A couple days ago, Stargate Universe was not renewed by the ScyFy channel. Even though it wasn’t an amazing show, it was better than a lot of other shows out there, and I am going to be sad to see it go.
Do shows ever get picked up by other stations and continue going on, or is this pretty much it for the series?
Bummer. That said, I’ve been a fan of the SG franchise since the original movie but this “hidden meaning behind the Universe” thing just didn’t scan.
Sometimes. An example of this is “Monk”, which was intended for ABC but ended up on USA.
WWE is another show that’s been picked up… by Syfy!
So Syfy is dropping Stargate and picking up WWE Smackdown? Brilliant!
For the fans out there, the second half of this season will air this Spring.
It wasn’t the best show, but it was definitely getting better as this season went on. I’m not sure if they’ve already filmed everything, but hopefully they don’t end it on a cliffhanger.
OMG, this comes as a total surprise! :rolleyes: I got bored toward the end of the first half of the season and never bothered coming back when SyFy brought it back. I suspect I’m not alone. So Eick & Moore are working on another BSG spinoff to try and salvage that franchise; anything in the works for Stargate?
Make that the first half of the pilot for me. Can’t say I’m surprised.
I’ve been watching it on Hulu, but without a lot of enthusiasm. That said, it has gotten better, or perhaps it’s just grown on me.
Looks like we may never know what ultimately happens to Chloe, as long as it is taking that arc to progress.
It was a decent, though uneven, show. While it lacked in character dynamics, at least it had more realistic characters than SGA or SG1 and didn’t rely on pointless technobabble solutions to problems every other episode.
Unless Spike TV wants to come up with 40-50 million dollars to pick up the series for a season (at roughly $2 million per episode), then Universe will probably end forevermore on a cliffhanger.
Bummer. I rather liked the show.
No you bastards! I just recovered from Vulcan being blown up because alternate universe Kirk is an incompetent jackass. Now this!
Son of a bitch! I really liked this show. It had its faults, but I think it was MUCH better than SGA. I guess it was too dark for most people. Look for the next Stargate series to be even cheesier than SGA.
Seems like the Stargate Franchise is out of ideas. They’ve milked the cow dry. I liked the movie & early seasons of Sg-1. Never saw Atlantis. Saw two episodes of Universe and that was too much
I’m not surprised. The success of BSG led them to the mistaken belief that really long story arcs with lots of drama and unresolved conflicts was a good formula. BSG was a fluke mostly based on nostalgia for the old series. In reality, people want monster a day with a couple of characters like SG1 and Dr Who. Occasional story arcs are good, but a whole show based on it is unwatchable. I don’t know anybody that was happy with the BSG conclusion.
I’m pretty skeptical that BSG was successful based on nostalgia. The original series wasn’t exactly a huge success, and even amongst people that had fond memories of it, I don’t think there was a huge desire to see it revisited.
And dramas with season long arcs have been pretty popular of late. Dexter, Heroes, LOST, V, The Wire, True Blood, 24, etc. Its not like its some crazy idea that the BSG remake came up with.
I know that Heroes and Lost are cancelled. If i recall correctly, the reason Lost got bad, is because they kept throwing in new plot twists without resolving them. Thats precicely the problem im talking about. Wasn’t V cancelled as well? As I understand it, 24 is a full season arc. It’s a long arc, but it’s not endless. Besides it’s not SciFi. There is a huge soap opera industry based on nonsense overextended plots like this.
The only one I know anything about in your list that counts is TrueBlood. Somehow that one works.
The major problem I had with SGU was that it seemed like the only reason the plot worked was that everyone were idiots. It also seemed like every other episode early on used and abused the Ancient communication stones without actually doing anything useful with them. Great, you’ve got real-time communication to Earth and can do a body-swap. So why aren’t Daniel, Sam, Rodney, and a whole other slew of experts on the ship the whole time and figuring things out? I realize you probably aren’t going to get the actors involved, but how hard would it be to write some dialogue indicating that it’s happening? Instead, all we got were intergalactic booty calls and a bunch of other boring interpersonal drama on Earth.
Heroes, V, and True Blood are cheesy as all get out. Arguably Dexter and Lost are more dramatic, but they both have humor, action, and romance. BSG was really dark, and used long arcs, but it had amazing action and lovable characters.
To me SGU was just a collection of people I didn’t really care about constantly in danger of dying in some horrible way gazillions of miles from home. Instead of Monster of the Week, they had Missing Element Essential to Human Life of the Week: oxygen, food, water, and heat were all failing within the first five episodes. I was a little bit interested in the Ming Na Wen character, but everyone else was either bland or, in the case of Robert Carlyle’s character, with motivations that don’t make sense, but are manufactured to create conflict.
So I don’t think it’s long story arcs at fault. I think a show can be dark, as long as it’s interesting or even exciting, with great characters. Otherwise, being somewhat peppy and silly is going to be needed to bring in audiences.
I think long story arcs only work if you know they will be resolved. I love Dr. Who for never having a damned season cliffhanger. I’ll tune in next season if I like the show dammit! Besides, the resolution of season cliffhangers is almost universally dues ex machina. AKA BSG’s goddidit.
I think Eick/Moore need to consult Shawn Ryan on how to do a multi-seasonal series and character arc story without boring everyone to tears.