Sy Fy cancels Alphas

[Vendikarr]

bigdaddy wrote:

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BSG got picked up for it's first season at the very last hour before the contracts were up. Maybe they were looking at cutting costs for the lower ratings and just couldn't find a way to make it work.

I think they are going to pick up the Ron Moore series Helix, and had to make room in their development budget. News that Helix was nearing a pick up happened on the same day.

[Admiral2]

I only saw a couple of episodes, and every time I wanted to see the "Rain man" satellite kid get shot dead. Every time. I'll settle for this.

[DarKush]

This sucks. I really liked season 2 and was looking forward to seeing what would happen next.

[JD]

I enjoyed it. It wasn't my favorite thing on TV, or even Syfy, but I will miss it.

[auntiehill]

^This. I enjoyed the characters and bigger story arcs, but it certainly wasn't my favorite thing on TV. It seemed to finally be getting pretty good when it got killed off.

Too bad, really. I was interested to see how they would have continued from last season's cliff-hanger.

[Relayer1]

There's not much that has 'stuck' with me recently. I gave up on Alphas after the first season. Same with Grimm, Teen Wolf and several other shows. I can see me ditching Continuum season 2 as well.

I keep finding myself watching things because I think I should be enjoying them, only to find that I am not...

[Guy Gardener]

Continuum is a Candian show made by Showcase, season two is on track and syfy can't do shit to stop it.

That anhedonia you're talking about is how they explain serial killers, don't chu know?

Season two was trying to make a show so gritty that it just clearly wasn't capable of.

[Enterprise is Great]

I lost interest in Alphas early on in the first season (plus some real life issues made it hard to find time to watch it) but I decided to try it again and really liked season 2. A shame it won't be back.

[Skywalker]

I just watched through both seasons of this a month or two ago, and I thought it was pretty decent. I really liked Gary, and his relationship with Bill, and I liked that the show tried to delve into the downside (both physical and psychological) of having such tremendous abilities. It wasn't my favorite show or anything, but it kept me interested enough that I wouldn't have minded seeing another season. Oh well.

[Forbin]

I LOVED Alphas. The whole production style, acting, cinematography, writing, was far and above the typical SyFy series.

[Guy Gardener]

I guess they had to pay for Defiance somehow.

It's like when you're fucking up at Monopoly, or trying to win the game in less than 20 minutes, and you keep having to sell your houses back tot he bank and mortgage your existing properties to buy yet more newer properties... "For gods sake! It's Park Place! I don't care if I have to flip everything else! That son of a bitch is mine!"

[Christopher]

sojourner wrote:

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I think with this SyFy has firmly stolen Fox's reputation for cancelling shows too soon.

Only if you don't look at the big picture. Plenty of shows have been cancelled this season. According to TV By the Numbers's "Bubble Watch," ABC has already cancelled or ended three shows this season and is likely to cancel at least two more, with another two "on the bubble." CBS has cancelled two shows and is likely to cancel two more, with two on the bubble. NBC has cancelled one and is ending two, with two other likely cancellations and three on the bubble. FOX has cancelled or ended two, is certain to cancel a third, and has two on the bubble. The CW has cancelled one, ended one, and has four on the bubble. TNT cancelled the long-running Leverage. USA cancelled its 2-year-old Fairly Legal and its 1-year-old Common Law.

So plenty of shows have been cancelled this year, most of them after one season or less. That's par for the course in any year. But Syfy has only cancelled one of its original scripted shows this season. Alphas is out, but Warehouse 13, Haven, and Being Human are still going strong. (I'm not counting Eureka, since the decision to end it was made in 2011.)

So that's only 1/4 of the network's current scripted offerings getting the axe. That's no worse than the percentage of shows being axed on the other networks, and quite possibly better. And while many of the shows cancelled by other networks were in their first season, Alphas at least got two seasons. The last time Syfy cancelled a show after only one season was with Caprica in 2010, and the time before that was Flash Gordon in 2008.

Indeed, throughout its life, Syfy/Sci-Fi has only cancelled nine original scripted shows in their first seasons, out of 23 cancellations in all (going by Wikipedia's list of the network's shows -- though my count may be a little rough). Add the current shows and that's ~26 scripted shows, with ~17 (nearly 2/3) lasting more than one season and ~11 (better than 40%) lasting more than two seasons. I doubt you could say the same for other networks.

