The first episode of the television series Smallville, known simply as "Pilot", premiered on the WB on October 16, 2001. It was written by series creators Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, and directed by David Nutter. The episode introduces the characters of Clark Kent, an orphaned alien with superhuman abilities, and his friends and family who live in the fictional town of Smallville, Kansas. It follows Clark as he first learns of his alien origins, and attempts to stop a vengeful student from killing the Smallville High students.

Gough, Millar, and Nutter were given more time to cast for the pilot than is normally alloted for a new series. They used Vancouver, Canada to represent the "middle American landscape" of Smallville. As time did not allow the crew to physically create many of the sets they needed, computer-generated imagery was used for several of the scenes in the pilot. The episode introduces many themes which were designed to run either the course of the season or the entire series, such as the triangular relationships of the main characters. When the series premiere aired, it broke several of the WB's viewership records. It was generally well received by critics, and was nominated for several awards, winning two.

Plot and themes

The episode begins in 1989 when a meteor shower hits Smallville, Kansas; at the same time a small spacecraft, containing an alien boy, crashes in front of Jonathan and Martha Kent's truck. They adopt the superhumanly powerful child and name him Clark. Gough and Millar use this opening scene to establish that the three lead characters of the series, Clark, Lana and Lex, share a common bond—they are all orphans: Clark is the only survivor of his home world; Lana's entire family is killed in the meteor shower; and Lex is alienated from his father, Lionel Luthor (John Glover), after being made bald by the meteor blast.^[1]

The episode jumps forward twelve years to when Clark (Tom Welling) is trying to find his identity. He is unable to handle being told of his alien origins and runs away from hom. Although he is in love with Lana Lang (Kristin Kreuk), he cannot get close to her without falling over in pain because she wears a necklace made of meteor rock (kryptonite). This was a concept Gough and Millar devised to establish a reason for Clark's clumsiness. In other mediums, it is usually portrayed as an act he puts on to deceive people of his true identity.^[1] But Clark and Lana do share an intimate moment at a cemetery, where Lana is visiting the grave of her parents. In such scenes, Gough and Millar created a theme of loneliness through the life stories of Clark and Lana.^[1] Lana's boyfriend, Whitney Fordman (Eric Johnson, becomes jealous of Clark and Lana's friendship and ties Clark to a scarecrow pole, using Lana's necklace, indirectly, to subdue Clark. This image of Clark, in just his underwear and a red "S" painted on his chest, stretches back to Gough and Millar's foundation for the show, which was about taking Clark down to the basic elements of the Superman character.^[1]

In the second strand of the story, Lex and Clark develop a "yin and yang" relationship. Clark first saves Lex from drowning when they get into a car accident and Lex saves Clark when he is strung up as a scarecrow in a field and immobilized by kryptonite.^[2] Alerted by his friends Chloe and Pete, Clark is able to save the high school students from a crazed student (Matthew Munn) bent on revenge.

Production

Casting

Gough and Millar had five months for casting, but their primary focus was initially on finding an actor to play Clark Kent. They received Kristin Kreuk's audition tape, for the role of Lana Lang, and liked it so much they immediately showed her to the network.^[3] Tom Welling, after twice turning down the producers' attempts to get him to audition for the role of Clark Kent, eventually accepted the opportunity to be apart of the show.^[4] It was David Nutter who finally convinced Welling to read the script for the pilot, and found Welling's picture in a photo album at the casting director's office.^[1] Welling's manager didn't want him to take the role, because it could hurt his feature film career, but Welling liked the script and agreed to come in for an audition.^[1] For one of his auditions, he read the graveyard scene, from the pilot, with Kristin Kreuk; the network thought they had "great chemistry".^[3] No one could agree on which actors had the best audition for Lex Luthor.^[3] Michael Rosenbaum auditioned twice,^[5] and, believing he did not take his first audition seriously, outlined a two-and-a-half-page scene from the pilot. He indicated all the places to be funny, charismatic, or menacing,^[5] and performed so well that everyone agreed he was "the guy".^[3]

John Schneider was brought in to play Jonathan Kent. Schneider was already well known as Bo Duke from The Dukes of Hazzard, and Gough believed Schneider's experience from The Dukes of Hazzard added believability to the idea that he could have grown up running a farm.^[3] Cynthia Ettinger was originally cast as Martha Kent, but during filming everyone realized that she was not right for the role, including Ettinger.^[3] Annette O'Toole, who previously portrayed Lana Lang in Superman III^[6] and who was fresh off the recent cancellation of her television series The Huntress, was cast in Ettinger's place.^[7]

Eric Johnson, after auditioning for the roles of Lex and Clark, was cast as Lana Lang's boyfriend Whitney Fordman.^[8] Johnson only spent one day filming his scenes for the pilot.^[8] Allison Mack toyed with the idea of auditioning for the role of Lana Lang,^[9] but chose instead to audition for the role of Chloe Sullivan.^[9] The character was created just for the series,^[3] and was intended to add ethnic diversity to the cast.^[9] Part of the reason she was cast was because Gough and Millar felt she had a "rare ability to deliver large chunks of expositionary [sic] dialogue conversationally."^[3] Sam Jones III, who plays Pete Ross, was the last of the series regulars to be cast. Gough and Millar saw Jones III four days before they began filming for the pilot.^[10] In the comics, Pete Ross is Caucasian, and the producers chose to cast Jones III, who is African-American, against the mythology.^[10]

Filming

Once Warner Bros. Television secured the rights to the show, Gough and Millar set out to write the script and find a director for the pilot.^[3] Gough and Millar were fans of director David Nutter's previous work; they considered him to be a "preeminent pilot director".^[3] David Nutter joined the project because he wanted to make a pilot that respected the audience but that was still fun and smart. Nutter also believes in creating shows that appeal to a wide variety of audiences.^[11] He wanted the final scene for the pilot, in which Clark fantasizes about dancing with Lana, to express the show's essence.^[3]

