The first episode of Terrahawks, part 1 of Expect the Unexpected, premiered on London Weekend Television on Sunday the 9th of October 1983. The first home video release of Terrahawks hit store shelves soon after the premiere broadcast. It featured 4 episodes of the show, including the opening 2 part episode, re-edited together into one compilation movie. The VHS featured several scenes that were not included in the commonly broadcast version of the episodes.
- A deleted scene between Kate Kestrel and Tiger Ninestein that served as Kate's introduction.
- A scene where Kate was transported to her aircraft 'Hawkwing' by a group of Zeroids, which would be reused for the second episode in production order; Go^ld
- A deleted scene featuring an exchange between Kate and Ninestein after the alien ship is destroyed.
- A deleted scene featuring Kate and Hawkeye where the former begs Hiro to not open fire on the ship holding Ninestein.
- An extended scene where Zelda and Hiro confront each other on the possibility of Zeroids thinking for themselves.
- An extended scene of Ninestein and Zero discussing the above mentioned possibility.
- A deleted scene of Mary explaining the idea behind the 'Datadump' and Ninestein's clones to Zero.
- Extended scene featuring Ninestein telling Mary they won't be using the Zeroids in their second confrontation with Zelda.
- An extended scene where HUDSON comments on the quality of the new road.
The deleted and extended material totals under seven minutes in length.
These scenes were also present in preproduction script material for Expect the Unexpected, among other scenes that were not seen in either version, but included in the novelisation of the episode by Jack Curtis. The broadcast episode master tape, which was released on DVD in 2002 and upscaled Bluray in 2015, does not feature these scenes. A glitchy VHS capture of the first compilation movie was included on the bonus features of the Bluray, as was the episode's script documentation. That capture included these scenes.
On May 26th 2019, a finished 16mm broadcast master for the uncut version of Expect the Unexpected was showcased at the Southend-on-sea film festival by film collector Mark Joseph. During the event he spoke to the audience about how the film had been scanned and was in the process of being digitally restored. No further information has been given regarding a potential release of this version.
It is unlikely (but unconfirmed) that the original broadcast on 9 October 1983 contained these scenes, which may have been cut when the hourlong pilot was split into two half-hour episodes. An article in S.I.G Magazine from the time makes note of scenes on the VHS not being in the broadcast version, whereas Mark Joseph maintains that these were in the first broadcast version. They appear in the Greek dub of the VHS compilation "movie."
