Anyone ever see the show "Threshold" on CBS? It aired for just 13 episodes in 2005 before being canceled because of ratings(even though almost all the user reviews of the show on IMDB are positive). Brannon Braga produced the show, which fortunately has nothing to do with the VOY episode of the same title(the show's name was going to be changed to "Foothold" in year 2 and "Stranglehold" in year 3). Braga has his faults to be sure, but I think the series showed he does have talent. The alien invasion storyline wasn't the most original, but I thought it was very well executed, with plenty of intriguing details and a clear long-term plan. I also liked the cast, especially Brent Spiner(my favorite Trek actor) and Peter Dinklage.
Anyone ever see "Threshold" on CBS?
- Thread starter TalkieToaster
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Yeah, because the people who didn't like the show and didn't finish watching it are just as likely as die-hard fans to write IMDB reviews.
I had high hopes, but it just didn't hold my interest. I can't even say it was the best aliens-attack-us-from-the-sea show to air that year.
Flashforward looks promising, though.
Flashforward looks promising, though.
Mmmmmm... Carla Gugino... 
Yeah, I remember the show. It seemed like another sci-fi show that suffered the same fate on CBS that the Flash did back in the early 90s. Pre-empted for sports during October and the all-important November sweeps period in some major markets and never allowed to get a good footing. I thought the show had promise, and though they made 13 episodes I had thought CBS canceled the show at around episode 8 and never aired the rest.
Yeah, I remember the show. It seemed like another sci-fi show that suffered the same fate on CBS that the Flash did back in the early 90s. Pre-empted for sports during October and the all-important November sweeps period in some major markets and never allowed to get a good footing. I thought the show had promise, and though they made 13 episodes I had thought CBS canceled the show at around episode 8 and never aired the rest.
A
Archangel
Guest
I agree. I enjoyed the first few minutes of the pilot and then didn't care for the show anymore.
To the OP, I've heard that story about them changing the name in future seasons...I can pretty much guarantee that wouldn't have happened. It would be like slashing your own throat from a marketing perspective.
Also....WAAAAAAHHHH I want more Surface!!!!111
Over on the Defying Gravity "remaining episodes discussion thread" I left a rant about how American audiences have developed ADD and don't seem to want to sit through any show that actually takes time to develop characters and stories over the course of multiple episodes, rather than in neat packages of 45 minutes (Lost is an exception but you'll see plenty of people complaining about it, too, despite its popularity). Threshold was one of the first of these types of shows that I felt was negatively affected by this lack of interest in following a slow-developing show.
I had no problem with it. I liked how a little piece of the puzzle was unveiled each week. Carla Gugino was great in the lead (and, yes, hot, too), and they had a great team of supporting actors. And it was spooky at times, too.
What amused me at the time was how similar Threshold was to the old Gerry Anderson UFO series, which was also about a secret organization fighting off an alien invasion which sometimes required tough decisions affecting people's lives, and both shows also delved into the negative effect such work had on those fighting the good fight. I don't agree with the comment that the show didn't have enough punch. Tell me the last time Grissom ordered an airplane full of civilians to be shot down. That was pretty edgy.
Of course, the last episode was a bit of a mess because they knew it was the end so they had to graft on a quick resolution more for the DVD than anything else. But I could see this show was getting more and more interesting, and we probably would have been treated to more episodes with Catherine Bell (who I think was being groomed to take over from Gugino had they killed her character off).
The failure of Threshold was one of several signs that I saw as indicating American audiences aren't willing to deal with true arc shows (by true arc I mean storylines that take 24 episodes to unfold, and I don't really count "24" because that's just an action show - I mean shows that actually take time to explain things, build character ... basically what Defying Gravity and Threshold did.)
Alex
I had no problem with it. I liked how a little piece of the puzzle was unveiled each week. Carla Gugino was great in the lead (and, yes, hot, too), and they had a great team of supporting actors. And it was spooky at times, too.
What amused me at the time was how similar Threshold was to the old Gerry Anderson UFO series, which was also about a secret organization fighting off an alien invasion which sometimes required tough decisions affecting people's lives, and both shows also delved into the negative effect such work had on those fighting the good fight. I don't agree with the comment that the show didn't have enough punch. Tell me the last time Grissom ordered an airplane full of civilians to be shot down. That was pretty edgy.
