increase the shows charm. Dylan Hunt was changed from being an "action-scientist" to being "budget Captain Kirk", and the remainder of his team were of little significance, except maybe Isiah, who did get a little bit of backstory thrown in in the opening scenes to explain why he, a "savage" was welcome amongst the people of Pax.
At the time the show aired, the "Womens Liberation" movement was quite vocal in their campaign for gender equality in the western world, and many viewers sort of objected to womens depiction on screen as being little more than ignorant tyrants who treated men as indentured slaves. Hunts famous line "Is this womens lib?, or womens lib gone mad?", which was seen by many as being an insult to women and supporters of gender equality, while some pointed out that the Kreegs spoke and acted in a way that seemed to mimic a stereotypical "African savage", as the Kreegs would speak in a series of gutteral grunts and were completely obsessed with destruction.
Another factor in its downfall was again, a high budget required for special effects and makeup appliances, as actors playing the Kreegs would all require to have bony headpieces applied and their skin darkened.
All in all though, the show wasn't too bad, but would never have really worked as a TV series for the same reason that its earlier incarnation, Genesis II, wouldn't have worked, but it was better than Genesis II insofar as it is actually entertaining to watch in places, and not scene after scene of science bits and philosophical dilemmas and so on. 
Overall - 7/10

 Strange New World (Warner Brothers TV - 1975)

Premise -
In the late 20th century, a scientific organisation named "Pax" launches a space station into orbit, its purpose, to test a suspended animation process by placing 3 people into stasis for 18 days.
3 days into the mission, Pax observers spot a swarm of meteors heading directly for Earth, so they move the space station into a deeper orbit, lasting 180 years, and extend the stasis period to cover that time. The meteors impact the planet, causing the worst natural disaster to ever occur during human history, however, some people, including the families of the three people in space, are placed into stasis in Paxs underground bunker, to await the return of the three space travellers.



Plot of Pilot -
Astronaut Anthony Vico (John Saxon), together with navigator/communications officer Alison Crowley and medical Doctor William Scott are revived and informed as to what has happened while they have been in stasis. They are given the instructions to return to Earth and make their way to the Pax headquarters to revive the survivors, if any, that they find there.
The disaster has left Earth a changed planet, completely wiping out all civilisations and countries that occupied it previously, and leaving only a handful of survivors.
After landing, the three travellers begin their journey using an advanced 6 wheeled all terrain vehicle, and come across a society of people who model themselves somewhat on ancient Rome, who also claim to have discovered the secret of eternal youth. They are however, much more sinister as they have perfected cloning, thus allowing them to replace organs at will, not only that, but they also use their own clones as slave labour.
The next people they meet on their travels are people descended from zookeepers, who now worship and protect the animals their ancestors watched over from tribes of marauding humans who hunt animals for food and sport.

Why did it fail?
Of the three "Pax Trilogy" pilots, this was the only one which Gene Roddenberry had no direct involvement in creating. Warner Brothers, who now owned the "Pax" series concept, decided to give it one last go and completely reworked the format, keeping very little from the original premise.
What remained, and what eventually aired was a poorly conceived "adventure" type show in which the team of "heroes" searched for the "lost" Pax HQ, encountering a new adversary each week, pretty similar to any number of other shows that were on at the time.
The production itself was riddled with cheapo special effects, poor acting, terrible dialogue and flimsy formulaic plots which were neither interesting nor entertaining to watch.

Its a shame that a solid concept as this ended up as a simple run of the mill TV show full of cliches, bargain basement effects and boring plots. After this show aired, the Pax concept was discarded completely by Roddenberry as "unworkable", although many people have noted that the subsequent "Logans Run" TV series did indeed have many similarities to "Strange New World".
Overall - 3/10

The Questor Tapes (NBC 1974)

Premise -
Dr. Vaslovik had a dream to build the worlds first super realistic android, however, just as his dream was reaching fruition, he disappeared without trace.
His team complete the assembly of the android, however their inability to understand the robots programming causes them to erase most of the data left behind on a series of program tapes.
They try and activate the robot using a substitute program they wrote themselves, but are unsuccessful, so in a last ditch attempt to get it working, they input the remains of the original tape, which again appears to fail, causing them to abandon the project.
However, when the android is left alone, it suddenly activates, and, after making cosmetic changes to itself so that it can pass for human, it begins to wonder what its purpose is.

