Sci-Fi TV Shows that you're pretty sure only you watched.

Yeah, the show would have been really cool if they had an ever increasing supply of capsules and Franks. Did they ever rationalize that when a backstep occurred that Frank and the capsule disappeared from the facility? I can't recall. Or addressed the issue that technically the only person left from the original timeline was Frank. Every time he used the device he was being transported to/creating an alternate timeline.

 

Disappointed after backtracking through the thread to see this wasn't MST3K related.

 

I remember SEEING Island City but nothing else about it. Might need to track it down.

 

Same here.

Saw 'em

Ah, Susan Anton... And the Michael Nouri Dracula sequences weren't bad in places.

Anyone remember Exo-man? It was basically an Iron Man rip off. A scientist is subject to a crippling injury and has to wear a suit of powered armor.

Guess someone does remember it.

 

Same thing.


At least when it comes to casting live action and animated Wolverines.

 

I saw Exo-man too :-)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGb0y7pm52g

Pay attention youngsters, this was before superheroes were "in" in live action and before CGI. This is what we had (and we LIKED it), so be thankful!

Wow the first review on IMDB has lots of info about Exo-man. It was from the writer who wrote Cyborg, the novel 6 Million Dollar Man was based on.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076008/

 

I liked 7 Days. Truly fun sci-fi.

 

Wow really??? I never had more than 3-4 at a time, I figure I can find whatever I want most of the time.

RAMA

 

Dunno 'bout Frank, but I'm pretty sure there was some comment along the line of asking him to not crash the device this time as it took them ages to get it into full working order again.

Not according to IMDb.

Nope 1416 now. - I find just clicking a link in my in-box to be an efficient way to keep up with whatever has happened since I was last here.

 

This happens to be Gary Conway's 77th birthday. He played Steve Burton.

 

World of Giants beats Land of the Giants.

Starring Daktari himself, Marshall Thompson!

 

Reminds me of Land of the Lost, a kids show with a similar premise.

 

Saw that.

 

The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. It was a sci-fi western that ran from 93-94 and starred Bruce Campbell. I'm still bitter about it being cancelled.

 

That and Space: Above and Beyond were the first shows where I really learned to hate the mindset of entertainment execs.

 

^Why do people always blame the execs for show cancellations? That's not how it works. Making TV shows costs a lot of money. That money comes from advertisers. If the audience doesn't watch a show, advertisers won't buy airtime on it, and the network can't afford to keep making it. The execs may passionately love a show, but if the audience doesn't watch it, the network simply can't afford to keep making it, so they have to cancel it. Conversely, the execs may absolutely loathe airing some sleazy reality show or whatever, but if it gets humongous ratings and makes them enormous profits, they have no choice but to keep it on the air, because that's their source of funding for the good stuff they actually do want to make.

Sure, sometimes the execs make bad decisions that keep a show from finding an audience. I mentioned earlier how UPN failed to promote Legend in the obvious way by playing up its connections to Voyager, which has always frustrated me. But a lot of the time, the execs can do everything right to promote a show but the audience still won't respond to it in large enough numbers. And in that case, sometimes the execs may keep a show on longer even at a financial loss because they believe in it so strongly, but eventually, if the ratings don't improve, there's nothing the execs can do except cancel it, because they can't make the show if they can't afford to.

So yeah, sometimes execs' bad calls are responsible for shows getting cancelled. Sometimes they even deliberately sabotage shows. But they do so by manipulating things to undermine ratings, to keep the audience from finding the show. Ultimately it's the audience that decides whether a show lives or dies. So a lot of the time, maybe most of the time, the real blame for a show's cancellation lies entirely with the screwed-up tastes of a viewing public that loves reality TV or wrestling more than smart, sophisticated scripted television.

 

I couldn't care less about UPN and the Tits of Nine Show, but those two are are examples where the people in charge threw away money makers because they couldn't see beyond the short-term goals.

It's not that different from TOS, where a show was initially cancelled after its second season, because it was not deemed worth the money. Over the years that same show and the things built on top of it have led to more than a billion in revenue alone.

Brisco County fell victim to the same thing TOS did back then (misinterpretation of statistics). S:AAB was not that much different from TNG and Babylon 5. Both were effects-heavy shows that struggling during their first season, but you could say those shows have made a buck or two.

Both events occurred during the old regime at FOX. The same people that OTOH kept the X-Files on life support years after it should have ended, even though it was practically screaming for someone to finally put it out of its misery.

 

Actually Star Trek was a case that perfectly illustrates how much network executives' hands are tied by fiscal realities. Contrary to the narrative Roddenberry spun, the NBC executives loved TOS and were glad to have such a smart, prestigious, cutting-edge, Emmy-nominated show on their network. But it was expensive to make and never got very good ratings, so it was a losing proposition financially. They would've been forced to cancel it after just one season if it weren't for the fact that it was cited in a study as the number-one reason why people in 1967 were buying color television sets -- the patent for which was owned by NBC's parent company RCA. So the profits RCA made from color-TV sales made up for the losses the network was taking on TOS due to low ratings, and thus the execs were able to keep it around for a second and then a third season -- though the budget got slashed each consecutive season in an attempt to offset the losses. Finally, after three seasons, they just couldn't staunch the hemorrhaging of money anymore and had to cancel the show -- which had fallen from its creative peak by that point anyway.

So the narrative Roddenberry constructed in later years -- which was a clever way of mobilizing the fanbase -- was that the network had tried to kill the show and the audience had saved it. But if anything it was the other way around. The audience was never there in large enough numbers to make the show profitable, but the network believed in the show enough, and got enough other benefits from its existence, that they chose to keep it around two years longer than they would have based on popularity alone.

Which just proves my point. Executives are no more monolithic than any other group of people. They're just trying to make the best decisions they can. Sometimes they make good decisions, sometimes they make bad ones. Sometimes their decisions undermine shows, and sometimes their decisions preserve shows that would otherwise die young. Whether those shows deserve their treatment either way is a matter of opinion, but it's not fair to stereotype all television executives as villains or incompetents who get their jollies smothering good shows in the crib. And it's just not realistic to ignore the enormous role that audience interest or lack thereof plays in the survival of TV series. Perhaps it's more convenient to blame the executives because they're a more visible target, but if you ask me, most of the time it's the public that's to blame. We get the TV schedule we deserve. If we tune into cheap, sleazy reality TV in droves, then we have no one to blame but ourselves when quality programming fails to earn sufficient ratings.

 

It would be funny if the system wasn't so completely flawed. How else can such an underperforming show lead to so much revenue? It wasn't until the mid-2000's that the Nielsen system finally managed to account for the viewing habits of university students to get an at least somewhat realistic image of that demographic group's behaviour. Same nowadays with delayed viewing of recorded broadcasts, viewership of online platforms and similar metrics, which have only been added in the last couple of years.

A rating system that's always a decade or two behind reality, executives that rely on it because while as flawed as it is it's still the only thing they have, the advertising business (my paycheck for more years than I care to remember and also the bane of my life) that would be better off basing its decisions on an Ouija board and an audience which has gradually adapted to this clusterfuck. A match made in heaven!

 

Truer words were never spoken.