curt:
Well, now we're really getting into the area of guesswork, since I'm not a Teep, and not in line-of-site to Sci-Fi headquarters anyway.
But I can think of some plausible reasons for the different way they are handling different shows.
Black Scorpion was entirely funded by Roger Corman, who sold it to TV stations after-the-fact. So the pilot issue didn't even come up.
Most pilots are, indeed, simply sample episodes of a show. Such pilots are almost
never seen by the general public as "stand-alone" broadcasts. They go to the network execs. If they like the pilot they commission a series. If there aren't too many changes between the pilot and the actual series, they may air the pilot as part of the regular series run. (As
TOS did with the second pilot, "Where No Man Has Gone Before.") So
The Chronicle may well have a pilot, which Sci-Fi looked at six months ago, and which will now air as the first episode.
Failed pilots rarely get seen. Sometimes a network will run a failed pilot instead of a rerun of a regular show to try to get a little of its development money back. Many years ago CBS used to run late night "anthology" shows which were entirely made up of failed comedy and drama pilots for each year. But for the most part the ones that don't sell never make it on the air - which means that they're a dead-loss for the studio and the network because it is hard to show a single out-of-context episode of a non-existant series. TV viewers are creatures of habit when it comes to one-hour and half-hour scripted TV shows.
TV movies are typically used as "back-door" pilots because viewers are
used to 90 minute (rarely, these days) and two hour "made for TV movies." The advantage to the network and the studio is that they run in normal "movie time slots" and they are stand-alone stories that can be shown again and continue to earn money. Even though they cost two or three times what a sample episode does, they are less of a risk because the finished product is marketable on its own.
Another advantage is that a lot of your costs (set, prop, costume design and construction) get charged to the TV movie, which is almost certain to turn a profit eventually, rather than to a sample episode that may end up a total loss. This is especially important for a Sci-Fi project, where these expenses can be substantial. Doing this also automatically lowers your per episode cost on the series, since these items are available "off-the-shelf" and have already been paid for. Depending on how you do your accounting, you may not even have to amortize them.
So TV movie pilots are a relatively cheap way to test out a concept, without committing yourself to a big cash outlay.
Sci-Fi clearly wants a show in the
B5 universe. But what if
Rangers doesn't turn out to be that show? What if the audience doesn't respond?
As things stand now SFC can air the TV movie and, if the results are negative, go back to JMS and say, "Here's the data from the viewer polls. Here's what folks liked and didn't like. Is there another story you can do that will be more appealing to the existing fan base?"
Then they can make
another TV movie and try again. If that one hits they've got their new show and it cost them about $6 millon to get the successful show they wanted. If they just go with
Rangers they spend between $14 and $25 million (guesstimates based on a per-episode budget slightly hire than
B5's to allow for inflation) for a show they could end up cancelling after one season or less.
There is also the fact that the
Rangers movie (and possible series) will be the work of a brand-new prodution company, team and FX house.
When SFC tried to pick up
Crusade it was a going concern, produced by a company with a track record and an in-house FX company doing terrific work. Two years later Netter Digital is gone, Babylonian Productions exists only on paper, they've lost they're L.A. studio space, and the new show is going to be shot in Canada with a lot of new crew members and a different FX company. Prudence suggests that you give the new team a trial run before you fork over tens of millions of dollars to them.
SFC may want to make sure that the new team can deliver a complex film on time and on-budget, just like Babylonian did. That was one of the major accomplishments of
B5 let's remember, and one of the things that makes it attractive to a "small" cable outfit like Sci-Fi. The reason they can make money on shows that draw ratings that would get them cancelled on the broadcast networks is their demograhics, and their ability to contain costs.
All of the recent
Trek series (and every other post-
TOS outer space show) were sold on the basis of a given cost-per-episode and
all of them rapidly exceeded that amount, to the point where the studio had to increase the budgets and their per episode deficits to keep the shows going. (Which the producers counted, on, figuring the studio wouldn't cancel a highly-rated show in mid-stream.)
One of the reasons that
B5 was such a hard sell for Netter and Straczynksi was that no one in Hollywood believed that they could produce the show for the budget they said they could. Everyone was convinced it would cost at least twice as much, and nobody was willing to risk that much red ink on a non-
Trek show, because it had no built-in audience.
In fact, Netter and Straczynski did exactly what they said they would, and produced
B5 for around $900,000 per episode, less than
half the budget for any of the modern
Treks (and a fraction of what a network show of any description costs, including most sitcoms.)
They proved they could do it with Babylonian. The question (in SFC's mind) may be whether or not they can do it in Vancouver with a new crew, after a two-year layoff from the production business. I'm not saying this is the reason SFC wanted a pilot, just that it strikes me as a plausible reason for doing so.
Regards,
Joe
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Joseph DeMartino
Sigh Corps
Pat Tallman Division
joseph-demartino@att.net
