Episode 1.0, The Unaired Pilot (60-min. "Study in Pink")

[Carol the Dabbler]

@Ioanna-- Not sure I'm following you.  When you say "any whole work" -- are you talking about (for example) the Sherlock program, or the Arthur Conan Doyle stories, or .... ?

 

[Caya]

Welcome Ioanna! 
 

I think she means trying to tack additional minutes onto a finished episode, as happened with the pilot . Sure, there are some scenes and cuts they’d want to flesh out, but at some point it probably becomes tedious.

[besleybean]

But that was the whole issue in this case.

The team made a point of not just sticking 30 mins on.

The whole episode was re-shot and done better.

They used the extra time wisely:

introducing Mycroft etc.

[Caya]

That part about Sherlock not realizing it could have been a cabbie was … a bit of an odd choice, though.

[besleybean]

Yeah, I think we all thought him a  bit slow on that one!

[Carol the Dabbler]

10 hours ago, Caya said:

I think she means trying to tack additional minutes onto a finished episode, as happened with the pilot .

Yes, now that I re-read what Ioanna said, it seems quite clear.  I must have been half asleep....

[Carol the Dabbler]

On 6/4/2023 at 11:42 AM, Ioanna said:

... the script is more harmonious in the UP. I consider the late insertions - the press conference, John and Mycroft's dialogue, the taxi chase, the drug bust - successful on their own but rather unnaturally inserted into the context of the first episode.

Speaking of that press conference, I just figured out how Sherlock did (or at least could have done) those simultaneous "Wrong!" messages to all the reporters' cell phones.

It seemed unbelievable to me at the time because, at least here in the US, the Wireless Emergency Alert system didn't begin until (I had to look it up) 2012, two years later, with tornado warnings, kidnapping alerts, and such.  Quite possibly such a system did not yet exist in the UK either -- but someone must have been experimenting with such a system a few years earlier, figuring out how best to do it.  Someone like the British government -- also known as Mycroft Holmes.  (We hadn't met Mycroft yet, and even when we did we didn't know he was Sherlock's brother, or someone from the government, but of course he already was all of those things.)

So Mycroft is working with a small, experimental version of an alert system, and Sherlock decides to have some fun with it....

 

[J.P.]

I liked in the Pilot that we get a glimpse into why Anderson cannot stand Sherlock, which makes him more human.

Wasn't the Pilot a presentation to BBC to get the series funded? 🤔

[besleybean]

Yes and the BBC liked it so much, they wanted more!

[Carol the Dabbler]

9 hours ago, J.P. said:

I liked in the Pilot that we get a glimpse into why Anderson cannot stand Sherlock, which makes him more human.

I'm trying to remember -- was the deodorant scene in only the pilot?  Or Anderson's discussion with Lestrade?

9 hours ago, J.P. said:

Wasn't the Pilot a presentation to BBC to get the series funded?

Not *just* a presentation, though.  If the BBC had approved Sherlock as a 60-minute show, the pilot would have been aired as episode 1 of the first season.  But after seeing the pilot, the BBC decided the show would work better as 90-minute episodes.  The production team briefly considered just adding some new scenes to what they had already filmed -- but now that they were funded (yay!), they decided to get the high-quality camera they'd been wanting.  Therefore the new scenes wouldn't match, so they started over from scratch.

 

[besleybean]

Wel deoderant scene was defo in the aired version...

[Carol the Dabbler]

1 hour ago, besleybean said:

Wel deoderant scene was defo in the aired version...

That's what I was thinking -- but wasn't positive, since I haven't seen either version lately.

There was a scene where Anderson is complaining to Lestrade about how Sherlock treats him, though, that I think was only in the pilot.  @J.P. -- is that what you were referring to?

 

[J.P.]

Yes. And what he says, explains a lot of the relationships between them. But they went for letting the viewers wonder what's going on with the telephone trick in SiP.

