Recycled Script: Difference between revisions

[[File:recycled 4981.jpg|link=Garfield|frame|Above: 2009. Below, [[Fleeting Demographic Rule|2011]].]]

 

''And they kept listening..."''

|'''[[Superdickery.com]]''' on Lois Lane #78<ref>[http://www.superdickery.com/lois-gets-powers-again-again/ Here.]</ref>}}

When two or more shows share the same pool of writers (or when a freelance scriptwriter is a particular combination of industrious and lazy), it's not unknown for tight deadlines to be handled by the expedient of taking a script already used by one show and "translating" it to another show. Characters are mapped onto their closest equivalents, and situations are revised slightly to fit the new program, but the same plot is used unchanged.

 

 

Recycled scripts are also a common side-effect of writers' strikes, particularly among Westerns made in the 1950s and 1960s. The practice actually dates back as far as the early days of radio.

A show targeted at a [[Fleeting Demographic]] or one that is a sufficiently [[Long Runners|Long Runner]] may well unabashedly recycle its own scripts [[Fleeting Demographic Rule|every few years]].

 

 

Related to, but not to be confused with [[Strictly Formula]], where each individual episode plot seems the same, with minor variations. See also [[Fleeting Demographic Rule]] and [[Recycled Premise]].

** ''[[Exterminatus Now]]'' presents [http://exterminatusnow.co.uk/2006-02-17/comic/non-storyline/out-of-continuity-comics/what-does-the-scouter-say-about-his-power-level/ The plot of Dragonball Z] - as [[Droste Image]].

* ''[[Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny]]'' copied plot lines from the last Gundam show, ''[[Mobile Suit Gundam SEED]]'': Shinn and Stellar's encounter in a cave (in ''Destiny'') being similar to Athrun and Cagalli's (in ''Seed''), while the final battles in both shows are nearly identical, with the only difference being that in ''Destiny'', the Three Ships Alliance's victory was a [[Curb Stomp Battle]] (and in the TV version, a [[Flawless Victory]]).

 

== [[Comic Books]] ==

* [[Disney Comics]] did it: A 2000-era Disney magazine reused [http://coa.inducks.org/s.php?c=W+WDC+117-22P a serial story] from the late fifties. It involved Mickey impersonating an [[Identical Stranger]] king.

** ...which itself was probably an homage to ''[[The Prisoner of Zenda]]''.

* Marvel's ''Tales to Astonish'' was a huge offender prior to 1961, when it was an anthology series. The writers apparently had a stock set of plots that were recycled, not every few years, but every few ''issues'', right down to the [[Twist Ending|twist endings]].

* In the late 50's and early 60's, [[Carl Barks]] recycled a couple of his own scripts from the late 40's with various changes, like making a ''[[Donald Duck]]'' story into a ''[[Disney Ducks Comic Universe|Scrooge McDuck]]'' one, figuring that no one would remember the old, long out of print comics. When older fans noticed it, Barks expressed shame in letters and interviews, feeling like he had been caught doing something wrong, despite that the fans simply thought it was a fun little trivia and liked both the new and old stories.

* Marvel retold the origin of [[The Rawhide Kid]] multiple times over the years, usually with almost identical scripts, but different art, as shown [http://bullyscomics.blogspot.com/2011/11/with-great-power-comes-blazing-fast.html here].

 

== [[Fan Works]] ==

* In ''[[Half Life: Full Life Consequences]]'', John Freeman receives a call from his brother to help him kill aliens and monsters, and goes out to do so on his motorcycle, killing "[[Department of Redundancy Department|zombie goasts]]", and eventually defeating the last boss, only to see Gordon Freeman killed before his eyes. In What Has To be Done, John Freeman sets out on his faster motorcycle, kills more zombie goasts and kills the boss that killed Gordon Freeman, only for Gordon Freeman to rise as a headcrab-infected zombie goast.