Plot of pilot -
Questor, as the android names itself, has fragmented memories of what it is supposed to do, left over from its original programming. It knows it must find Dr. Vaslovik, and that his location has something to do with a boat. The problem is that Questors nuclear power source, located in his stomach, will explode within a week if he is not reunited with his creator.
Questors investigations eventually lead him to mount Ararat, where he is reunited with Vaslovik, who reveals himself to be another android, one of many in a line left behind by "The Masters" to act as a guardian of mankind. Each android has a lifespan measured in centuries, and at the end of its lifetime, it must build a replacement and "pass on the torch" of responsibility, as it were. Questor takes on the mantle and begins his quest to help mankind move towards a peaceful existence.

Why did it fail?
Oddly, "The Questor Tapes" was actually greenlit for a full series before the pilot had even aired on TV, however, the series never happened, simply because NBC demanded numerous changes be made to the shows format, and then further causing insult by saying that the show was scheduled to air on friday nights at 10pm, a time slot which is considered to be a "death slot" for any TV program put in it (the 3rd series of Star Trek was placed in this time slot, and suffered horribly because of it).Roddenberry refused to make any of the changed demanded by the networks and after the timeslot was announced, he quit the production. Without him at the helm, the series fell through.
Although the premise itself was sound, the formula of having an "outsider" shepard mankind towards its destiny had already been tried out in the backdoor pilot episode of Star Trek named "Assignment: Earth" and had similarities to Doctor Who.

Overall - 6/10

Spectre (1977)

Premise -
William Sebastian is a Criminologist who during one of his cases ends up being cursed by the demon Asmodeus. The result of this curse is that he requires constant medical attention. Lucklily, Sebastians friend Dr. Hamilton is on hand to provide him with medical assistance whenever he needs it, thus leaving Sebastian free to continue solving cases related to the occult in the hopes that he will find a cure for the curse.

Plot of pilot -
While investigating a case on behalf of the Cyon family, Sebastian is attacked by a succubus, whom he defeats. This leads him to further investigate the family in their ancestral home in London.
Every step of the way, Sebastian and Hamilton are beseeched by supernatural entities who commit several murders in order to stop anyone investigating the family.
The pair eventually find a hidden temple dedicated to the demon Asmodeus and defeat him, thus removing Sebastians curse.

Why did it fail?
At the time the pilot was proposed, occult detective fiction was quite popular, however, due to this, numerous other pitches were made in a similar vein, many of which never made it into production.
By the time the filming of a pilot had been greenlit, it was already obvious that the pilot wouldnt be picked up for series, so instead the script was reworked into a standalone film, with the hopes that maybe it would become a series. Although the finished film was released at cinemas, it didnt do too well, being as that the main characters were basically Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson in everything but name, and the story was bland and uninteresting, having pretty much been done to death before.
One item of note is that the UK theatrical release of the film featured a "black mass" scene at the end of the film, which included full frontal nudity, this section of the film was edited out for US release.

Overall - 5/10



 

Pilot erroR - TV Pilots that didnt make the cut.

Before a TV channel wants to spend money on something, its usually traditional for the producers to make an initial episode or TV movie which outlines the basic plot and premise of the program.

However, not all of these projects get the green light and make it as far as getting an actual full series commission, due to the fact that they are poorly timed, excessively expensive, or just being plain old crap.

I'm going to have a look at a couple of these pilot shows that were given the thumbs down from the TV people, and give my opinion of them...oh yes.

ReWind (SyFy - 2013)
Its a bit like- The Time Tunnel,Quantum Leap, Sliders

Premise -
After a terrorist group destroys New York with a nuclear bomb, an international team of  scientists and military types assemble to make use of a top secret time travel device to subtly change history so that "bad" events (usually ones that involve mass death and so on, particularly connected to the US) don't happen. However, the time travellers can only spend a short period of time in the past as the time window created by their machine only remains open for a fixed, but random, amount of time, meaning that if they fail to get back to the window, they will be stranded in the past, and, if they fail their mission, they will not be able to try again without causing a temporal paradox!
The team are aided in their efforts by a computer called the "Panopticon", which can fairly accurately predict the outcome of changes made to the past and what their knock on effect will be in the future, however the machine is not always correct.
Finally, the time travellers and their secret base are protected from changes in the time line by a side effect of the time window, so no matter what they do to change the past, they themselves will not be changed.