Of course, the last episode was a bit of a mess because they knew it was the end so they had to graft on a quick resolution more for the DVD than anything else. But I could see this show was getting more and more interesting, and we probably would have been treated to more episodes with Catherine Bell (who I think was being groomed to take over from Gugino had they killed her character off).
The failure of Threshold was one of several signs that I saw as indicating American audiences aren't willing to deal with true arc shows (by true arc I mean storylines that take 24 episodes to unfold, and I don't really count "24" because that's just an action show - I mean shows that actually take time to explain things, build character ... basically what Defying Gravity and Threshold did.)
Alex
Yeah, I remember cringing at the cliches (the bad guy hidden behind the fridge door, nonsense like that) but the cast was intriguing - Spiner, Dinklage, Gugino - I also liked the nerdy guy with the striking blue eyes, he seems to have fallen completely off the map.
Dexter is Showtime's mega-hit and it gets something like 2M viewers. 2M people willing to pay good money to subscribe to a show are worth way more than 2M people watching ads (and half of them avoiding the ads via time-shifting etc). Any network show could get 2M people to follow it religiously - out of a potential audience of 300M, that's not a high hurdle. The hurdle is extracting value out of those 2M people that makes the show a worthwhile business proposition.
For instance, I gave up on Defying Gravity for being too boring to tolerate, yet have been a loyal Lost viewer who never even considered bailing (and doesn't really understand why S2 or S3 were considered frustrating or too-slow), and will suffer through Heroes to the bitter end regardless of how badly the show is written.
Do I have ADD or some kind of freakish anti-ADD condition (would that be OCD?)
Neither. I have niche tastes and as long as there are enough people who share my niche tastes, I will get to watch my niche-taste shows. But of all the shows I watch, the one least in danger of cancellation is Dexter - which also has the smallest audience. That demonstrates two things:
1. All the interesting stuff on American TV caters to niche tastes; that is why those shows are interesting.
2. Trying to marry a small niche audience to the mass market business model that broadcast TV is still following is a difficult-to-impossible task.
The solution is that broadcast TV must either change its business model (by finding ways to measure and monetize audiences that aren't being captured by the Nielsens-measuring-ad-viewing system) or resign itself to creating boring, predictable fare for a mass market audience and let basic and premium cable handle all the really interesting stuff. And don't even bother to show up at the Emmys.
That one was fun, too, but the cancelled sci fi show from that year with the most promise was Invasion.
I don't think American audiences have ever shown a big appetite for years-spanning, slow-burn arc'ed series. The minority of Americans who watch premium cable series like The Sopranos, The Wire and Dexter do like that format and reward it with financial success, but the math is totally different.
Dexter is Showtime's mega-hit and it gets something like 2M viewers. 2M people willing to pay good money to subscribe to a show are worth way more than 2M people watching ads (and half of them avoiding the ads via time-shifting etc). Any network show could get 2M people to follow it religiously - out of a potential audience of 300M, that's not a high hurdle. The hurdle is extracting value out of those 2M people that makes the show a worthwhile business proposition.
For instance, I gave up on Defying Gravity for being too boring to tolerate, yet have been a loyal Lost viewer who never even considered bailing (and doesn't really understand why S2 or S3 were considered frustrating or too-slow), and will suffer through Heroes to the bitter end regardless of how badly the show is written.
Do I have ADD or some kind of freakish anti-ADD condition (would that be OCD?)
Neither. I have niche tastes and as long as there are enough people who share my niche tastes, I will get to watch my niche-taste shows. But of all the shows I watch, the one least in danger of cancellation is Dexter - which also has the smallest audience. That demonstrates two things:1. All the interesting stuff on American TV caters to niche tastes; that is why those shows are interesting.
2. Trying to marry a small niche audience to the mass market business model that broadcast TV is still following is a difficult-to-impossible task.
The solution is that broadcast TV must either change its business model (by finding ways to measure and monetize audiences that aren't being captured by the Nielsens-measuring-ad-viewing system) or resign itself to creating boring, predictable fare for a mass market audience and let basic and premium cable handle all the really interesting stuff. And don't even bother to show up at the Emmys.