 

* On the big screen, the 1960s ''[[James Bond (film)|James Bond]]'' film ''[[Thunderball]]'' was recycled into 1983's ''[[Never Say Never Again]]'' with only a few minor tweaks to reflect the passing of time. The plot, names of several major characters, and even the actor playing Bond (Sean Connery) were otherwise unchanged. This was the result of a lawsuit by a writer who had contributed ideas to the original ''[[Thunderball]]'', who was trying to leverage this into permission to make his own Bond movies; the verdict was essentially that he could make as many remakes of ''[[Thunderball]]'' as he liked.

** ''[[Die Another Day]]'' didn't go as far, but copied from ''[[Diamonds Are Forever]]'' the primary weapon of the villain (an orbiting satellite using smuggled diamonds that shot down nuclear missiles) and the fact that he teamed up with a foreign agent that happened to be the only girl he slept with that movie. I understand that they wanted to reference previous movies for number twenty, but that was a little much.

** It doesn't just apply to the beginning; ''Batman and Robin'' also used some key plot points from ''Forever'', namely the final act, where Batman, Robin, and Batgirl raided the observatory.

 

* [[Douglas Adams]]' novel ''[[Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency]]'' reused several key concepts from "[[Doctor Who/Recap/S17/E06 Shada|Shada]]", a story he had written for ''[[Doctor Who]]'' but which had been unfinished due to strike action (and elements of "[[Doctor Who/Recap/S17/E02 City of Death|City of Death]]", which ''was'' broadcast). Another Adams novel, ''Life, the Universe, and Everything'', began its life as a ''[[Doctor Who]]'' screenplay called ''The Krikketmen''. It shows, as the [[Gotta Catch Em All]] plot is a very different sort of animal from its predecessors.

* [[Agatha Christie]] did this several times. The Poirot short story ''Yellow Iris'' became the Colonel Race novel ''Sparkling Cyanide''; the Poirot novellas ''Murder in the Mews'' and ''Dead Man's Mirror'' (which were published together) were based on the Poirot short stories "The Market Basing Mystery" and "The Second Gong", respectively; the Poirot novel ''The Blue Train'' uses the same device as the Poirot short story "The Plymouth Express"; and two Poirot stories, "Problem at Pollensa Bay" and "The Regatta Mystery", were later rewritten to be about Mr Parker Pyne. Note that Poirot, Race and Pyne all exist in [[Canon Welding|the same universe]].

* Donald Sobol's ''Two-Minute Mysteries'' includes a story of a man who tries to impress his date with a fake medal his great-grandfather supposedly received, marked as a medal of valor from the first battle of Bull Run. The challenge is to figure out why the medal is obviously fake. Either it's obvious because {{spoiler|it wasn't called the ''first'' battle of Bull Run until after there was a ''second'' battle of Bull Run}} ... or it's obvious because Sobol used the same mystery in his ''[[Encyclopedia Brown]]'' series.

** The majority of the ''Two-Minute Mysteries'' are just ''Encyclopedia Brown'' stories condensed to one page and with the crime in question upgraded from petty theft to first-degree murder.

* The [[Roald Dahl]] adult short story "The Champion of the World" is about two men who come up with the idea of poaching pheasants by dosing raisins with sleeping pills and scattering them though the wood. [[Danny, the Champion of the World|There's something familiar about both title and plot...]]

* Dan Brown's ''[[Digital Fortress]]'' mentions a subplot explaining the etymology of the word "Sincere" as derived from "sine cera" which literally means "without wax" in Latin. In ''Digital Fortress'' he credits this to Spanish instead. It's explained that ancient sculptors would cover flaws in their work with wax, therefor a piece finished "without wax" would be considered honest and without flaw. Interestingly enough, Dan Brown revisits this exact same subplot when he explains "without wax" in his other book ''[[The Lost Symbol]]'', this time crediting the etymology to Latin. (Both times, [[Dan Browned|the etymology is false]]; the word comes from the Latin prefix sin- (one) and word crescere (to grow), drawing an analogy to a field that is not growing mixed crops.)

 

* This trope was the basis for the early [[Too Good to Last|short lived]] 2000s NBC show called ''[[The Rerun Show]]'' in which a group of actors took actual scripts of old shows such as ''[[Bewitched]]'' and ''[[Married... with Children]]'', and used the same exact dialog, while spoofing the show with props and actions.