Plot of Pilot -
After the nuclear destruction of New York, a team travels back in time to 1929 to kill a street punk who spends the majority of his life committing crimes. This punk will eventually kill the wife of the scientist who built the nuclear bomb for the terrorists in a botched mugging attempt, sending the scientist insane, which eventually leads him to build a bomb.
The team are briefed on 1920s culture and language and given era appropriate clothing and equipment, then they step through the portal, being the first humans to attempt time travel.
they are successful in their attempt, but find that time travel is a fairly gut wrenching experience.
Once back in the past, all of the travellers are tempted to alter events to suit their own personal needs, but decide against messing around with their own personal histories.
Back at time travel HQ, the technicians find that after the travellers have departed, the amount of time they have to get back decreases, this, coupled with the fact that the travellers get lost while trying to find the guy they're supposed to kill, and end up nearly getting killed when they have a traffic accident with a moonshine bootlegger.
Just as they think they are going to fail in their mission, they find the man they are supposed to kill, and discover that he is committing crimes in order to provide for his younger sister. They decide against killing him, instead, one of the travellers poses as the mans "guardian angel", and tells him of what will happen if he continues being a criminal. The man heeds the warning and New York is restored, however the travellers run short of time to get back to the time portal, so it becomes a race against time to get back to their starting point, which is made significantly easier by one of the historians remembering that a hidden road used by bootleggers can get them back much quicker.
With seconds to spare, they make it back to the portal, and are relived to see that New York has been restored.
While they celebrate, the military liaison dresses in a winter coat, loads a gun and steps through the portal while no one is looking, which immediately causes New York to disappear again.....

So why did it fail?
While the basic premise of the show was good, the problem was it has all been done before. Both "The Time Tunnel" and "Quantum Leap" covered the whole "time travelling to change things for the better" trope, while "Sliders" covered the whole "a team of people go about alternate Earths correcting wrongs". With such a well trodden concept, and a large budget required to recreate the past, this show, if it ever made it to a full series, would have to have been really popular to justify itself.
The plot of this initial episode is fairly bland and uninteresting, I knew as soon as it was mentioned that they were going to go back in time to kill someone that there would be a reason found for them not to abuse time travel for the purposes of cold blooded murder, and it came as no surprise whatsoever that at the end someone else found a way to use the machine to fiddle around with history and cause a disaster, so as a series, each week the team of travellers would have jaunted through time fixing problems etc etc, exactly like Quantum Leap and Sliders.

Final Score - 4/10

doorways (sic) (1993)
Its a bit like -  Sliders (see later)

 
The Premise-
Our reality is not the only reality in existence, as Dr. Thomas Mason finds out when he stumbles across a young woman named "Cat". Cat has the ability to find and travel through "doorways"(sic) , which are naturally occurring portals that allow anyone stepping through them to travel to an infinite number of alternative realities. Dr. Mason and Cat travel through these portals in an effort to keep one step ahead of "The Dark Lord", an enemy from Cats home reality who relentlessly pursues her.

The Plot -
Dr.Mason MD meets a woman called "Cat", who is on the run from someone she calls "The Dark Lord", who appears to be some sort of demon/alien from her own reality. Cat struggles to convince Dr.Mason that she is telling the truth, both due to the fact that she can barely speak English, and due to the fact that the police and the FBI are wanting to have words with her.
Eventually, Cat proves she is telling the truth by showing Mason a "doorway" to another reality, which they promptly end up falling through after the bad guys catch up with them.
Cat and Dr.Mason visit various different Earths, including one where there are no petrochemicals left and the towns and highways of America are terrorized by gangs of bicycle riding punks.
Cat has a defense against the bad guys though, in the form of a weapon she stole from her own reality, which is a sort of gun that fires explosive flechettes, or, as she describes it "Fwick!...BOOM!".
Dr.Mason faces up to the fact that he wont be returning any time soon, and continues to travel with Cat hoping that they will eventually find a way for him to get back to his own reality, however no matter where they hide, the servants of the Dark Lord are always able to track them down....

Why did it fail?
Despite the series concept being created by George R.R Martin , its timing was completely wrong. The early 90s were not a good time for Sci-Fi offerings, particularly one which was as weak as "doorways" ended up being.
The pilot episode was poorly scripted and acted (With the character Cat pretty much sounding like she suffered from some sort of mental retardation, and Dr.Mason spending most of the time acting like a confused buffoon) and the special effects were of very poor quality (even by early 90s standards), Plus, the series itself would have been expensive, as each week the travellers would have had to visit an alternate Earth, which would have required a lot of money to be spent on costumes, sets and special effects. In the end, with the main characters being thoroughly unlikable, and the premise being a tad on the expensive side, the series was given the thumbs down.
Interestingly enough though, when you watch this pilot, it has many, many, many similarities with "Sliders", which eventually got greenlit 2 years after doorways had been binned. these similarities did not go unnoticed, so much so that George Martin himself had to issue a statement to say that screenwriter Tracy Torme, the creator of "Sliders", had had no involvement with "doorways" bar his agent applying for a job on his behalf as a writer.
Another interesting note is that doorways starred a young Carrie-Ann Moss , Kurtwood Smith and Max Grodenchik , all of whom later went on to find stardom in other projects.

Final Score - 3/10