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By funny coincidence, I finally tracked down a copy of the DVD set this past week (Took me 2 1/2 years!), and my only disappointment was that they'd replaced all the songs with royalty-free tracks. Luckily I still had my AVIs of the 2-part Pilot, so I could still enjoy the sequence where the choppers fly out to the Big Horn accompanied by Kasabian's "Club Foot", which most of you will remember from the Serenity trailer.
YouTube - Kasabian - Club Foot
(They also used it in an episode of Primeval, when a bunch of Dodo birds got loose, but it worked much better in Threshold, IMHO)
Nice that the website which lists all the music originally used on the show is still up...
threshold :: stick to the plan
YouTube - Kasabian - Club Foot
(They also used it in an episode of Primeval, when a bunch of Dodo birds got loose, but it worked much better in Threshold, IMHO)
Nice that the website which lists all the music originally used on the show is still up...
threshold :: stick to the plan
thats the thing; Braga stopped being a good writer, but the concept was fairly well executed so I couldn't utterly hate it; i.e. a few of the characters were pretty stale, but Stiner knew what he was doing.
What I liked was that they'd come up with new things the alien "signal" can do, but it never felt TOO much like a plot device of just the "we can make it up as we go along" variety ....because they sort of established at the beginning that they didn't know everything the signal could do, and that sort of WAS the plot: finding out new ways it can spread.
****Anyway, I think what was nice was that they'd actually try to keep all of the infected people in a holding facility, which ultimately meant they HAD to have some sort of internal continuity.
What I liked was that they'd come up with new things the alien "signal" can do, but it never felt TOO much like a plot device of just the "we can make it up as we go along" variety ....because they sort of established at the beginning that they didn't know everything the signal could do, and that sort of WAS the plot: finding out new ways it can spread.
****Anyway, I think what was nice was that they'd actually try to keep all of the infected people in a holding facility, which ultimately meant they HAD to have some sort of internal continuity.
What do you think of the Fringe strategy of appearing to be little more than an X-Files clone, but developing such a strong -- and fairly unique -- storyline by the end of its first season?
I found Fringe pretty boring at first but, in hindsight, I think the formatting was really brilliant (given viewer ADD).
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Archangel
Guest
Or maybe it just wasn't a very good show...
Lets see...24 is an arc show (which you tried to disqualify because it doesn't fit your agenda), House is getting pretty heavily arc based, LOST is all arc, FlashForward is being setup as arc based...adn all are popular.
I guess it is easier to whine about us dumb old Americans though isn't it.
wat
Ahem. Look, even if one accepts your premise Threshold wasn't the first heavily arced series to suffer low ratings or get cancelled as a result of being heavily arced. Not even 'one of the first,' this was a problem that plagued Babylon 5 as well.
I'm still trying to figure out, in what country are multi-year strongly arced series popular? I can't think of any such series that aren't American. Tell me about em and I might check em out.
Well, except for telenovelas. Is that what we're talking about?
I do like watching those, you don't even need to understand Spanish to enjoy them.
It seems like the easy way to defend a seriously flawed show here -- don't acknowledge the bad, just call everyone else idiots.
Threshold is NOT an arc show. That's why I gave up on it.
You could see that Braga was pulling the same Voyager/Enterprise crap - big season opener, 10 episodes of filler, mid season cliffhanger, 10 episodes of filler and season finale cliffhanger.
This talk about how they'd change the name of the show every season and blahblahblah was all just talk. It didn't do anything interesting with the premise and suffered because of it. It wasn't as serial as Invasion or Surface, the two other shows that aired that year.
Heck, I think Warehouse 13 has more continuity in its relatively short run than Threshold ever did.
You could see that Braga was pulling the same Voyager/Enterprise crap - big season opener, 10 episodes of filler, mid season cliffhanger, 10 episodes of filler and season finale cliffhanger.
This talk about how they'd change the name of the show every season and blahblahblah was all just talk. It didn't do anything interesting with the premise and suffered because of it. It wasn't as serial as Invasion or Surface, the two other shows that aired that year.
Heck, I think Warehouse 13 has more continuity in its relatively short run than Threshold ever did.
I'm not so sure about the ADD comment. I've watched shows with arcs like Dexter, DS9, B5, 24, Supernatural, etc, and I enjoyed them all. I don't know if The Shield, Nip/Tuck, BSG, Space Above and Beyond, The Tudors, would also qualify as arc shows, but I liked them too. Same with X-Files (at least the first seven seasons). I liked those shows because they had gripping characters and stuff happened during the arcs that kept me wanting to see more, to see how it all ended. I tried with Threshold, but it didn't hold my interest. They failed to keep hooking me into the show.
