I miss Canada's Space Channel era of the 2000's, when it made some of the greatest commercials for their Star Trek lineup. Give that lady some applause!
The Sci-Fi Channel
- Thread starter Data Holmes
- Start date
Thankfully, the Space Channel/CTV Sci-Fi Channel never suffered the massive Network Decay that Sci-Fi Channel US did. It still shows tons of Star Trek and Stargate and Eureka and Haven and stuff. The worst it slipped is when it shows Harry Potter on long weekends and occasionally an action movie
Star Trek and Stargate, yes, but they haven't had Eureka in years, and IIRC, Haven was actually on Showcase. Nowadays they have a habit of running crime shows that have only a token connection to sci-fi genre. Like they air Castle just because it stars Nathan Fillion. Or a couple of years ago they were running Elementary because it was an Americanized Sherlock, a show produced by Doctor Who's Steven Moffat.
Least they didn't show reality TV or wrestling....
Agreed, although somewhat ironically, it lost the Trek license to Paramount+, and it's lost some of its identity over the last several years. I really loved what they were doing when they were still the Space Channel.
It has? They showed all of Picard, or did they lost the license after that?
Yeah, they showed all of Picard, but as far as I know that was the last time they held the Trek license for anything. I think they had Prodigy and up to Season 4 of Discovery too. It was shortly after that that Paramount made their push to move all of Canada's Trek to Paramount+. Mind you, this is all muddled since everything was removed from Crave, but apparently some of it can still be viewed via CTV Sci-Fi, so I don't really know what kind of deal they got. Canada's media rights are so confusing that way. Hard to know where anything is. And I don't subscribe to Paramount+. I knew something was up when I couldn't access SNW via Crave anymore. Was probably the beginning of their purge. It's sad seeing the long-standing relationship they had, as Bell had put a lot of money into the Canadian CBS studios where they film Discovery. That was part of the deal via Cancon requirements.
Except it wasn't. IIRC, the idea for a modernized Sherlock Holmes series had been in development for years; at most, Sherlock prompted CBS to move forward with the pre-existing idea, as often happens (e.g. how the success of Star Wars convinced ABC to move ahead with Battlestar Galactica, which Glen Larson had been pitching in one form or another since the '60s). And the two shows were extremely different approaches to a modern Holmes; many viewers (myself included) considered Elementary the superior of the two. For a modernized Holmes show that was a localized version of Sherlock, you'd have to look to Miss Sherlock from Japan.
If they wanted to show Elementary because of a science fiction connection, surely the fact that its creator Robert Doherty had been a writer, story editor, or producer on Star Trek: Voyager, Dark Angel, Tru Calling, and Medium would be a better connection, as well as the fact that Deep Space Nine's Robert Hewitt Wolfe was one of its writer-producers.
I've just put a random episode of Stargate Atlantis on.
I miss the sci-fi Fridays, which was sci-fi Saturday in the UK.
I miss the sci-fi Fridays, which was sci-fi Saturday in the UK.
Our regional cable providers did not offer the Sci-Fi Channel for the first few years. I remember personally delivering my cable bill to the office in the early 90s just so I could state my interest (translate: bug the crap outa' the staff) in that "new" service (along with the Cartoon Network and couple of others).
After all this time, I can't recall exactly when it was added. I just remember it had to some time before February 1997 because that was when the channel debuted season 8 of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and I saw that from the start. (Oh, yeah, the same cable service also didn't offer Comedy Central at first because I never got to see the earlier MST3K episodes before the channel migration.) Anyway, I missed the channel's debut and its initial collection of "short lived" series as well as the more widely remembered ones.
Oh, somebody uploaded a video to YouTube playing the first few hours of Si-Fi Channel airtime, a "countdown" of the final couple of hours before the official launch and the first block of actual programming. Well, that "programming" was actually just interstitial promos and product ads...minus the actual entertainment segments which happened to be Star Wars. I'd have to track down that video again to verify, but the commercials and promos alone amounted to roughly 50+ minutes (which meant SW probably consumed a 3 hour block).
After all this time, I can't recall exactly when it was added. I just remember it had to some time before February 1997 because that was when the channel debuted season 8 of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and I saw that from the start. (Oh, yeah, the same cable service also didn't offer Comedy Central at first because I never got to see the earlier MST3K episodes before the channel migration.) Anyway, I missed the channel's debut and its initial collection of "short lived" series as well as the more widely remembered ones.
