Before
The Love Boat set sail as a regular series, there were 3 pre-series"pilot" telefilms shown on ABC:
- The Love Boat (Sep. '76; starring a completely different cast than the series would later have)
- The Love Boat II (Jan. '77: Bernie Kopell, Ted Lange & Fred Grandy come aboard)
- The New Love Boat (May '77: Gavin MacLeod & Lauren Tewes join Kopell, Lange & Grandy)
Afterward, the show ran 9 seasons, ending its regular run of voyages in 1986. But later that year there were a handful of specials shown, and then in 1990 we got a reunion "Valentine Voyage" (and, of course, 1998's UPN series
Love Boat: The Next Wave as well, which had some of the original cast appear in one episode).
Sooner or later, fans of the series would like to get all of these on DVD. But the studio has gotta start somewhere, and we're pleased to have the exclusive info for you about Paramount/Spelling's first steps in this direction!
The other day Paramount
announced that
The Love Boat - Season 1, Volume 2 is cruising to DVD on
August 12th. At the time we told you to expect a 3-disc set containing the remaining 12 episodes (one of them double-length) from the back half of the show's first regular season. Now, thanks to our friends in the industry, we've learned that this will actually be a 4-disc set, and that the May 1977 "movie of the week"
the New Love Boat - the third telefilm, but the very first which had all of the cast as seen on the regular series when it premiered in Sept. 1977 - will be included on this package as an extra!
That's awesome news, and our thanks to the people "in the biz" who passed this word along to us. More, thanks to the studio for including it! Hopefully we'll see the other two pilot telefilms included, as further DVD sets get released in the future.
