More people would have watched = more advertising $$.
Atlantis movie shelved ‘indefinitely’
- Thread starter Brent
- Start date
Hmm I am surprised that the comments on the writing. I don't know why but I honestly didn't think the show was that bad. Was it emmy award winning? No. But I found it entertaining.
How the hell would they have trimmed the budget of SGU? They already sit around on the set in complete darkness and whine about their lives for 42 minutes.
Actually, they only do that for 40 minutes followed by a 2 minute montage of basically the same thing.
That 2 minute montage also had crappy music in it that they had to pay someone to license, so if you cut that out you've saved a few bucks.
Except quality is entirely subjective. So when people say write a better show, what they really mean is something with more lowest common denominator appeal.
SGU has a much larger cast with more high profile actors, plus the production quality on SGU is much, much higher than that of SG-1 or Atlantis.
Those figures are wrong anyway, episodes of SG-1 and SGA ran between 1.5 and 2 million dollars, while the only figure we have on SGU's budget is "over 2 million dollars per episode".
Either way I don't think it's difficult to see where the money went.
Exactly. "Quality" has very little correlation with ratings. Many of the smash hits out there aren't exactly examples of great writing or storytelling (just look at the spate of overhypes reality shows) but then again, you do occasionally get some very well-made shows that achieve ratings success (The Wire, The Sopranos, Lost, etc). It's basically just random.
No, they don't.
Sorry, but no Stargate show ever filmed was too intelligent or sophisticated for the average television viewer - that's not in the Franchise DNA, and pretentiousness about "dumbing it down" is just that.]
When we say "write a better show" we mean exactly that - smarter, more entertaining, worth making more than a casual effort to watch in order to kill an hour.
No one said anything about the show being too intelligent or sophisticated, it's just too niche. Although having said that, I'd say the scripts are a lot tighter in Universe than the other two shows, and much more thought has gone into the arcs that weave their way through the series. I wouldn't say it's too challenging for a casual audience, but I think it requires more patience and more thought than this ADHD generation are willing to give it. You'd be surprise by how many people needed the Time ending explained to them, or couldn't appreciate Human, and I've only seen a handful of posts from people who understood the metaphors in Cloverdale too.
A set of criteria that are entirely subjective. I personally found SGU much smarter and more entertaining than Atlantis, others would disagree, neither are right as there is no objectivity right answer. It's not a case of writing a 'better show', it's about writing one that appeals to a broader audience.
All meaningful criteria for art and entertainment are.
Larger cast, yes, but higher profile actors? Robert Carlyle is of high profile, yes, but the rest of the main cast isn't really high profile. Hell, I hadn't even heard of most of them before watching SGU.
Lou Diamond Phillips might have cost a few pennies.
LDP is a pretty big name, and Ming Na is well known too. David Blue is known for Ugly Betty and Alaina Huffman is known for Smallville, while Louis has been in a few movies and big series, they weren't well known per se, but still probably bigger names than any of the regulars when SG-1 and Atlantis started bar RDA. Plus guest stars like Rhona Mitra and Robert Knepper probably don't come cheap either.
Okay, I forgot about Ming-Na, however Lou Diamond Phillips is only a recurring guest star. He isn't part of the main cast. Which leads me to:
SG-1 and Atlantis also had quite a bit high profile guest stars in their episodes. This is not unique to SGU.
Sometimes they mean something with more highest common denominator appeal.
Even in my most cynical moments I would never have imagined such a thing. People are dumb but not quite that dumb.
Cable = niche. Stargate isn't serving the needs of its niche audience by being the right kind of niche show. Here are a couple examples of more successful strategies:
Warehouse 13/Eureka - light, fluffy, fun, friendly sf/f entertainment. There's a strong niche audience for that stuff. Not to my tastes, but I don't begrudge others their niche fluff. Stargate used to serve this niche audience pretty well, but SG:U veered away and didn't find a niche audience waiting for it.
The Walking Dead - The AMC niche audience demands smart, quality entertainment. AMC was taking a big risk in thinking their niche audience would go for the horror/sci-fi genre, but they bet correctly. Not sure if skiffy could lure this audience over, given what a bad reputation they've built for themselves, but it's worth a try. However it goes without saying that the AMC audience knows the difference between quality and crap.
Sci-fi character drama = niche. The only two other examples I can think of are Caprica and Defying Gravity, both of which were cancelled in their first season. There's an argument for Lost I suppose, but that show avoided the tropes than turn the mainstream off, and probably wouldn't register as genre in many people's minds, let alone science fiction/fantasy.
I think the issue is the recent trend of seeing relationship melodrama become the defining feature of so called "dramas." That sort of thing doesn't really work well in scifi settings because there's usually more interesting things going on in the background and because scifi fans don't really care for relationships being the most prominent aspect of a show. It also doesn't help if shows don't establish the characters as likable and competent (which SGU failed at) and just throws this stuff at you without allowing you to know the characters first (which SGU and Caprica did).
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