One thing that’s been consistent is that when an interesting TV series gets going, the money people will can it …
Just been reading about the new V, while it wasn’t the best series it was (barely) good enough to deserve the chance to tell its story at least to a satisfactory conclusion. I was watching Chase until I heard it got canned, although I found out it was being canned because I was wondering if there was any point in persisting with it. There’s other examples too :
Babylon 5 – lost its fifth season so 2 year’s worth of story had to be compressed into one. And that earnt it a fifth season. It’s spinoff, Crusade, wasn’t so lucky. It was given the axe just as it was building momentum. Same with Firefly and Stargate Universe. Firefly was awesome from day 1, SG:U struggled due to a depressing setting but came out fighting in season 2.
Star Trek original series – was killed off early. Were they right ? The success of Next Generation, the spinoffs and 11 movies (so far) say “hell no”. At least the separate Star Trek series had chance to wind down and close themselves out, although Enterprise deserved more of a run.
I was really enjoying Defying Gravity over its short run, it was warm & fluffy entertaining scifi. Outcasts not so much, that got a mercy killing as it really didn’t have that much in the way of redeeming features with actors phoning in their performances.
I still think Farscape is the best scifi series to be on telly in recent times, it roared back in style after getting killed off by the networks.
What am I enjoying on telly at the moment ? I have series links going for Buffy and A Town Called Eureka. Buffy’s always been good, although I’m not intending to buy the dvds. Eureka is a new one which I looked at because of its links with Warehouse 13. Top, top series both of them. Highly entertaining due to light hearted character interaction. Sanctuary is what Amanda Tapping did next after Stargate and she brought through a lot of what made Stargate great. It’s fun to watch while keeping an edge in reserve.
I just think it’s a shame that potentially great series get killed off before they get a chance to show off their stories. We have a saying at work for thinking like that : “Risk Averse”. Well, if the networks are that risk averse, they’ll never get the payoff that comes with all the merchandising for successful series.
So many great stories out there which will never get the chance to be told.