You should be happy, generally, that you don’t see most of the pilot episodes for new TV series — they mostly stink. (I know this largely because of my experience watching the pilot episodes that do occasionally air — primarily when the networks are trying to fill their off-season schedules.)

But every now and then you see a pilot that hints at what might have been a good or even great television show — and that’s how I’d characterize the pilot episode of “Global Frequency,” a show developed for The WB, based on a DC comic book created by Warren Ellis. (If you decide to order the graphic novel, make sure you order both volumes.)

Sadly, the pilot to this show never aired, and likely never will air — it’s available online, primarily via BitTorrent, and without anyone’s official approval. (That’s how I got hold of a copy.) Google on “Global Frequency” and “TV series” and you’ll likely find a link to a .torrent file or a BitTorrent tracker that lists the pilot. You’ll also find a lot of frenzied discussion by folks who’ve seen the pilot and loved it.

What’s “Global Frequency” about? The premise isn’t entirely spelled out in the pilot (I imagine that the series planners hoped to explore it more in the course of a full season), but if you’re a fan of the comic book, as I am, you know that the Global Frequency is an organization of 1001 uniquely (but often quirkily) talented operatives around the world who mostly live anonymous lives — until they’re contacted on a special cell phone by the head of Global Frequency, a mysterious woman named Miranda Zero. Despite their unusual talents, these people are not heroes — until they’re called upon by the Global Frequency to do something heroic to save lives, and maybe even save the world. Then they demonstrate how heroic “ordinary” people can be.

(There is one very affecting scene in which a gymnast is recruited by the Global Frequency for a very specialized task — you can see her thinking through what’s being asked of her, and then deciding to take the risk. I love that scene.)

The pilot, like the comic book that inspired it, is a combination of science-fiction, horror fantasy, and action thriller, but with plenty of room for characters to breathe, and it’s for the characters, ultimately, that you end up caring the most. It is not perfect by any means — it has a few rough edges, such as when one GF expert refers to a doctor’s getting “disbarred,” or when the character Aleph’s name is pronounced “ay-leff” (no doubt to prevent its being misheard as “Alice”). But you can still see the potential for a show that might have been as groundbreaking as “The X-Files.”

Given the fan buzz around the pilot, will the show’s producers (or a network) change their minds and decide to give “Global Frequency” a chance? It’s not likely, of course. But one fan website underscores what makes this phenomenon unusual: “The recent leak of the Global Frequency TV pilot has gotten people talking. A LOT of people are talking. For the first time, possibly, ever, the fans are wanting a regular series out of a pilot that was never publicly screened in the first place.” Imagine — file-sharing on the Internet used to build the audience for a TV show that otherwise wouldn’t have seen the light of day.

—–