Evening Entertainment: Unsold pilot for "Galaxy Beat," a 1994 sci-fi comedy from "Sledge Hammer" writer with Gregory Harrison, Roddy McDowall and Tracy Scoggins

Broad science fiction comedy is a tough sell on television -- just look at the short run of "Quark."  "Galaxy Beat" is a perfectly entertaining pilot that probably could have been developed into a highly entertaining show if they'd allowed to develop it.  The pilot, written by "Sledge Hammer!"'s Alan Spancer, is filled with sight gags, many of which work quite well.  (There are also a lot of cultural references that date it quite a bit.)  But Harrison seems to be enjoying himself as the amazingly-named Dax Steelbrow, and the supporting cast (which also includes "The Flash"'s Alex Désert and the voice of Michael Dorn) is just as solid.  Much of it works at least as well as SPACEBALLS.

Watch This Thing - Anthony Perkins in 1990's darkly comic pilot for "The Ghost Writer," from the writer of "Sledge Hammer!"

Anthony Perkins never quite found another great role after PSYCHO, and in the '80s, he embraced his most popular character in full, starring in several sequels and embracing a variety of twisted roles.  One of his last was in, of all things, a sitcom, in the 1990 pilot "The Ghost Writer," playing a widowed bestselling horror author with a goth son (RIVER'S EDGE's Joshua Miller) who remarries a woman with a daughter suspicious of the goings on that surround them.  It could have been an "Addams Family" for the '90s - it's written by Alan Spencer, who lent "Sledge Hammer!" similar sensibilities, but the series never got past the pilot stage.