Television pilot: Encyclopedia II - Television pilot - Airing the pilot

Television pilot - Airing the pilot

Pilots usually run as the first episode of the series, unless the series ended up being so different from the pilot that it wouldn't make sense (in this case the pilot, or portions of it, is reshot or rewritten to fit the rest of the series). The pilot for Gilligan's Island, for instance, showed the castaways becoming stranded on the island. However, three roles were recast before going to series, with the characters either modified or completely altered to the point where the pilot could no longer be used as a regular episode. The series began with the second produced episode, with the characters already on the island. The story from the pilot was largely reworked into a flashback episode which aired later, although with several key scenes reshot.

There have been exceptions to this rule when a network or a producer has chosen to run the pilot at a later date. Series for which this has happened include the first Star Trek series, where the second, modified pilot ("Where No Man Has Gone Before") was aired as the third episode, and footage from the original pilot ("The Cage") was edited into newer footage to produce the two part episode "The Menagerie". The more recent television show Firefly set a particularly curious example, where the series was officially cancelled before the pilot aired as the final televised episode. Critics of the Firefly move complained that airing the pilot out of sequence made it difficult for audiences to understand what was going on; when the series was subsequently released on DVD, the pilot became the first listed episode.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Airing the pilot", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki