Farscape

There are people who love this show. I’m gonna say right up front, I had trouble getting through the pilot — I thought it was awful. It premiered in 1999. I had to look that up to be sure because, watching it with no prior knowledge, I was estimating something closer to 1989. I’m going to plead, “You can’t judge a show by it’s pilot,” on this one because apparently it improves.

According to TV Tropes, “While its premise began as a fairly standard science fiction show, Farscape quickly distinguished itself with a focus on complex, evolving characterizations, jaw-dropping plot twists and movie-quality special effects and cinematography.” Continue reading

Pilots that Never Flew

There are more pilots that never get picked up than most people ever stop to think about. It can be funny or horrifying, or in the case below, a bit sad, to imagine a show that the world was robbed of seeing. 

A couple of days ago, Bleeding Cool posted a clip from a 1969 clip of a Jim Henson-created Wizard of Id series, based on the comic strip by Johnny Hart. It looks like the plan for the show was simply to recreate individual comic strips with Muppets, rather than to create half-hour plotlines. Still, you can see the creativity at work here from Henson’s mind. And see if the Wizard’s voice doesn’t tug at your heart strings.

Here’s a list of seven other pilots that never got picked up, from OMG Lists. (It’s a couple years old, but there are some gems.)