he six broadcast networks announced their fall pickups in one crazy week beginning May 12, meaning that 39 shows survived the development process [including Tru Calling, starring Buffy alum Eliza Dushku, seen at right]. With a few exceptions that might live on as midseason projects, everything goes to television heaven.
Or possibly television limbo. Rumor is that the cable channel Trio will air several failed pilots during the coming year. This is a gambit that has been tried in the past—does anyone remember CBS Summer Playhouse? Didn't think so. Of course, that was before the days of 500 channels. ...
For every one of these failed pilots, there are probably four to six scripts that didn't get filmed, each one a cherished dream that a writer managed to sell to a network on an off day, only to have it die young.
I ought to know. I've got my own collection of failed pilots.
I was reminded of this sad fact because I recently undertook the frightening job of cleaning out my home office. I'd like you to believe it was a routine chore triggered by the completion of two projects; in truth I had simply run out of room on countertops and in filing cabinets.
Something had to go.
Pilots with no wind beneath their wings
First on the list was Way Station, my adaptation of Clifford Simak's classic sci-fi novel about a Civil War veteran—still alive and youthful more than 100 years after the conflict—who tends a transfer node for an intergalactic matter transport system in an isolated corner of Wisconsin. The veteran, Enoch Wallace, was recruited by an alien he named "Ulysses," after General U.S. Grant, and has, over the years, learned more about the universe through his alien visitors than any human being.
I had always liked the novel, partly because it was set in Wisconsin, where I grew up, but also because it was good. (Sci-fi readers agreed; Way Station won the Hugo Award for best novel in 1964 and has sold close to 1 million copies since publication.)
I had thought Way Station would make a great sci-fi family television series, so I fiddled with the concept a bit, having suburbia encroach on Wallace's isolated facility and giving him two neighbor kids who stumble on his secret ... episodic stories would involve aliens who got loose on earth, or Wallace and even the teens loose on other planets.
Way Station is one of my best scripts. The network agreed—when it failed to get a production commitment, it was rolled over and re-examined for a second season.
But it never got that final green light for filming. The rights have since reverted to the Simak estate, and Stargate SG-1 came along, with its own take on the "portal" concept.
Time has passed Way Station by.
Then there was Dream Palace, a one-hour drama I developed with Karl Schaefer. The idea here was to explore dreams (and solve people's problems) using virtual reality—turning the metaphorical into the literal, if you will. This was just the sort of ambitious concept that gets developed because network executives do like to take the occasional chance, but almost never filmed, unless some big-name talent from the feature world is involved.
It might also have been a tad confused. I wrote the darn thing, and looking back after several years I can't quite see what the series was supposed to be.
In any case, some years later NBC aired a series called Sleepwalkers, which examined the same territory to no one's great benefit.
Several drafts of Dream Palace, all marked up with studio and network notes, went into the recycle bin. (Oh, I have all the drafts on disk. But the only hard copy I need is the draft Karl and I liked best.)
Here's another favorite, Star Traders, co-created with George R.R. Martin, the best-selling fantasy novelist, television scripter (Beauty and the Beast, Twilight Zone) and award-winning SF author ("Sandkings," etc.). The idea here was to imagine that a giant alien starship arrives today. The ship is populated by representatives of several different races, all of them engaged in trade and exploration, and they offer us a chance to join. So "Nine Brave Americans" (which was the title of the pilot episode) win a lottery for the chance to take this trip of a lifetime. (Which will, in fact, consume years ...)
Picture a giant alien shuttlecraft parked in the Mojave ... television crews and spectators all over the place ... an alien offering greetings to inhabitants of our planet and offering to include humans in the next phase of the voyager.
The alien has even handed out a brochure, which is being examined by Brady, a con man, and the Professor, his cohort.
The Professor thinks he and Brady should sign up for this trip.
Brady holds up the brochure: "But what if it's a cookbook?"
(If you find that exchange promising, thank George R.R. Martin.)
Star Traders was dead upon arrival at the network that developed it, victim of a change of direction. And so last week I tossed out several early drafts, including one that was 50 percent longer than it should have been.
But this one might still have life today ... hmmm.
SF TV's
arrested development
These are just a sampling of my busted sci-fi projects. I could do two more columns on failed mainstream developments, like The Front Office (a sitcom about an idealistic baseball fan hired to run an expansion team) or Comrade Smith (another sitcom, this one about an American businessman and his family setting up a McDonald's in Moscow—prior to the fall of the U.S.S.R., of course) or In Harm's Way (a drama about female bodyguards).
Like my sci-fi projects, all of these were paid for. At one time or another, somebody thought they had merit.
But, alas, no longer.
Multiply me by a couple of hundred, and you'll have some idea of the number of failed television scripts gathering dust on shelves.
The odds suggest that some of them deserve a second look.
(A close friend of mine, an experienced show runner, claims that a network could field a strong development slate by simply asking writers to resubmit "failed" projects like these.)
If Trio can air failed projects that got filmed, you'd think there was a way to revisit these scripts. Perhaps the Internet?
Oh well. A new development season begins in a month.
Michael Cassutt recently discarded early drafts of his forthcoming novel, Tango Midnight (Forge, November 2003) and a script for The Dead Zone (to air on USA in late June).