Whereas with the aforementioned shows, I think they mostly had good or interesting characters, Threshold had a lot of good actors who were playing bland characters, and as much as I liked Brent Spiner, Charles Dutton, and Carla Gugino, it just wasn't worth it. Threshold felt more episodic in nature than a true arc anyway, and it felt too much like I had seen it all before but Threshold was just throwing in alien infected instead of terrorists or criminals that had to be tracked down like on the other CBS shows. I also watched Invasion that year and though it was very slow, and I stopped watching it for a period, I came back toward the end. I liked the bottom up approach of Invasion more, ordinary people placed in extraordinary situations rather than an elite team with all the resources of the government at their disposal. But strange enough, I couldn't get into Surface. It just felt silly to me.
Regarding Defying Gravity, I think Threshold actually moved at a faster clip. The concept was intriguing, I liked the cast for the most part. But I was irked with the constant use of flash backs to tell me who these characters were. The way the show was structured didn't work for me, and I never got a real sense of the danger or the wonder of space travel which I felt was a must for a show about the first ship that traveled that far into space. After watching Pandorum, I got a sense of the claustrophobia and the terrors and dangers of space in just two hours that I didn't get in all the hours that I watched DG. DG was a valiant attempt, but it also needed more punch or spark.
Whereas with the aforementioned shows, I think they mostly had good or interesting characters, Threshold had a lot of good actors who were playing bland characters, and as much as I liked Brent Spiner, Charles Dutton, and Carla Gugino, it just wasn't worth it. Threshold felt more episodic in nature than a true arc anyway, and it felt too much like I had seen it all before but Threshold was just throwing in alien infected instead of terrorists or criminals that had to be tracked down like on the other CBS shows. I also watched Invasion that year and though it was very slow, and I stopped watching it for a period, I came back toward the end. I liked the bottom up approach of Invasion more, ordinary people placed in extraordinary situations rather than an elite team with all the resources of the government at their disposal. But strange enough, I couldn't get into Surface. It just felt silly to me.
Regarding Defying Gravity, I think Threshold actually moved at a faster clip. The concept was intriguing, I liked the cast for the most part. But I was irked with the constant use of flash backs to tell me who these characters were. The way the show was structured didn't work for me, and I never got a real sense of the danger or the wonder of space travel which I felt was a must for a show about the first ship that traveled that far into space. After watching Pandorum, I got a sense of the claustrophobia and the terrors and dangers of space in just two hours that I didn't get in all the hours that I watched DG. DG was a valiant attempt, but it also needed more punch or spark.
That's not true. There was a very definite arc, but it took a while to become evident. Ironically, CBS dropped the show from its schedule just one week before the arc really kicked into high gear. Once you've seen the whole season, though, it becomes clear how much arc content there was in early episodes. Every single installment introduced something that was important to the unfolding narrative. It just took a while for the connections to reveal themselves.
You know, there's a strange contradiction in the rhetoric of Braga's critics. Even while they're dismissing his worth as a creator, they're doing far worse to all his collaborators by ignoring them completely and speaking of Braga as if he were the only person who contributed anything. Oddly, his worst critics apotheosize him as the singular auteur of any show he participates in even as they condemn him.
On VGR and ENT, Braga was working for Rick Berman. On Threshold, he was working for David S. Goyer and David Heyman. Surely it's reasonable to expect there to be some differences in the respective shows as a result. Also, the show was created by Bragi F. Schut, and it's really very unfair to Mr. Schut to ignore his contributions and treat the show as if it were purely Braga's work.
And you're totally wrong about the filler. A few early episodes did seem a little formulaic, but as I said, when you look back with the perspective of the whole season in mind, it's clear how each episode is an integral and important piece of the whole evolving puzzle.
That's not to say Threshold was a success. It did unfortunately give a misleading impression of its nature early on, and that caused a lot of viewers, such as yourself, to jump to the wrong conclusions about the show, so that by the time it finally got its act together and began showing just how intriguing it could be, it had already lost too much of its audience and been pulled from the air.