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Poorly-Disguised Pilot: Difference between revisions
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* The ''[[Star Trek: The Original Series]]'' episode "Assignment: Earth" ends with Kirk and Spock assuring everyone that they are sure Roberta Lincoln (played by then-unknown Teri Garr) and her super-spy boss Gary Seven (played by Robert Lansing) will have many more interesting adventures to come. Sadly, they didn't; the most they got was an occasional appearance in the [[Expanded Universe]].
** The episode was originally written as a straight pilot and then [[Dolled-Up Installment|reworked to include the ''Trek'' characters when a buyer couldn't be found]]. Note how Kirk and Spock are rather awkwardly shoehorned into a storyline to which they contribute very little. As Kirk himself put it in the episode, "I have never felt so helpless."
* ''[[Diagnosis: Murder]]'' had several episodes intended to be spin-offs but none were ever picked up:
** "Retribution," a two-part episode was intended to be a pilot for "The Chief." Fred Dryer starred at the hard-nosed Los Angeles chief of police who played various political games to provide law and order. Neal McDonough would co-star as Ross Canin, a mob boss who was actually an undercover policeman acting as Masters' ultimate inside man.
** "A Mime is a Terrible Thing to Waste" featured Rachel York as Randy Wofle, an eccentric woman with various jobs who gets involved in murder cases.
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* The ''[[Martin]]'' episode entitled "Goin' for Mine" was a backdoor pilot, about Pam James wanting an A&R job at a record label by trying to get an unsigned singer signed. Martin Lawrence, the star of the series was only shown in the cold open and the episode featured a number actors that were to star in the proposed series. The show was not picked up as a full series.
* The ''[[Miami Vice]]'' episode entitled "Leap of Faith" was a backdoor pilot about a Youth Crime Unit going undercover as college students, a somewhat similar concept to the series 21 Jump Street. The show's main stars Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas are seen only in the first few minutes of this episode, and none of the other regulars appear at all.
* ''[[Being Human (UK)]]'' had an episode centering on a young(looking) vampire named Adam, who ate up most of the screen time. He became a central character in the [[Webisode|online]] young-adult spinoff ''[[Becoming Human]]''.
* ''[[The Mary Tyler Moore Show]]'' examples:
** The final episode of its second season (this was before the concept of the [[Season Finale]] took off) was used for an attempted backdoor pilot starring Bill Daily as an incompetent city councilman.
** The show had three actual [[Spin-Off]] series that averted this trope: ''[[Rhoda]]'', ''[[Phyllis]]'', and ''[[Lou Grant]]''. Each of these shows had separately produced pilots.
** One episode's plot involved Rhoda ''almost'' moving back to New York, a few seasons before ''[[Rhoda]]'' was launched. It doesn't appear to have been intended as a backdoor pilot per se, but may have been a trial balloon for the concept.
* [[Cartoon Network]] has tried this twice, both times being in the form of [[Made for TV Movie|Made for TV Movies]]: ''Re-Animated'' (which spawned ''[[Out of
* Averted on ''[[Prison Break]]''. The producers planned a spin-off with the working title ''Prison Break: Cherry Hill'', which was to focus on a woman escaping from a maximum security prison. The main character was to be introduced in an episode of its parent show, but first it became too difficult to steer its serpentine plot in a direction that could accommodate ''Cherry Hill", then casting the lead became a chore, then finally the writers' strike made it more trouble than it was worth.
* It would take less time to list the instalments of ''[[Disney|The Disney Sunday Movie]]'' that ''weren't'' Poorly Disguised Pilots. And even less time to list the pilots that became series, because only one did (''The Last Electric Knight'', which became ''Sidekicks'').
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