30 days of television: Day 27
Oct. 29th, 2010 12:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hnpccDay 27 - Best pilot episode
This is tricky because the way things work here is that they usually screen an entire series of something and then I see the pilot episode or I find out that the first episode was the pilot episode. So this is going to turn into "first episodes I really liked".
1. Battlestar Galactica, 33. This was the first episode after the preliminary miniseries, and it was fantastic. (I also quite liked the preliminary miniseries, which I didn't see until after I'd seen half of the first series.) There was a reason this episode won a Hugo - it was awesome.
2. Firefly. I was lucky enough to miss the screened series and go straight to the DVD. And this was a really good opening episode - it introduced characters, timeline, plot points... which is probably why Fox (and whichever Australian network it was) decided to start with a different episode, and cannibalise the opening episode in never-before-seen "previously on" segments in later episodes before finally showing it as a season finale. Yeah, great move there guys.
3. Red Dwarf USA. I realise this is probably a controversial choice, at least if anyone from my flist is still reading this! The first time I saw it I thought "what a travesty". The second time... I warmed to it a bit. The third time I'd gotten over the US thing and was starting to be interested in where they'd go with it. Answer? Nowhere. It remains one of the few pilots I've actually seen of anything. In some respects I think of it now as being similar to the US version of The Office - the initial episode was terrible, because it copied the UK one directly. When they got into their own writing though it became a really good show. I think RD:USA had that same potential. (Then again I didn't mind the US version of Coupling either, so I'm possibly not the best judge here.)
4. Twin Peaks. Great opening episode. I was interested to read in a recent interview about the network pressuring the writers to do the Big Reveal of who killed Laura Palmer - and managing to effectively kill off the series by doing so. Great move there guys.
5. Mulholland Drive. Yes, I know this is a movie. But it was originally made as a pilot, wasn't picked up and then became a movie. And I came out of the cinema going "dammit!! I want to see the TV series!!! Crap!!!" Which is still pretty much how I feel about it. It would have been a series I would have been totally sucked into. Damn. I still want to know where the hitman fitted in. And the gorilla.
This is tricky because the way things work here is that they usually screen an entire series of something and then I see the pilot episode or I find out that the first episode was the pilot episode. So this is going to turn into "first episodes I really liked".
1. Battlestar Galactica, 33. This was the first episode after the preliminary miniseries, and it was fantastic. (I also quite liked the preliminary miniseries, which I didn't see until after I'd seen half of the first series.) There was a reason this episode won a Hugo - it was awesome.
2. Firefly. I was lucky enough to miss the screened series and go straight to the DVD. And this was a really good opening episode - it introduced characters, timeline, plot points... which is probably why Fox (and whichever Australian network it was) decided to start with a different episode, and cannibalise the opening episode in never-before-seen "previously on" segments in later episodes before finally showing it as a season finale. Yeah, great move there guys.
3. Red Dwarf USA. I realise this is probably a controversial choice, at least if anyone from my flist is still reading this! The first time I saw it I thought "what a travesty". The second time... I warmed to it a bit. The third time I'd gotten over the US thing and was starting to be interested in where they'd go with it. Answer? Nowhere. It remains one of the few pilots I've actually seen of anything. In some respects I think of it now as being similar to the US version of The Office - the initial episode was terrible, because it copied the UK one directly. When they got into their own writing though it became a really good show. I think RD:USA had that same potential. (Then again I didn't mind the US version of Coupling either, so I'm possibly not the best judge here.)
4. Twin Peaks. Great opening episode. I was interested to read in a recent interview about the network pressuring the writers to do the Big Reveal of who killed Laura Palmer - and managing to effectively kill off the series by doing so. Great move there guys.
5. Mulholland Drive. Yes, I know this is a movie. But it was originally made as a pilot, wasn't picked up and then became a movie. And I came out of the cinema going "dammit!! I want to see the TV series!!! Crap!!!" Which is still pretty much how I feel about it. It would have been a series I would have been totally sucked into. Damn. I still want to know where the hitman fitted in. And the gorilla.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-11-14 12:39 pm (UTC)There was something else I've seen this year which made me say 'wow, awesome pilot' but can't for the life of me recall what it was...