No love for "The Expanse" (SyFy)

[Mr. Adventure]

I think I take their Syfy's word on it being just a monetary decision. I imagine The Expense, er, The Expanse, is a prestige show for them, it looks like a million bucks and gets good buzz. The network is not currently moving away towards wrestling and reality TV as in the past and has been doing more challenging original programming over more comfy stuff in the past like Eureka, Warehouse 13 and the like. It just doesn't seem like a show they would want to lose in the current environment unless their hand was forced.

 

[Christopher]

The network is not currently moving away towards wrestling and reality TV as in the past and has been doing more challenging original programming over more comfy stuff in the past like Eureka, Warehouse 13 and the like.

First off, I think you mean to say the network is currently moving toward more challenging stuff.

Second, I disagree with the conventional wisdom that Eureka and Warehouse 13 were unworthy fluff. They were both terrific shows -- fanciful and with a lot a humor, but also clever and well-written and often with a lot of strong character drama. W13 in particular got pretty dark and powerful at times, though it lost its way in the final season.

As for Eureka... well, there was a perception at the time that the network was moving away from science fiction, but it was more just that it was moving away from space opera and focusing on more Earthbound SF/fantasy. And Eureka was very much a science fiction show, more than most, because it was actually about science and scientists. The science may have been fanciful for the most part (although it got a little better in later seasons), but still, few shows have focused so heavily on scientist heroes actually doing science as a driving element of the stories.

It's also worth noting that, during this supposed "down" period when those "fluffy" shows were on, there were also more serious dramas airing at the same time. Battlestar Galactica overlapped with Eureka by three seasons. After it was gone, there were Stargate Universe, Caprica, Being Human, Alphas, Continuum, Defiance, etc. The alleged interregnum was never actually lacking for challenging or un-"comfy" original programming. It's just that the dumber stuff that paid the bills for the smart stuff -- the wrestling and the reality TV and the parody monster movies that were dumb on purpose -- tended to overshadow it in people's attention.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

I wasn't trying to disparage those shows but suggesting that The Expanse is in line with the kind of programming they're doing now as a point against it being cancelled for reasons other than economic.

 

[Christopher]

I wasn't trying to disparage those shows but suggesting that The Expanse is in line with the kind of programming they're doing now as a point against it being cancelled for reasons other than economic.

Yes, indeed. I just read an interesting comment on another board, suggesting that maybe the reason Syfy accepted such a limited contract for The Expanse was because it was a loss leader to rebuild their reputation as a home for smart and/or space-based science fiction. They had every reason to want it on their network, and never would've accepted such a bad contract if they hadn't really, really wanted it. So it stands to reason that they really didn't want to cancel it, but were forced to do so because it just didn't take off as well as they'd hoped. It's critically acclaimed, but evidently not a breakout hit like Galactica was.

It's much like the original Star Trek with NBC. For decades, fan conventional wisdom was that NBC hated the show and was glad to kill it. But the book Inside Star Trek by Herb Solow and Bob Justman showed that NBC's execs actually loved the show because it was smart and classy and visually spectacular and Emmy-nominated, so it brought them a lot of prestige that made them want to keep it, but its ratings were too low in proportion to its cost, so they had to struggle to justify keeping it on the air. But after the third season, they were just losing too much money and couldn't keep it any longer, no matter how much they wished they could. Commercial TV is not a charity.

 

[JD]

Really disappointed to hear this has been canceled, it's one of my favorite shows. I guess if it doesn't get picked up I'm not more motivated to get working on the novels, so I can at least get a close approximation to what would have happened next on the show.

 

[The Wormhole]

Syfy is keeping a number of excellent shows, like The Magicians and Killjoys.

In the case of Killjoys, SyFy doesn't actually make decisions regarding that. Space in Canada calls the shots for that show, just like Orphan Black.

 

[Christopher]

In the case of Killjoys, SyFy doesn't actually make decisions regarding that. Space in Canada calls the shots for that show, just like Orphan Black.

I'm pretty sure it's actually a Space-Syfy co-production. That's why Syfy kept it while cancelling the purely Canadian Dark Matter. And note that Dark Matter still got cancelled even in Canada when Syfy cancelled it in the US, because the money Syfy paid for the broadcast rights was part of what funded the show in the first place. So Syfy's decisions do matter even to the Canadian shows they import. Many shows and movies these days have to be internationally funded.

Just in general, regardless of who makes a show, it's always a network's own decision whether they want to air it. It's not like someone can force them to air a show. For instance, even if The Expanse keeps being made, it won't air on Syfy. That was their decision there, and it was their decision to keep Killjoys too.