Oh, somebody uploaded a video to YouTube playing the first few hours of Si-Fi Channel airtime, a "countdown" of the final couple of hours before the official launch and the first block of actual programming. Well, that "programming" was actually just interstitial promos and product ads...minus the actual entertainment segments which happened to be Star Wars. I'd have to track down that video again to verify, but the commercials and promos alone amounted to roughly 50+ minutes (which meant SW probably consumed a 3 hour block).
Crave lost the streaming rights to modern Star Trek, but CTV Sci-Fi still continues to air the modern shows. They aired season 2 of SNW, season 4 of Lower Decks and season 5 of Disco. The only thing that's not clear at the moment is whether they will air season 2 of Prodigy.
"Americanized Sherlock" was the actual line CTV Sci-Fi provided when asked why they were running Elementary.
Ahh ok, that's for the clarification. When that happened, they really could have been clearer in their official messaging. Must be a streaming vs broadcast rights issue, whereas Paramount+ has the streaming rights, and where Bell/CTV keeps the broadcast rights. But then again we're about the only Country that does still broadcast it. Either way, I had lost it via my DVR which had Crave access.
Yes, I took that from your previous post. I was pointing out that that was a silly and ignorant justification on their part, not only because it's inaccurate, but because Elementary had much more direct science fiction connections through its own creative staff.
Add me to the growing chorus.
I was a teenager (fuck, I'm old...) when the channel first launched and I was so damn excited that we finally had a single source for all things science fiction.
We had a combination of great original shows and miniseries (Farscape, Battlerstar Galactica, Eureka, Tin Man, The Invisible Man, The Dresden Files) to exports (Star Trek, Doctor Who, The Incredible Hulk, The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits) to shows that found a new production home (Sliders and Stargate SG-1, even if I never got into the latter). I'm pretty certain I first discovered my love for Mystery Science Theater 3000 when it also moved over to the network. Along with regular showings of countless classic sci-fi films, the channel was a godsent haven for young nerds such as myself at that time.
...and then things slowly began to decay.
The abrupt and deceptive cancellation of Farscape (we were promised a fifth season, damnit!) hit the hardest. Thank the gods the outcry was so loud that we did get a conclusive miniseries several years later, but it still hurt and The Peacekeeper Wars will always have that "What if...?" shadow cast upon it.
Almost as painful for me was the horrific adaptation of Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea, so badly written with whitewashing across the board that the typically private Le Guin spoke out against the production after its release. I still long for the day when we'll finally get a proper adaptation of the series but now Le Guin will never get to see it. And for that alone, I remain livid at the network.
From there, it was a circling of the drain to the largely pile of shit that we have today.
At least now there are so many great outlets that are producing incredible sci-fi and fantasy shows and films that I can safely ignore the very existence of the network (I refuse to type out its rebranded name, yes I'm that petty).
I was a teenager (fuck, I'm old...) when the channel first launched and I was so damn excited that we finally had a single source for all things science fiction.
We had a combination of great original shows and miniseries (Farscape, Battlerstar Galactica, Eureka, Tin Man, The Invisible Man, The Dresden Files) to exports (Star Trek, Doctor Who, The Incredible Hulk, The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits) to shows that found a new production home (Sliders and Stargate SG-1, even if I never got into the latter). I'm pretty certain I first discovered my love for Mystery Science Theater 3000 when it also moved over to the network. Along with regular showings of countless classic sci-fi films, the channel was a godsent haven for young nerds such as myself at that time.
...and then things slowly began to decay.
The abrupt and deceptive cancellation of Farscape (we were promised a fifth season, damnit!) hit the hardest. Thank the gods the outcry was so loud that we did get a conclusive miniseries several years later, but it still hurt and The Peacekeeper Wars will always have that "What if...?" shadow cast upon it.
Almost as painful for me was the horrific adaptation of Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea, so badly written with whitewashing across the board that the typically private Le Guin spoke out against the production after its release. I still long for the day when we'll finally get a proper adaptation of the series but now Le Guin will never get to see it. And for that alone, I remain livid at the network.
From there, it was a circling of the drain to the largely pile of shit that we have today.
At least now there are so many great outlets that are producing incredible sci-fi and fantasy shows and films that I can safely ignore the very existence of the network (I refuse to type out its rebranded name, yes I'm that petty).
I remember loving Tin Man at the time but I wonder if it'll hold up well upon rewatch. It does have a killer cast (Zooey Deschanel, Alan Cumming, Neal McDonough, Callum Keith Ritchie, among others) and I remember it being wonderfully zany, which is honestly the best way to handle Oz anyways.
What was the miniseries about 3 generations of people impacted by alien visitation? Taken? That was a weird series but really interesting.
Yes, the 2002 Spielberg "Taken". One of Dakota Fanning's first roles IIRC.
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