A "backdoor pilot" is an episode of an existing series that heavily features supporting characters or guest stars in previously unseen roles.
Television networks use pilots to determine whether an entertaining concept can be successfully realized and whether the expense of additional episodes is justified.
[1] Each summer, the major American broadcast television networks – including ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, PBS, Univision, and Telemundo – receive about 500 brief elevator pitches each for new shows from writers and producers.
For the 1994 pilot of Friends, casting director Ellie Kanner reviewed more than 1,000 actors' head shots for each of the six main roles.
In the event the changes being made are so substantial that they would cause confusion to viewers, the pilot (or portions of it) is often re-shot, recast, or rewritten to fit the rest of the series.
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.
Another example is Star Trek, where footage from the unaired original pilot, "The Cage", was incorporated into the two-part episode, "The Menagerie", with the story justification that it depicts events that happened several years earlier.
The original Cagney & Lacey movie co-starred Loretta Swit (of M*A*S*H fame) as Chris Cagney, but when she could not get out of her contract, they reshot it with Meg Foster, who after the first season was replaced with Sharon Gless; therefore, the original movie is not considered part of the television series, and is not included in the series collections on DVD.
Likewise, The Homecoming: A Christmas Story had an almost entirely different cast from the series it was intended to pilot (The Waltons), but both have been rerun for many years.
For example, to introduce A Different World, built around The Cosby Show character Denise Huxtable (Lisa Bonet), the Cosby Show episode "Hillman" was devoted to the Huxtable family visiting Denise during her freshman year at Hillman College though no characters from the upcoming series were introduced.
A 2018 episode of ABC's 1980s-set sitcom The Goldbergs, titled "1990-Something", heavily featured teachers who were recurring characters on the series and served as the backdoor pilot to Schooled, which debuted in early 2019.
A 2011 episode of the TV Land original sitcom Hot in Cleveland focused on the wedding of the character Elka (played by Betty White).
[15] The third season two-part episode "Terra Firma" of Star Trek: Discovery is generally regarded as a backdoor pilot for a series featuring the character Philippa Georgiou.
Up-and-coming actors Juliette Lewis, Mayim Bialik, Seth Green, and Meredith Scott Lynn[21] were featured as some of Eastland's new students.
[22] In June 2010, Lifetime pursued a spinoff procedural drama of Army Wives featuring Brigid Brannagh's character, police officer Pamela Moran.
[23] The episode sees Moran teaming up with an Atlanta-based detective on a murder that is related to a case she has been working on for the past three years.
"The Farm" was an episode of NBC's The Office that was supposed to act as a backdoor pilot for a spin-off series starring Rainn Wilson and focusing on his character, Dwight Schrute.
[28] The Arrow episode "The Scientist" served as a backdoor pilot for the spinoff series The Flash, introducing Barry Allen as a CSI searching for super-powered people in an attempt to find his mother's murderer.
[29] This episode also created the Arrowverse, a shared universe of interconnected DC Comics superhero TV series.
Series that used the 10/90 model include Tyler Perry's House of Payne, Meet the Browns, For Better or Worse, Debmar-Mercury's Anger Management,[36] and Are We There Yet?.
[37] In the case of Firefly, the original pilot ("Serenity") which was intended to serve as the series premiere was rejected by the network, and a new first episode, "Train Job", was shot specifically for broadcast.
The first, titled The Cage, didn't sell, but Desilu head Lucille Ball convinced NBC executives to allow shooting of a second pilot, Where No Man Has Gone Before, which was accepted by the network.
Viewers of Temple Houston, for example, would likely have considered "The Twisted Rope" its pilot because "The Man from Galveston" was only publicly exhibited in cinemas four months later.
Even then, "The Man from Galveston" had an almost entirely different cast, and its main character was renamed to avoid confusion with the then-ongoing series.
(1966); and Mulholland Drive (2001), which was composed of an unsold pilot episode appended with an ending shot specifically for the film.
In addition, a number of unsuccessful pilot episodes have been released as direct-to-video films, including Belle's Magical World (1998), Cruel Intentions 2 (2001) and Atlantis: Milo's Return (2003).
[46] On June 8, 1956, the New York Times reported that the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) would begin airing a package of unsold pilots that summer under the title G.E.
Summer Originals, adding that "the problem of what to do with 'pilot' or sample films of projected television series that previously have failed to sell has been solved.
[46] A number of summer anthology series consisting entirely or partly of unsold pilots were broadcast in the United States between 1956 and 1989.
These series were:[46][48] By the mid-1980s, the rise of cable television outlets had led to an increase of original programming during the summer months and ABC, CBS, and NBC began to experience a decline in summer viewership;[48] the launch of Fox as a fourth major network in 1987 only exacerbated the problem for the former "Big Three" networks.