GRRM’s Lost 1990s Sci‑Fi Pilot ‘Doorways’ Gets a Second Look

Before dragons conquered HBO, George R.R. Martin tried to crack television with a dimension‑hopping sci‑fi drama called Doorways. The 1993 ABC pilot never went to series, then quietly slipped into cult obscurity. Now a new wave of fan interest—and a rare digital release—is giving this lost world‑hopping adventure a second life.

Sliders meets Stargate, with a GRRM twist

Written and executive produced by Martin, Doorways follows ER doctor Thomas Mason (George Newbern) and Cat (Anne Le Guernec), a refugee from a parallel Earth ruled by alien overlords. After Cat crashes into our world through a mysterious portal, the pair are chased across realities by the servants of a faceless Dark Lord, leaping through different “doorways” to alternate timelines and conquered Earths.

The 90‑minute pilot plays like a proto‑Sliders crossed with the Stargate franchise, complete with rubbery visual effects, early‑’90s costumes, and a surprisingly stacked cast. Kurtwood Smith appears as the relentless FBI agent on Cat’s trail, while a pre‑The Matrix Carrie‑Anne Moss plays Mason’s girlfriend, Laura.[1] It’s scrappy and uneven, but you can see the long‑running series it might have become.

Martin first pitched Doorways to ABC in 1991. The network ordered multiple scripts and the pilot, but ultimately passed in 1993, leaving the project stranded between timelines.[2] For years, the only way to experience the story was at rare convention screenings or by tracking down Martin’s published teleplay in his collection Dreamsongs: A RRetrospective.

The version that survived—and why it matters now

The only fully realized version of Doorways is actually on the page. In 2010, IDW Publishing released a comics adaptation based on Martin’s original pilot script, finally giving readers the complete narrative arc ABC never filmed.[2] For fans already fascinated by Martin’s non‑Westeros work—like his space‑horror novella Nightflyers, which spawned both a 1987 film and a 2018 Syfy/Netflix series[3]—it’s another window into how he plays with genre outside epic fantasy.

That broader picture of Martin’s career has been getting more attention lately. Readers tracking every update on The Winds of Winter and new Westeros spinoffs have also been diving into deep cuts like his horror‑sci‑fi classic Nightflyers and even his forgotten charity X‑Men one‑shot with Stephen King.[4] In that context, Doorways feels less like a failed pilot and more like an early experiment in the kind of sprawling, multi‑world storytelling that would later define A Song of Ice and Fire.

It also lands at a moment when Martin’s every side project is scrutinized against the still‑unfinished Winds. At recent conventions, fans have confronted him about delays even as others rally to defend his right to work at his own pace.[5] Revisiting Doorways is a reminder that Martin’s relationship with television—and with unfinished epics—goes back decades.

Will Doorways ever get a modern revival beyond its rough‑hewn pilot and comic run? There’s no movement yet. But as studios circle more of Martin’s backlist—from vampire saga Fevre Dream to space opera Dying of the Light[6]—this strange, ambitious slice of ’90s sci‑fi suddenly feels like less of an oddity and more like the missing link between a haunted starship, a multiverse of doorways, and the road that eventually led to Westeros.