* ''[[The Six Million Dollar Man]]'' and ''[[The Bionic Woman]]'' shared a fair number of scripts. The most obvious of these was a plot involving a crash on a remote island, stranding the bionic individual with a lot of extras plus a coworker from OSI (Oscar for Steve, Rudy for Jaime). The coworker is seriously injured, but there is a doctor among the survivors who can save him despite the primitive conditions; to help him do so, though, Steve/Jaime must cut open a finger on their bionic hand and bare two wires so that the doctor can cauterize a blood vessel.

* Not the same show, but from the same writer: Kenneth Johnson wrote the two part ''[[The Six Million Dollar Man]]'' episode introducing Jaime, who was to be married to Steve until her bionics (recently acquired in the course of the two-parter's first half) malfunctioned and she ran amok during a tropical storm, after which she died from her condition. A couple of years later Kenny would write the season two opener of ''[[The Incredible Hulk]],'' where David Banner fell in love with a doctor with a terminal brain disease—that causes her to run amok in a tropical storm until she died.

* ''[[The Bionic Woman]]'' and ''[[Gemini Man]]'' once shared a script about a lookalike for the title character infiltrating the agency where she/he works despite being ignorant of the main character's superhuman abilities. They are both assassins, targeting the main character's superior. At the climax, the hero(ine) and the double are both claiming to be the real deal; the hero(ine) proves his/her identity by using their special abilities—one by bionic-jumping to the top of a tree, the other by turning invisible.

* In what is probably a specialized case, ''[[The New Odd Couple]]'' recycled eight scripts that were written for the original version of ''[[The Odd Couple]]''.

* An episode of ''[[Step by Step]]'' had the exact same plot as an episode of ''[[Happy Days]]''. A character is dating a woman. Another character suspects that the woman may secretly be a popular stripper (who wears a mask). They notice that the woman has a very distinctive laugh. So they hire the stripper in order to make her laugh and prove her identity.

** After three years of the original series and ''eighteen'' years for its spin-offs, scripts began to be borrowed and recycled from within each show and across the franchise as a whole. For example, the basic script for the original series episode "Elaan of Troyius" was recycled ''twice.'' It got particularly bad with ''Enterprise,'' which was accused of being a recycle of ''Voyager'' as a whole set in the past.

* The ''[[Star Trek: Enterprise|Enterprise]]'' episode "Doctor's Orders" is virtually identical to the ''Voyager'' episode "One."

** "Oasis" from ''Enterprise'' was extremely similar to "Shadowplay" from ''Deep Space Nine'', both being about isolated societies that turn out to mostly consist of holograms created by the one real person to stave off loneliness after the people they're based on were all killed. "Oasis" even brought back ''Deep Space Nine'' cast member Rene Auberjonois, who immediately pointed out the similarity.

** ''Enterprise'' also has the episode "Chosen Realm," an obvious redo of the original series' "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield." Both deal with aliens who are at war over a trivial matter reflecting society at the time(having different colored skin, or a trivial religious debate), who ultimately return to their planet to discover that everyone has long since killed each other.

* ''[[Star Trek: Voyager]]'' was often considered just a recycle of ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation]]''. For example, the ''Next Generation'' episode "Lonely Among Us" featured an [[Energy Beings|Energy Being]] that is able to possess people and machines, and takes over the ship. ''Voyager'''s "The Haunting of Deck Twelve" used almost exactly the same plotline, but with the [[Framing Device]] of having Neelix telling the story of what happened to some children. By chance (probably), the ''Voyager'' episode ended up airing back-to-back with a repeat of the ''Next Generation'' episode when it was shown on [[The BBC|BBC2]].

** Similarly, the Voyager two-parter "Future's End" takes a lot of story elements from ''[[Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home|Star Trek IV the Voyage Home]]''.

* 24 scripts on ''[[Bewitched]]'' were recycled scene by scene. One was recycled ''twice''. Most of these were episodes featuring the first Darrin that were recycled with [[The Other Darrin]]. Since some were two-parters, this means a total of 55 of the 254 episodes, 22% of the entire show, weren't unique. In addition to these completely recycled scripts, there were also many that had similar premises but were different in the particulars, and many individual scenes and gags that were recycled in otherwise original episodes.

