I love this show! I read the first five books before the first season aired. The books are great! If the show ends up being cancelled I can easily recommend the book series!
Mag boots are all well and good as a visual cheat, but the rest of someone's body is still weightless. No one should be flopping down into a chair, or sitting on a table edge in zero-G, for instance. IIRC, referencing the stewardess scene in 2001 (the movie), a real astronaut said no one would ever use velcro shoes or mag boots, because it's so much easier (and fun!) to float and fly. It would be physically strenuous and very tiring to use the boots. But again, TV show.
The TV broadcasts only show the full title sequence in the season premiere (and finale, maybe?), but I wouldn't be surprised if the online versions got the full sequence every week.
Netflix normally only picks shows up if they can get exclusive distribution rights. If they can secure those there is a (small) chance that they could step in and save the show.
Besides, I think sci-fi is watching the numbers on streaming services too. ALOT of people aren't catching the broadcast live and are instead time-shifting it on Amazon or Comcast on-demand. "Broadcast night" ratings just don't mean that much anymore in an era where half your audience is working two jobs and the other half would rather watch the show in the morning when the kids are at school and there are no commercial interruptions.
Wait, am I understanding this? You guys aren't getting the title sequence in the US? Very strange, we get it on every season 2 episode in Canada. A lot of decisions are still being made based on broadcast night ratings, despite their decreased relevance in the modern world.
I feel like that would be massively skewing viewership data to heavily favor everyone in America who is too old or too slow to figure out how to use a streaming service. Actually, that would explain quite a lot. No wonder network TV is inundated with cop shows, hospital dramas and dumbass sitcoms.
I'm hoping they keep this going another season at least. It's been so long since good SciFi was on TV and this show scratches the itch and then some. I bought season 1 last summer on Blu-ray and have watched it at least 3 times. I'm staying up on Wednesday's until midnight just to see it (and getting up at 4AM for work)!
The number of commercials per hour in the US has continued to increase, so most US shows these days don't bother with main title sequences longer than maybe 10 seconds. Although it's odd, since so many shows have opening sequences that establish the premise and backstory in a way that main title sequences used to do, but without actual credits being shown over them. Instead of a single sequence with the premise explanation, series title, and regular cast credits, we get an opening premise explanation, then a separate title card, then the cast credits shown over the first act. It's weirdly inefficient.
It wouldn't be that big a deal to me if it did get cancelled. I prefer the structure and pacing in the novel to the TV series for season 1 at least (season 2 isn't available in the UK yet). I thought some of the story changes were unnecessary and they didn't work for me. However, I'm not a seasoned TV producer so what the hell do I know? (rhetorical question)
Oh, you're preaching to the choir on this matter. Unfortunately, that's now the world works at the moment. Oh, I know about commercials and the fact that most shows don't bother with title sequences. It just surprises me there is a title sequence made for this show that isn't included with the US broadcast. Especially since the title sequence gets updated every week to reflect changes that happen in the previous episode, for example in last week's title sequence the shot of Tycho Station no longer has the Nauvoo hovering nearby.
I've seen it happen before -- a show without full titles in broadcast but with them on home video. Too bad we're missing the individualized titles, though. But it's pretty much routine for end titles -- for a couple of decades now, TV shows have routinely just run the end credits at the bottom of the screen or in a box while a promo for the next show ran, so it was only in the syndicated reruns or home video that you could see the end title sequence or hear the closing theme music, even in shows that did individualized theme music for each episode. That's one more way in which titles have "eroded" under the relentless pressure of more advertising. In the '70s and '80s, they'd just show the end title sequence with an announcer's voiceover saying what came next. Then they started running it in a box while a preview showed in another box. Then most networks just stopped showing the proper end title sequences altogether, just running the retyped credits in Chyron under a network preview. It's just ridiculous how much commercials keep metastasizing in US television. Once, there were no more than 5-7 minutes of commercials in an hour; now they fill nearly a third of the time slot, and even get superimposed on the bottom of the screen during the show, if they're not just written into the show as blatant product placement. I wish advertisers would understand that the more they inundate us with ads, the more we tune them out as white noise. I wish they'd try a "less is more" policy for a change.
Amen, brother. My favorite (not) is large, flashy animated promos for other shows that leap up in the bottom quarter right in the middle of a scene. I actually DO remember watching closing credits uninterrupted when I was a wee child. Then they started talking over them promoting the next show. Then finally came the "credits in a window" while an actual promo ran. It'd be interesting to find out what years those things started. I remember a Paul McCartney special on (ABC?) in the 70s, where he closed the show with "Yesterday" as they ran the credits, and yes, the network talked over it with a promo. I remember hoping they wouldn't, so it must have been a newish thing then, and then I remember screaming.
Netflix (and other streaming services) has really been an eye opener on the erosion of actual content time. It's interesting to go watch TOS and see how long the show is, then go watch a modern hour show and see how much less minutes the show is. Half hour shows are even worse. You're fortunate to get 20 minutes worth of show.
The flipside of that is that shows made for Netflix are able to be longer, and not required to be exactly the same length every week. The Marvel Netflix shows, and some other Netflix originals I've seen, have episode lengths typically ranging from around 50 minutes to more than an hour. It's so refreshing to have shows that aren't constrained by the need to accommodate advertisers and rigid schedules, that can be as long as they need to be. You mentioned Star Trek -- TOS episodes were 50-some minutes, but TNG and DS9 were about 42 minutes and VGR and ENT only a bit longer. I wonder if Discovery will be longer since it's on a streaming service.
The showrunners have been in the business a long time, so I assume that they're aware that more than 10 seasons is totally unrealistic. Even if the network wanted to renew that long, it's a reach to expect to be able to hang onto actors for such a lengthy run. My *guess* is that they have at least some kind of vague notion of how to do the story in something like 7 or 8 seasons, even if it means making big changes down the line to make it all fit. But this is really a question that someone needs to ask them at their next convention appearance. Also, the first season was only 10 episodes, and it took 15 episodes to get through the first novel. But Season 2 is 13 episodes. If 13 episodes per season is going to be the norm from now on, then I don't see why it would take "1.5 seasons per novel" going forward.
Also a good point. At the pace they're going, they'll probably wrap up "Caliban's War" by the end of Season 2. I kind of disagree with those who are looking for a half-season treatment of Abbadon's Gate: that's a very complex story with multiple converging character arks and introduces people whose backgrounds and characters have to be established for the first time in the beginning of the season. I'd be amazed (and kind of disappointed) if "Gate" took less than an entire season to wrap up: Spoiler Think of all the shit they'd have to do just for the story to make sense. - They'd have to have the slingshot kid shoot the ring and get killed. - Introduce Pastor Anna and the delegation to the ring - Introduce Michio Pa, Bull, Seth Ashford and some of the other crew on the Behemoth - Introduce the Behemoth Itself and get it heading out to the ring to join the delegation - Introduce Clarissa Mao and spend at least one whole episode showing us how bat shit crazy and homicidal she's become Basically it'll take them half the season just to get to the space station in the middle of the slow zone, and that's when the story really flies off the rails with all the mutinies, shifting alliances, gun battles, to say nothing of the carnage that ensues as a result of the slow zone lockdown. There's just too much in Gate to decompress in less than 13 episodes. And Cibola Burn is even worse. If they're going to compress anything into half seasons, it'll probably be Nemesis Games and Babylon's Ashes.