Production was initially slated to take place in Australia, but Vancouver, Canada had more of the "middle America" feel for which the creators were looking. The area offered a site for the Kent farm, including their barn, and the city itself doubled as Metropolis. Vancouver also provided a cheaper shooting location, and was in the same time zone as Los Angeles.^[3] Nutter spent sixteen days on main unit filming, and an additional five days for second unit filming. Time constraints forced Nutter to film strictly from Adrien Van Viersen's 150–page storyboard when filming the opening meteor shower scene.^[1] Much of the look for Smallville came from Millar, who wanted the epitome of "Smalltown, USA".^[11] Construction coordinator Rob Maier explained, "it had to be cleaner than clean, nicer than nice, more beautiful than it would be in the real world. All of the people in Smallville are beautiful; all of the colors are bright and sharp."^[11] For the Kent farm, Nutter wanted to have "an old world sensibility and tone."^[11] For the pilot, the production crew only built a kitchen and dinning room to represent the Kent home.^[12] All the exterior shots of the farm were taken at the Andalinis farm, a local couple who also gave the crew permission to paint their forest green house yellow.^[13] Since the Vancouver farm already had a barn, the production crew only had to build a loft with stairs leading up to it.^[12]

Exterior shots of the Luthor Mansion were shot at a castle in Victoria,^[1] two hours west of Vancouver by ferry. A limited amount of time for shooting forced multiple angle scenes to sometimes be shot at separate locations. A scene involving Whitney (Eric Johnson) and Lana (Kristin Kreuk) sitting on her porch was shot at two different locations. Close-ups of Whitney were shot under a football stadium, while close-ups of Lana were shot in a potato factory.^[1] Unable to shoot at the house being used as the Lang residence, the crew built Lana's front porch inside a sewage factory for the final scene of the episode where Lana walks up the stairs to her house.^[1] The local sewage factory is also the site for the LuthorCrop pesticide plant, which Lex was sent to Smallville to manage.^[13] The crash site of Clark's ship was shot at the sandpits where they filmed Mission to Mars.^[1] Smallville's Main Street, was filmed in both the town of Merritt, which is three hours east of Vancouver, and in the town of Cloverdale.^[1] Most of the filming took place in Cloverdale, since the town had a long stretch of vacant buildings that could double as Smalville's Main Street.^[13] When they with ribbons and balloons, as well as paint some of the buildings.^[13] Two sets were built just for the pilot. The Kent storm cellar was built as a cover set inside the farm's barn.^[1] For the cemetery scene between Clark and Lana, production designer Bernard Hides built the entire cemetary from scratch in an empty field.^[1]

Effects

On-set computer-generated effects for the pilot were done by Thomas Special Effects.^[1] Certain scenes, because of time and money, had to be created digitally. The opening sequence showing the destruction of the water tower by a meteor was created on the computer.^[1] The day the crew was filming the Kent truck-crash scene, it was snowing and they had no corn for the surrounding fields and cornfields had to be digitally added.^[1] Creating realistic corn, a necessity for a show based in Kansas, was a major problem for the director. Over 10,000 stalks of corn were grown in a greenhouse for the pilot, but they only grew two feet high. Digital corn was used as a substitute for the undersized corn, but for scenes where digital corn was not an option, six hundred stalks of fake corn were flown in from Arizona.^[1] Other digital effects include the flattened cornfield where Lex was caught in a meteorite blast.^[1] Some scenes required physical effects, instead of computer imagery. When Lex drives his car off a bridge, and hits Clark, the stuntman, who doubled as Wolverine in the film X-Men, was literally hit by the car as it went over the bridge.^[1]

Reception

8.4 million viewers watched the pilot's debut, breaking the WB's record for highest ratings for a new series.^[14] The pilot broke the WB's ratings record for the 18-49 male demographic, with 3.9 million viewers. Smallville became the third-highest rated debut for the overall adult 18-49 demographic, with 3.8 million viewers.^[15] The pilot won an Emmy Award for Sound Editing; it was nominated for Visual Effects, but lost to UPN's Star Trek: Enterprise.^[16] The special effects team won a Leo Award for Best Visual Effects in a Dramatic Series.^[17] Casting directors Deedee Bradley, Coreen Mayrs, and Barbara Miller were nominated for an Artios Award for their work on the pilot.^[18] The pilot was nominated for two Golden Reel Awards, one for Effects & Foley Sound Editing, and one for Music Sound Editing.^[19][20] Peter Wunstorf was also nominated for an American Society of Cinematographers Award for his work on the pilot.^[21]

The pilot received favorable reviews upon its release. Rob Owen of the Pittsburg Post-Gazette thought it was "[a] respectful addition to Superman lore . . . [and] has all the markings of a super series."^[22] Elizabeth White of Media Life believed the show had potential to be a big hit for the WB, but felt it needed to survive not only its time slot Tuesdays at 9:00 p.m. (EST)^[23], but also the audience's expectations of "what Superman should be".^[15] USA Today's Robert Bianco was a bit more mixed in his criticism. Bianco stated, "for all its innovations, there's also something rehashed and repetitive about Smallville... shows often look more familiar at the outset than they do as they progress. There's talent and intelligence at work in Smallville. Given time, maybe they'll find a more distinctive voice."^[24]

References

External links

Official

• Official website
• Smallville on YTV (Canada)

Additional

• Pilot at Wikia.com
• Pilot at TV.com
• Pilot at IMDb