Doctor Who (new one is technically the same show, not a follow-up) Family Matters (moved to CBS for its last season after ABC cancelled it) Jericho (brought back for a 7-ep second season) Scrubs (cancelled by NBC after 7th season, moved to ABC) Family Guy Babylon 5 (cancelled by PTEN, immediately offered a fifth season by TNT) Futurama (season 6 coming this year) Wormhole X-treme And probably plenty others
Wow, that's a bit eerie how spot on you are about my reaction to the show. It never really won me over and hooked me until "Our Mrs. Reynolds", but even after that there were some episodes that bored me. I found some of the early episodes really hard to get through due to boredom...it was a very inconsistent show. As for the meaningless deaths in "Serenity", one of them didn't bother me because the character was hardly in the movie anyway, so the rest of the movie pretty much demonstrates how fine everything can go without him. The other was just a cheap, totally unnecessary Joss Whedon shock tactic that I'm completely sick of at this point. I think "Dollhouse" and "Dr. Horrible's Singalong Blog" were what made me realize how much Whedon uses that as a crutch to manufacture more suspense and made me officially fed up. It's pathetic now. Even in a comedic webfilm he has to kill off a major character. Ridiculous. It was awesome all those years ago in "Passion" and "The Body", but even on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" I thought a lot of sudden character deaths were stupid.
See, now, I hadn't watched broadcast TV since Babylon 5 ended (couldn't afford cable anymore), but I'd been a big Buffy fan prior to that, so I was only vaguely aware that Joss had a new show in 2002; I think I heard a commercial for it on the radio. When the first trailer for Serenity went online in April 2005, it spurred some recognition, so I went looking for the Firefly DVD, and then watched all the episodes in two days! Oddly enough, I consider it to have the best Pilot episode that I've seen, and I've watched that one about 7 times now. I appear to be alone in that.
I was hooked on the pilot. I saw bits of it first on the UK Sci-Fi channel but I just ignored it. I didn't even care that Dark Angel got cancelled for it. I just didn't bother. Then I have to admit. I downloaded the show. Watched the first episode. BOOM! I was hooked like Tiger Woods to sex. I watched them all. Kept rewinding Janes song. Went out and bought the DVD series.
Possibly, yeah but there would probably have to be some changes, "Out of Gas" has that weird 'post pilot, several episodes in back story" feel to it (but then again, maybe it'd have been a smart move to use it because of that), but there's enough of an introductory feel to it, I suppose that it could be a good pilot.