There’s an art to a good pilot episode. With a sci-fi series pilot, it’s an even finer art. In less than an hour, the episode has to establish the rules of the world where the story takes place, the inciting incident of the series as a whole, and any pertinent characters. It’s a tall order in any medium, but on Apple TV+, a streamer that has told directors that “if something doesn’t happen in the first 30 seconds ... people will just turn off,” it’s even more difficult.
