The original post: /r/television by /u/doom1701 on 2024-06-09 22:57:34.
I don’t think this has happened quite as much in recent years, but during the writer’s strike in the late 1980’s, there were a lot of “repurposed” scripts.
One of my favorite shows is the late 80’s revival of Mission:Impossible; one of the main reasons it existed was the 1988 writer’s strike. Thanks to PlutoTV and a lot of business travel, I’ve been watching a lot of the original Mission:Impossible series. Last night I watched “The Killer”, which was the original episode that the pilot of the 1988 revival was based around.
There are some obvious differences between the two stories (the 1988 version re-introduced us to Jim Phelps and introduced us to a new crew, and it also adjusted the technology to fit the time), but there were also a number of smaller differences, including how we meet the assassin and how he attempts to pull off his job.
There are other episodes of this series that were repurposed original series scripts, and they also have some pretty big differences from the original. How did these scripts get updated if the writers were on strike? It seems like, if they were going to have writers cross picket lines for updates, why not just create completely new stories?