** Some of the black and white episodes were redone after the show went to color.

** Likewise the ''New Avengers'' episode "Complex" is essentially a remake of the original series episode "Killer".

* The plot of the ''[[Thunder in Paradise]]'' episode "Endangered Species" (a wolf child turns out to be the heir of a murdered co-owner of an aviation company, and the other co-owner wants to finish the job) was also featured in an episode of ''[[The Wizard (film)]]'' with the same title.

* One episode of ''[[The Brady Bunch]]'' in which Bobby pretends he's sick in order to get a visit from his favorite professional athlete, Joe Namath, was later re-used on ''[[Diff'rent Strokes]]'' with Muhammad Ali.

* After Curly Howard's stroke, ''[[The Three Stooges]]'' attempted to get the audience attached to his replacement Shemp by making several of their old shorts over again with Shemp in the Curly part. Results were less than successful.

* ''[[El Chavo del Ocho]]'' suffered badly from this. Several episodes were remade until four times, sometime even repeating cast and roles. Granted, the show having done several [[Channel Hop]]s (even if it within the many [[Televisa]] channels) and severals changes of cast and format<ref>''El Chavo'' began as a sketch in an [[Sketch Comedy]] show, before becoming its own half hour sitcom until it ended being part of a sketch show again.</ref> could explain it, but it's still quite jarring when all of those episodes end together in syndication.

 

* One arc of ''[[Modesty Blaise (comic strip)|Modesty Blaise]]'' had her being captured and placed in the bottom of a large hole with a bucket stuck on her head, as entertainment for two elderly murderers. The same plot was reused in an arc of ''Agent Corrigan''.

* The Comics Curmudgeon has noticed recycling in comic strips, most blatantly in ''[http://joshreads.com/?p=1646 Blondie]'' and ''[http://joshreads.com/?p=2372 Family Circus]'', which exactly duplicated the layouts of the original strips.

* ''[[Garfield]]'' has recycled gags many times in the strip's 30+ year history, including at least two instances where the same gag was used twice only one year apart. One is at the top of the page; the other was a gag where Garfield is in such a hurry to get to a cup of hot chocolate that he stands on Odie.

* ''[[Beetle Bailey]]'', which by now has a run of about half as many strips as there are atoms in the known universe, must have recycled hundreds of its jokes, almost certainly sometimes more than once. Since there are so many strips in existence, it's just conceivable Mort Walker just can't remember which ideas he has already used. But don't bet on it.

** He seems very deliberate about reusing the gag where the officers are afraid to point out an obvious spelling mistake in the General's written instruction, and instead do exactly what the instruction says, even though it makes no sense (tacks instead of tanks, buns instead of guns, gag masks instead of gas masks. etc.)

* ''[[Peanuts]]'' did this several times, as listed on [http://www.fivecentsplease.org/dpb/samegag.html this page].

* And averted with extreme prejudice by ''[[Calvin and Hobbes]]'' and ''[[The Far Side]]'', none of which recycled an earlier comic.

* ''[[FoxTrot]]'':

** A 1998 strip has Roger complaining about how the paperboy is always throwing the morning newspaper in a puddle or in the bushes, to which Andy responds by saying that Roger should stop tipping him with a nickel every month. A later strip from 2000 has Roger complaining about how the paperboy keeps throwing the newspaper in a puddle and declares, "Starting today, no more 5-cent monthly tip for ''that'' young man!"

** A strip from 2000 has Paige channel-surfing very slowly, to the point that Peter grabs the remote and start channel-surfing very quickly, saying "''This'' is how to do it." This same gag was used in a 2005 strip, except with Jason in place of Paige.

 

* [[Professional Wrestling]] manager/promoter Jim Cornette, out of character, has put out a "rule" that angles or gimmicks can be recycled after about [[Fleeting Demographic Rule|seven years]], due to the shifting fanbase.

 

* Not even [[Shakespeare]] was immune to this: ''[[Macbeth]]'' is a virtual rehash of ''[[Julius Caesar]]''. Both tell the story of a general (Brutus/Macbeth) who, at the urging of a close companion (Cassius/Lady Macbeth), murders a ruler (Julius Caesar/King Duncan) and seizes power. After being haunted by their respective victims' ghosts, they are defeated by a former ally (Marc Antony/Macduff) in the name of the rightful heir (Octavius/Malcolm).

