Announcing the This Was Television Debut of Test Pilot
By Cory Barker
Happy Monday boys and girls! One of my favorite features to do at my personal site TV Surveillance is Test Pilot, wherein a rotating batch of guest co-writers join me to discuss pilots from all different types of shows in hopes of putting the openers in interesting historical, industrial, and cultural contexts. To get a well-rounded opinion, Test Pilot ideally includes two perspectives from individuals who have just watched the pilot; one coming from a writer with full knowledge of the series following the pilot develops, the other coming from a writer who is not as familiar with the series. Finally, each entry is part of a theme (usually of four-to-six pilots) that attempts to discuss the episodes in an even broader context.
The feature has been dormant at TVS since last fall, but I’m happy to announce that it’s coming back, and that it will now be posted here on This Was Television. Test Pilot posts begin again this week with Les and I talking about ABC’s Invasion, and will appear bi-weekly for the near future. Below is the information and schedule for the upcoming theme; more are in the works (if you have suggestions, let me know). And you can find all of the previous Test Pilot entries right here.
Theme 14: Post-Lost Failures
In the aftermath of Lost‘s initial success, the broadcast networks (especially ABC) tried to capture lightning in a bottle again. They failed miserably. We tackle those failures in this theme.
File #59: Invasion with Les Chappell [June 5, 2013]
File #60: Threshold with Eric Van Uffelen [June 19, 2013]
File #61: Surface with TBD [July 3, 2013]
File #62: The Nine with Chris Roof [July 17, 2013]
File #63: FlashForward with Kate Tripoli [July 31, 2013]
This Was Television 
2 Responses to “Announcing the This Was Television Debut of Test Pilot”
Apropos of nothing, I’d be curious to read a column about your favorite pilots. I think the best pilot I’ve ever seen is MOONLIGHTING, probably because it was not quite like anything we had ever seen on television before (except its surface similarity to the Thin Man movies).
Best unsold pilot: LOOKWELL.
[…] Pilot is back and I’m happy to bring it into the This Was Television family. If you missed Monday’s announcement post, here’s briefly what we do with Test Pilot: A guest co-writer and I watch a pilot and […]