You motherfuckers cancelled Farscape. I’ve never been much of a sci-fi fan (aside from Star Trek: TNG) and my roommate forced me to watch Farscape. So like a good little drone, I realized it’s a fucking GREAT show! I’m in love with Ben Browder and Claudia Black, and although I’ve never seen any of seasons 2 and 3 (and you losers BETTER release 'em on DVD, but that’s another rant altogether), I’m hooked on this show. So you announced the cancellation months ago. I’ve come to terms with it. My life will go on. Or so I thought. Then I watched the damn show last night and realized I should march up to Sci-Fi headquarters in Manhattan and go Deliverance on your asses (made more difficult by the fact that I’m a girl). How the FUCK can you cancel this show?? From Aeryn’s “This girl is slow!” in response to a child stuck on the letter ‘S’ on Sesame Street, to Chiana’s middle finger greeting, to all of the emotional stuff with John and his family (including a rarely-seen Carmen Duncan, former US soap actress), the writing is first-rate!
I get the numbers thing. I worked in television and my show was threatened with cancellation several times. But for sweet fuck’s sake, you’re a goddamn CABLE network! Get rid of your fucking delusions of grandeur. You’re supposed to allow lower ratings—and the ratings aren’t that fucking low for a FRIDAY NIGHT! Maybe if you’d put it in a decent time slot, it’d have half a chance to survive!
If it weren’t for Henson productions promising a feature movie and anime (which I’ve never watched, but I’ll start), I’d have to hurt you people. And swear to God, if there’s no sort of resolution with Aeryn’s pregnancy, well…it’s not like I’ll do anything, but I’ll be pretty fucking pissed. Just the fact that you’re allowing Stargate to stay on the air and cancelling Farscape makes me think you were all lobotomized and given cotton candy for brains. Obviously, you enjoy shows that pander to the lowest common denominator. And yeah, those fucking reruns of “Cujo” are gonna get better ratings than Farscape, aren’t they?
I am still in denial about Farscape being cancelled. I just try not to think about it.
I have discovered that Season 3 of Farscape is available on VCD (which plays on my DVD player just fine, and should on most DVD players). Check eBay. If you are sure your DVD player will play VCDs (and if it’s a recent model, it probably will) then it’s worth considering.
I think I’m a show-killer. Just about every critically acclaimed show that I like gets cancelled—Freaks and Geeks, Now and Again, and a few others. Since I didn’t start watching Farscape until the beginning of the fourth season (after I watched the first season DVDs), I think I can blame this one on myself, too.
Since when does “killed off” mean “saved them from cancellation and therefore allowed them to make some of their best episodes ever, including returns by Joel and Frank, not to mention running repeats years after production stopped?”
I haven’t seen Farscape, but I know some people who love it, and I wish it wasn’t being cancelled. (I have every episode of Futurama, so I can relate.) But the idea that Sci-Fi or any other network should “allow” lower ratings is preposterous. The only time when airing a low-rated show can be justified is when there’s a large, easily identified demographic that appeals to specific advertisers. (BTVS, for example, has a significant female audience to “enhance” the usual 18-35 college-educated demographic for sci-fi/fantasy shows.)
Sci-Fi had to know that Farscape is one of their most popular shows, maybe even the most popular, but if its production costs are greater than revenue, then how can they be blamed for replacing it with a cheaper show than can get the same ratings? The “numbers thing” keeps them in business, and allowed them to air four seasons of Farscape, with zero cost to the audience. Do you know how rare it is for a show to stay on the air that long, especially one with a small audience?
And don’t think that since they’re owned by a large corporation they can bleed money with no chance of the network going off the air permanently. Seen CNN/SI lately?
Yeah, I know. But the fact is, the demographics have been pretty desirable—it attracts a good number of people in that 18-35 demographic. And from the interviews I’ve read with the producers of Farscape and one interview with someone at Sci-Fi (the only one they’ve given regarding the cancellation), they were still turning a slight profit on the show.
I worked on a soap that’s been threatened with cancellation for years now (and at this point, I think it’s time—the show’s DOA just about every day), but as long as it’s turning a small profit, the production company and the network are determined to keep it going.
I think my biggest problem with the cancellation is that they chose to do it right before they were to begin production on Season Five, thereby ending the series with the fourth season finale–which I haven’t seen—but they didn’t allow the show to be wrapped up. I HATE that. I don’t know how many questions will be left unanswered, but if they follow the previous seasons’ examples, there will be quite a few questions. I don’t think I’d be quite so upset if they’d allowed them the chance to wrap up the show and answer viewer’s questions.
Hopefully, though, Henson Productions will follow through on the movie that they’re promising (they sound fairly serious about it), and that’ll take care of those questions.
Hunh. I saw Farscape this past Friday and thought, “Cheesy time-travel episode. Going back in time to Set-Things-Right – all we need is Scott Bakula to show up. Slow pacing. Incoherent plot. Maybe they were right to take this one off life-support.”
Then again, Sci-Fi Channel ran Battlefield Earth last night and now I dread that this will become one of the stable of crappy movies that they run over and over and over again. I did watch it, and while it was definitely the implausible crapfest that everyone said it was, it was no worse than most of the other B movies they run. Just much, much more expensive. But when you sandwich it in between Event Horizon and some other lame flick based on a video game, the suckitude blends into the general noise of mediocre programming.