So it would be completely untrue to characterize Syfy as a premature show-killer. Cancellation is simply a fact of life on television, and most shows die young. Genre shows in particular have a hard time surviving because they cost more to make and attract smaller audiences. (Both of ABC's freshman genre shows this season got axed.) But overall, Syfy's track record with cancellations is no worse than, and arguably better than, most other networks' track records.

I think it's just that genre shows tend to attract more devoted followings, so their cancellations attract more notice and evoke stronger feelings than the cancellation of something like Made in Jersey or Guys with Kids. Not to mention that Syfy's shows are generally better than something like 666 Park Avenue. So even if they aren't cancelled sooner or more often than other shows on other networks, their cancellations have more of an impact, so it feels more unfair. Which is why it's valuable to look at the big picture and get some perspective.

Caretaker wrote:

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I know it's probably a non-realistic hope, but maybe Warehouse 13 could do another crossover with the Alphas characters and bring resolution to the Alphas storylines (especially as some speculate that certain Warehouse agents are Alphas). It worked for The X Files and The Lone Gunmen and Millennium, right?

I'd rather they didn't do that. It was a bad idea to cross the two shows over to the extent that they did. Crossing over Eureka and Warehouse 13 was problematical enough; not only were they different genres (soft SF vs. magic-realist fantasy), but they had incompatible laws of time travel (time was mutable on Eureka but immutable on W13 -- although the latest season of W13 abandoned that rule without explanation). But at least they were similar in tone so it wasn't a complete mismatch. But crossing over the broad, fanciful universe of W13 with the much more naturalistic, solemn Alphas universe was just wrong. And it seemed like something Alphas did reluctantly and under network pressure, since, although they used Lindsay Wagner's character, they carefully avoided mentioning the existence of the Warehouse, Artifacts, or anything of the sort. I choose to believe the universes are unconnected but simply have separate versions of a character named Dr. Vanessa Calder.

[Greg Cox]

Good points, Christopher. Indeed, in a universe in which big network shows are routinely canceled midway through their first seasons (sometimes after only one or two eps!), I've never quite understood the "Syfy cancels everything good!" refrain that tends to pop whenever a fan-favorite genre show gets axed--often after three or four or even five seasons!

Most freshman shows get cancelled. Genre shows on cable actually tend to have better chances of survival than most.

It's almost as though we've convinced ourselves that every genre show is entitled to at least seven seasons--and that anything less is an outrage.

[Agent Richard07]

I liked David Strathairn and the pretty cast, but the show itself didn't really hold my interest. I won't miss it.

[Christopher]

Greg Cox wrote:

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Good points, Christopher. Indeed, in a universe in which big network shows are routinely canceled midway through their first seasons (sometimes after only one or two eps!), I've never quite understood the "Syfy cancels everything good!" refrain that tends to pop whenever a fan-favorite genre show gets axed--often after three or four seasons!

Most freshman shows get cancelled. Genre shows on cable actually tend to have better chances of survival than most.

It's also worth pointing out the difference between broadcast and cable networks. Broadcast networks can cancel a show anytime -- even after just two episodes, as with this season's Made in Jersey -- and don't have to bother to air the remaining episodes. But cable networks, or stations that pick up syndicated programs, commit to show the entire season, always. An NBC or CW or, yes, FOX show could be pulled midway through with unaired episodes (though the current FOX regime has been much less likely to do that than its predecessors), but a cable show is guaranteed to get all the episodes of a season aired, no matter how crummy its ratings are. The only shows SciFi/Syfy has ever cancelled midseason have been reruns it acquired from other networks, like Charlie Jade. (Which means it could theoretically happen with something like Continuum or Primeval: New World.)

It's almost as though we've convinced ourselves that every genre show is entitled to at least seven seasons--and that anything less is an outrage.

Which just shows how much better genre fans have it today than they did when I was growing up. Back then, it was pretty much unheard of for a US genre show to get more than 5 seasons, and quite rare to get even that much. (I can only think of four pre-TNG genre shows that ran five seasons: Space Patrol (the 1950 kids' series), The Twilight Zone, The Six Million Dollar Man, and The Incredible Hulk.) Most genre shows lasted one season, two or three if they were very lucky. TNG's success in first-run syndication really changed the playing field in a lot of ways.