Where Does “Pilot” in “Pilot Episode” Come From?

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Elias from Plano, Texas. How are you doing?

Hey, I’m doing well. How are you doing, Elias?

Doing well, thank you.

How can we help?

I got a quick question about TV series and how they name their first episodes in a series.

I began to notice that a lot of shows refer to their very first episode in their series as their pilot episode.

And in some cases, the first episode is literally titled pilot.

And I was wondering where that term came from, why it’s used.

That practice began. Yeah, this goes back to at least the 1950s

In TV, and I believe that it also happened in radio before then.

Radio had decades before TV came along, a very similar setup

Of seasonal shows with kind of a story arc over the course of the season

And a cast of recurring characters and that sort of thing. But what we’re really looking at

Here is that idea of pilot is something that guides. So a pilot of a plane

Or a pilot of a ship is someone who guides the ship. And so we have this first episode

Where we’re laying down the first foundation for the characters and the situation

And the things that are going to unfold over the coming season or seasons.

What’s really interesting to me, and you didn’t quite mention it,

But some of the things that I’m seeing now marked as pilots are simply episode one,

Where traditionally a pilot has been this episode that was bought a single episode,

Paid for by the production company or paid for by the distributing organization,

Just to see if the show worked.

And then if they like the pilot episode, then they pay for the whole rest of the season or pay for more episodes.

But now I’m seeing what you’re seeing.

And I’m finding like this doesn’t look like an episode that they just kind of created out of just to see if it would have worked.

This looks like they planned the whole season and shot the whole season like kind of straight through.

So you’re saying that if a TV series is already set on starting the series, they’re pretty sure on it.

They’ll still continue to use the term pilot as the name of the first episode.

Some shows do.

Yeah, some shows do.

It might just be like a bow or a hat tip to tradition more than anything else.

And ultimately, the word, I’m looking at my chief etymologist here.

Her name is Martha Barnette.

Martha, ultimately, it goes back to a Greek word having something to do with a rudder of a boat, right?

Oh, sure. Yeah.

And so it’s continuously through Greek and Latin and French and now into English.

We have this idea of a pilot as a guide, of course, or the thing that’s steering you through the waters.

Gotcha. That’s pretty cool. Thank you.

Yeah, sure. No problem.

Thanks for calling.

Really appreciate it, Elias.

Thank you, guys.

Bye-bye.

Okay, bye-bye.

Yeah, it’s interesting, right?

Not a standalone episode, really.

But before it was used in TV as a pilot, you might have a pilot experiment as far back as the 1890s and probably earlier.

Or you might have a pilot machine, like you would build a one-off or a model, a working model, and that was your pilot device.

So TV borrowed from other industries where it was just about putting together this first iteration, this first real attempt to make the thing that you’re envisioning in your mind.

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