Last week, we got the season 1 DVDs of “Heroes”, which promised to show us the “unaired premiere episode”. I thought it meant a pilot episode that would be all new material. In reality, it is the original version of the first episode that was aired. The primary difference was the inclusion of terrorist nuclear bomb plot.
This took place as part of the Parkman (“I can hear you thinking”) story line. Sylar was evidently a much different character and the worries over a bomb destroying New York were much more, well, conventionally unconventional. I’m sort of glad they didn’t go that route because it would have turned into a version of “24”. I think this is much better.
Much of the other storylines were similar to what we ended up with, although I think all of the changes were improvements. We could tell that Mohinder’s accent changed from the first episode, less Indian and more British. It’s interesting that Parkman’s problems were going to be connected to dyslexia and that his marital problems seemed much more severe. Radiation boy was going to be a Muslim terrorist. Isaac took some drastic, permanent steps in his cold-turkey attempt to get off heroin. And Sylar met Mohinder in that first episode!
We haven’t had a chance to see any of the other special features yet, but it was quite interesting to see how the creative process worked in turning the pilot into the first episode of a hit series.
I just got this box set as well… I’m enjoying it a great deal.