SeaQuest DSV should’ve stayed on Earth.
I thought Hercules stayed the course & ended well, but my favorite show Xena… uh no.
First, they shouldn’t have gotten all proto-Christian with the prophet Eli & the coming of the One God of Love. Just work out Xena & Callisto & Gabby’s redemptions in the context of butchered Graeco-Roman mythology.
BUT then since they did it, then be brave enough to follow through. Take them all the way to the Twilight of the Olympians & the coming of the One God of Love, which you know has to be the Nativity.
BUT then they drop that & have the last ep being Xena willingly dying permanently (as far as resuscitations, not future reincarnations) in order to give rest to the ghosts of a village she accidentally destroyed. Bleh!
Television series “Heroes”. I wish it had gone more in the “Watchmen” direction. I would have liked to have seen more about what society’s reaction would be to super powered humans. It was just my impression that the show would be a more thoughtful treatment of the whole super hero genre. But since my early impression has nothing to do with what the creators planned it’s not their fault. Maybe it’ll become less cheesey and a little deeper in the coming season but it’s a hit the way it is, so I doubt it.
I wish David Eddings had stopped the Garion/Belgarath story arc with The Belgariad, stopped the Sparhawk story arc with The Elenium, and then just stopped.
It was always there. Wizards’ First Rule had a pointless scene come out of nowhere that slammed Communism. Nathan’s explanation of the Wizards’ Second Rule in Stone of Tears condemned charity. I can’t remember what the pointless political rant in Blood of the Fold was, but Temple of Wind had that scene where Berdine confesses to being a lesbian. Every book in the series had his politics injected into it – it’s just as that the series wore on, the politics became more and more prominent, culminating in Naked Empire, in which Goodkind devotes an entire book to slamming vegetarians and pacifists.
I don’t know if there are serious plans for a second season, or, if so, where it’s going to go, but with Bionic Woman, they had the chance to tell the story of Blade Runner from the point of view of the replicant, and pretty much chose not to. That would make for a much more interesting story than “hey, she’s strong, and fast, and can do all the stuff that Lindsay Wagner did back in the 70’s, plus, she’s got a blue tooth cell phone in her head!”
Do you mean, TNG and Voyager written as PORN??
I wish Frank Herbert had gotten a vasectomy, or at least encouraged his son to go into telemarketing or something useful like that.
Another comment about X Files. I liked the “Night Stalker”-style episodes, where they would investigate a serial killer who turned out to be a supernatural monster. The Great Alien Conspiracy storyline got really old, really fast.
I think season seven beats it for wasted potential. Seven at least had an interesting build up which was completely pissed away; six didn’t even have that.
“Descent?” 
Sorry, I don’t mean to be too hard on it; I’ve read the first couple of books and found them at least enjoyable enough to finish. But the writing is middle-school level, the characters are a bit superficial, and the plot is ham-fisted at best. And Goodkind seems like kind of a prick. If his oh-so-subtle faux-intellectual political platitudes become even more obvious as the series goes on, then The Sword of Truth definitely earns its place on my “To Avoid” list.
Another vote for X-Files. I always liked the “monster of the week” episodes better than the “alien conspiracy” episodes. Fighting the aliens just seemed so hopeless: it’s like Mulder and Scully were a couple of kids with BB guns trying to stop a column of M-1 Abrams battle tanks. There’s no way they could win, and if they survive at all it’s just because the aliens decide that it’s not worth the trouble to hunt them down and kill them. They should have taken RikWriter’s suggestion, wrapped up the alien stuff, and focused on the random weirdness. Unfortunately, they went the opposite way, letting the monsters disappear into the background while the aliens took center stage.
I would have liked to have seen six more seasons of “Firefly.”
Not me. I think two or three more seasons would have been the absolute maximum possible before the series would have devolved into crap like so many other good shows before it.
Oh man, do I hear you. I’m still angry about the last few seasons of Xena, and ESPECIALLY the finale.
If they’d ended it with Xena and Gabrielle’s crucifixion (!) at the end of Season Four I’d have been disappointed, but not as much as I was with what came afterward.
In some ways I think Xena made the same mistake as the X-Files in assuming that people would prefer several complicated and not very well thought out multi-season story arcs to a series of mostly stand alone monster-of-the-week episodes.
If I had the power to rewrite the series I’d have gone back to Season Three and removed all that Rosemary’s Baby business. If the writers wanted Xena and Gabrielle to face a big conflict in their relationship, they could have come up with something more plausible…and practically anything would have been more plausible than “Gabrielle is magically impregnated by a demon”.
Classical mythology is rich and varied enough to have provided plenty of material for the rest of the series, without dragging in the Hindu gods, not-Jesus, or a bunch of angels.
If Xena had to be pregnant (perhaps unavoidable as Lucy Lawless was), she and Gabrielle should have returned to the Amazon village and made that their permanent base. Gabrielle finally takes up the mantle of Amazon Queen. The series could have ended with Xena having her baby and looking forward to a working retirement training young Amazon warriors, or it could have continued for another season with Xena trying to balance career and family. The latter is not my preferred choice, but it would have been a lot better than contriving a way to shift Xena and Gabrielle forward in time to carry on as wandering adventurers but with all the original supporting characters dead.
If the writers were determined to end the series with Xena’s death, she could have died defending the innocent and Gabrielle could have taken Xena’s baby back to the Amazon village as her heir. But if they were going to kill Xena it should have been a clean kill, none of this hanging around as a ghost and maybe going to be resurrected but not really.
The Riverworld series of novels. Fantastic premise, and virtually unlimited storytelling potential. The novel The Dark Design, providing a sort of (stupid) explanation for everything, was anticlimactic.
With all due respect, what on earth are you talking about? There wasn’t an episode about a virus that killed aliens. Ever. The virus infected humans, not the other way around. I think you might be talking about Cassandra Spender, who was the first alien-human hybrid the consortium created, but she wasn’t wanted dead by the powers that be because she could hurt the aliens, but because she was immune to their virus. They were afraid the aliens would attack once they discovered that someone was immune.
But you’re right. The show should have ended differently. They should have introduced Doggett and Reyes in season 7 so they weren’t seen as instead of Mulder but in addition to. When DD decided to leave at the end of season 8 they should have sent the baby with him, and have Scully join up with him later after working fewer and fewer official cases. Then, with Scully gradually phased out they could have continued the series with Doggett, Reyes and Skinner in season 10, and had movies about Mulder and Scully elsewhere at the same time.
And Harry and Hermione would have made more sense than Harry/Ginny and Hermione/Ron in the Harry Potter books.
The Song of Ice and Fire. I like that GRRM is unapologetically bleak, and I’m sure there’ll be a satisfying payoff whenever he finishes, but in my more sentimental moments I sometimes wish that the heroes found some happiness. Lika Arya reaching Riverrun before the Red Wedding. Or that Edmure hadn’t thrown back Lord Tywin at Stone Mill and Robb Stark had the chance to hook up with Margery Tyrell. Sansa had been allowed to reach Highgarden.
I could go on forever.
I thought that they could have put the Lone Gunmen and the little Sculder on the same bus, if they wanted to write them out of the series. Y’know, WITHOUT grinding Carter’s hobnails into the audience’s face.
By the by…for this discussion, do only full series’ count, or can we include individual works with no actual sequels?
Well, no, more like Aliens, with cursing and violence. At the very least:
Wesley: not included.
Neelix: not included.