[Carol the Dabbler]

5 hours ago, J.P. said:

the telephone trick in SiP

Sorry, it's been a while.  If you're talking about some telephone-based interaction between Sherlock and Anderson, I'm not offhand recalling any.

 

[besleybean]

No, I assume it...oh, so many phone tricks. But the final reveal is fab!

[Ioanna]

On 6/5/2023 at 10:16 AM, Caya said:

Welcome Ioanna! 
 

I think she means trying to tack additional minutes onto a finished episode, as happened with the pilot . Sure, there are some scenes and cuts they’d want to flesh out, but at some point it probably becomes tedious.

Exactly. The adding of additional scenes to the finished work.

[besleybean]

Except it clearly wasn't finished...

'Pilot' means something different in the UK, to it's meaning in the US...

is this where the confusion lies?

[Carol the Dabbler]

32 minutes ago, besleybean said:

Except it clearly wasn't finished...

You mean because the BBC then decided to increase each episode from 60 minutes to 90?

40 minutes ago, besleybean said:

'Pilot' means something different in the UK, to its meaning in the US...

I wasn't sure what you meant, so I went hunting for a British definition of a pilot episode, and found this on BBC Maestro (emphasis within the quote is added by me):

What is a TV pilot?

Every TV show needs a pilot episode. A pilot is the first episode of your series. The pilot episode is the most important of your series because it’s your one shot to bring your vision to life.  When writing your TV pilot you must try to pique the interests of viewers and leave them desperate for more.

Screenwriters will write their pilot script and then pitch it to television broadcasters or production companies, in hope that they will love it, strike a deal, and produce the rest of the series.

That's just an overview of course, but it sounds to me very much like a pilot episode in the US.  Perhaps the difference is in the details, though -- what differences are you referring to?

 

[besleybean]

The fact that a pilot is floated as a possibility...

The unaired part is the important bit! 

We have only one, official aired, episode one...that is the difference.

The BBC insisted on 90 min episodes.

[Caya]

Still doesn't mean, to me at least, that I simply have to prefer the aired version in any and all details. 🤷‍♀️

[besleybean]

Oh of course not.

[Carol the Dabbler]

3 hours ago, besleybean said:

The fact that a pilot is floated as a possibility...

The unaired part is the important bit! 

We have only one, official aired, episode one...that is the difference.

The BBC insisted on 90 min episodes.

That's the same in the US -- the powers that be often require significant changes in the cast and/or in other aspects of a pilot before approving the show.  Gilligan's Island was so heavily changed that they were unable to use the pilot as an episode!  Some shows (e.g., Star Trek) even have to do a second pilot before being approved for production, in which case it's usually just the second one that's used as an episode.

So Sherlock isn't particularly unusual in that regard.

 

[Hikari]

One salient difference between UK show pilots and the US is that the UK pilots seem to stand alone, sometimes for as long as a year before the show proper gets underway and will subsequently be counted as ‘Series I” all by itself.  When the British shows are subsequently packaged for release in America, the counting of seasons is off compared to the UK renditions since the pilot episode is usually put with Season I in the American sets.  American shows tend to run weekly until the episodes run out…maybe 10 for a cable series, but 22 - 26 weeks for a regular network show.  No way would Americans be willing to wait a year between the pilot launch and the regular season, so the pilot is immediately followed by the full first season.  

[Carol the Dabbler]

4 hours ago, Hikari said:

No way would Americans be willing to wait a year between the pilot launch and the regular season, so the pilot is immediately followed by the full first season.  

Often, but not always.  Sometimes (especially for 60 or 90-minute shows) the pilot is aired as a "movie of the week," so that the audience reaction can be assessed before the final decision is made regarding the series.  For example, the Longstreet pilot/movie aired on February 23rd of 1971, and the series premiered over half a year later, on September 16th.

 

[besleybean]

The Sherlock Pilot is not an official episode. It was not aired and won't be...it was a proposal to BBC execs.