K-9 on Syfy for Xmas

[Brendan Moody]

This show is no longer in production correct?

It's not currently in production, and it's been two and a half years since the last episode aired, but the producers are reportedly developing a second season. However, there's been no news on that since June, and apparently ratings and reviews for the first season were disappointing. So it's sort of up in the air, I guess.

The show's creators gave an update on its status at a convention early last month. Disney had a renewal option for three years, and even though the production team knew they wouldn't be picking it up, the show couldn't (or perhaps can't-- I don't know the precise timing) be sold to anyone else until the option expired/expires. They plan a complete cast reboot for season two-- possibly with a transition to the new team in episode one-- largely because the season will be shot in the UK. And the K9 design will be further tweaked; the color and big ears on the season one version were requested by Disney. (They also wanted Andy Serkis, who had expressed interest, as the voice of K9!)

 

[Christopher]

Okay, I just finished watching the whole series. And I kind of wish I hadn't. There was a while, a few episodes in, when it looked promising and I was invested in the characters and the world, but as it went on, there were just so many bad and silly episodes, and it became increasingly obvious how incredibly cheap the show must've been. I mean, most of the "adventures" took place either in the mansion or in the sewer tunnels, the supposedly all-powerful Department had only two employees at a time (other than the unseen Lomax), and those employees did most of their work out of the back of a van (which was invisible from the outside so they didn't have to spend money building it). And the cast was for the most part pretty bland, though they made a wise decision ditching the mediocre actor playing Inspector Drake and replacing him with the far more menacing Thorne.

And a lot of the backstory and worldbuilding was so nebulous and so cursorily handed out. It took half the season to learn there'd been a Great Cataclysm that reshaped the world into what it was by 2050 (even though London looked unchanged from 2010), we only rarely got any mention of Lomax leading the Department, and so on. And once they dumped Drake for Thorne, they didn't even spend any time establishing any antagonism between Thorne and the kids before we saw them breaking into his office to gather dirt. It was very awkwardly put together.

Also -- why the hell was everyone white? As far as I can tell, there was only one nonwhite speaking character in the whole 26 episodes, the schoolgirl Vibeka in "Sirens of Ceres." Which just isn't realistic for a show that was meant to be set in London, whose population is over 40 percent nonwhite or mixed-race. And the show was shot in Brisbane, which has relatively large Asian, South Asian, and Pacific Islander populations. It shouldn't have been hard for them to assemble a more diverse cast. So why didn't they?

The main reason I stuck with it all the way through is because I'd recorded the whole thing and I figured I shouldn't let that go to waste. But I can't say I'd recommend it. Which is too bad, because I've always liked K9 despite the silliness (and dog-ness) of the concept.

 

[Pindar]

Well thanks for watching it now I don't have too. I know it's a kids show but what a waste of the character.

Could have been so much better.

 

[Christopher]

There's no reason being a kids' show should have anything to do with the quality or worth of a series. If anything, we owe it to our children to put the very highest quality into everything we make for them.

Doctor Who itself has always been essentially a kids' show; it's accessible to adults as well, but the primary target audience has always been the small child watching fearfully from behind the sofa. The Sarah Jane Adventures was a kids' show just as much as K9 was, and had a very similar format -- a trio of teenagers and their knowledgeable adult mentor investigating alien phenomena and saving the world -- but it was far, far better than K9 in every respect.


Oh, by the way, one of the main conceptual flaws that bugged me about the show was the way so many of the threats just randomly came through Professor Gryffen's Space-Time Manipulator. I kept wondering, why the heck doesn't he just unplug it when he's not using it? We saw in the very first episode how easy it is to shut it down simply by unplugging it from the wall.

 

[Sindatur]

There's no reason being a kids' show should have anything to do with the quality or worth of a series. If anything, we owe it to our children to put the very highest quality into everything we make for them.

Doctor Who itself has always been essentially a kids' show; it's accessible to adults as well, but the primary target audience has always been the small child watching fearfully from behind the sofa. The Sarah Jane Adventures was a kids' show just as much as K9 was, and had a very similar format -- a trio of teenagers and their knowledgeable adult mentor investigating alien phenomena and saving the world -- but it was far, far better than K9 in every respect.


Oh, by the way, one of the main conceptual flaws that bugged me about the show was the way so many of the threats just randomly came through Professor Gryffen's Space-Time Manipulator. I kept wondering, why the heck doesn't he just unplug it when he's not using it? We saw in the very first episode how easy it is to shut it down simply by unplugging it from the wall.

LOL, "I don't know what to do, these monsters keep coming in through the open door", "Then close the DAMNED door"

 

[Guy Gardener]

The Professor lost his wife and child to that door.

Even if he could close it he wouldn't want to.

 

[Christopher]

The Professor lost his wife and child to that door.

No, he didn't lose them to it. He lost them to mysterious circumstances while on holiday nearly a decade before the Department found the STM and brought it to him to study, and he was using it to try to bring them back.

Even if he could close it he wouldn't want to.

That doesn't work either. First off, he can close it -- we saw in the very first minutes of the very first episode that it can be shut down just by unplugging it from the wall outlet, and reactivated again just by plugging it back in.

Second, he doesn't have to have it plugged in and active all the time in order to study it. Having it active while he's there at the controls, examining it and trying to get it to work, is one thing. But there's no reason to leave it plugged in and active when he's away from the controls, or when he's asleep. Most of the episodes that had something coming through the STM had it happen when the STM was completely unsupervised, when nobody was in the vicinity or doing any work on it at all. They just walked away and left this incredibly dangerous device plugged in, powered up, and completely unmonitored. It's just silly.

 

[Cutter John]

Thanks for taking a bullet for us Chris. Much appreciated.