** Almost all of Shakespeare's plays were recylings of others' plays to begin with - which was common at the time. Also, both ''Julius Caesar'' and ''Macbeth'' were based on historic records/legends which happened to have some similar plot points.

* [[Cirque Du Soleil]] has done this at least twice with clown acts, recycling material from long-since-closed tours. ''Quidam'''s current clown segments ([[Audience Participation]] involving a date and a film shoot) are from the 1990-93 tour ''Nouvelle Experience''. ''ZAIA'' revives the comic symphony conductor act that appeared in their [[The Eighties|Eighties]] tours. As well, back in [[The Nineties]] -- when the company was much smaller -- acrobatic acts developed for one show were sometimes moved with their performers to another and given a different song and costuming/staging to fit the new "home" (aerial cube moved from ''[[Alegria]]'' to ''[[Mystere]]'' after the latter's manipulation act was moved to ''[[Quidam]]''); this still happens occasionally. Finally, the 1992 Japan-only tour ''Fascination'' mostly consisted of acts from the ''Le Cirque Reinvente'' and ''Nouvelle Experience'' tours (which hadn't visited Japan), and in visuals and theme duplicated those of ''Reinvente''.

 

 

* BioWare RPGs ''[[Neverwinter Nights]]'', ''[[Knights of the Old Republic]]'', and ''[[Jade Empire]]'' all feature sidequests where you end up arguing your position before a panel of five judges against an insulting opponent. The connection is more explicit between NWN and KotOR: both sidequests feature a murder trial, the player character as the defense lawyer, and a defendant who did actually commit the crime (although in one case, the defendant was not responsible for his actions).

** [[Mass Effect|Mass Effect 2]] also has this, though there are only four Quarian admirals (one only presiding, without a vote) on the panel that judges Tali'Zorah.

* ''[[Tron 2.0]]'' came out in 2003, was given virtually no publicity by [[Disney]], and quickly vanished into [[Canon Discontinuity]] once ''[[Tron: Legacy]]'' came out. However, there are enough plot elements (protagonist is the son of the human protagonists, gets zapped to cyberspace when searching for his dad, gets drafted to the games and rescued by a mystery woman, goes to a bar to get what looks like the way out only to fall into an ambush...) matching up to make one wonder if the writers had the thing on multiplayer.

 

 

* The episode "Dementia 5" was used, with very few changes, by two animated series made by the same studio. The series were ''[[Spider-Man]]'' and ''[[Rocket Robin Hood]]''.

** Another episode of [[Spider-Man]], involving a scientist taking over a power plant to raise the city into the air, was re-used later. Essentially they changed a few words in the script, changed the scientist's skin color and added pointy ears, and suddenly it was involving an Atlantean using his submarine to ''lower'' the city into the ocean.

* ''[[The Simpsons]]'' episodes "Million Dollar Abie" and "The Boys of Bummer" both involve a member of the Simpson family (Grampa and Bart respectively) becomes a pariah over a sports-related mishap, to the point they [[Driven to Suicide|attempt suicide]]. Both episodes are hated by the fanbase to the point of [[Fanon Discontinuity]].

* The ''[[Courage the Cowardly Dog]]'' episode ''Curtain of Cruelty'' has an identical plot to ''The Tower of Dr. Zalost''; a scientist causes the entire town of Nowhere to become miserable, just like him, and the solution involves one of Muriel's homemade recipes. Also, Eustace is immune because he's already so cruel. Both episodes do have several differences though, for instance ''Dr. Zalost'' is a full 30-minute episode, while ''Curtain of Cruelty'' is a normal [[Two Shorts|15-minute short]].

* Showing that [[Tropes Are Not Bad]], Michael Maltese recycled the non-wartime parts of the [[Merrie Melodies]] short "Herr Meets Hare" into the later short "[[What's Opera, Doc?]]" - which placed at number 1 on [[The 50 Greatest Cartoons]] list.

 

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