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Sy Fy cancels Alphas

Christopher, Greg - I think you both missed the word "reputation" in my last post, but I'll also amend it a bit to "cancelling sci-fi shows".

I didn't miss the word. My whole point is that reputations are often wrong, which is why people should have the good sense to ignore reputations and pay attention to facts instead.
 
I think the general consensus showed by a lack of interest in The Alphas cliff-hanger shows why the series was canceled. As an unwanted public service (the easy kind to fulfill, meeting social obligations is no problem if you pick'em wisely:techman:) I will tell you How It All Ends.

Dr. Lee Rosen is not killed. But he is very unhappy to discover that the reason Stanton Parrish had designated him the new leader was because, unbeknownst to him, Parrish knew that Rosen was one of his descendants. Rosen finds it really icky that one of his grandmothers cheated with Parrish, but, really, these things happen.

The photostimulator that created new Alphas is eventually reverse engineered to become a destimulator. Alphas who work for the government are the only Alphas left. The revolutionary threat posed by the power of "ordinary" people is repressed. This is just as it should be because human nature decrees that ordinary people are unfit for power. That is why every Alpha has some miserable weakness or flaw created by his or her ability.

Except that eventually Parrish will escape and find a cure for the destimulator! That is because human nature also decrees that the rabble will always have some class traitor who panders to their malevolent dreams of a world where they, instead of those who earned their privileges, have power. The end is not really an end, but an endless Manichean struggle, that corrupts the defenders of order and justice by the tragic fate of humanity at war with itself.

Or, to put it another way, angst never really dies, it just changes actors!:lol:
 
Christopher, Greg - I think you both missed the word "reputation" in my last post, but I'll also amend it a bit to "cancelling sci-fi shows".

I wasn't so much addressing your post as the whole "Syfy always cancels things" meme in general--which has been popping again at the usual places: io9, blastr, etc.

And, yeah, Syfy's "reputation" for cancelling shows prematurely seems to bear little connection to reality, especially when you take into account TV programming in general, as opposed to just our own little corner of the woods.
 
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I stopped watching Charlie Jade when my dvd player died.

I took that as a sign from god.
You must have misunderstood the sign.

Charlie Jade is very good.

The first 5 or 6 episodes are pretty confusing and difficult to get your bearings and understand the different 'verses and travel between them and so forth, because you are seeing the show through Charlie Jade's eyes, as he learns stuff. Once you get your bearings, though, it's a fantastic show, every bit as graphic, gritty, and realistic (and more so) as NuBSG, but, wth a character providing more obvious humor t break up the drama and hopelessness, so, you never get the feeling of wanting to slit your your wrists that NuBSG somtimes left you.

For longevity's sake, it was perhaps a mistake to make the audience as ignorant and confused as the lead character, but, it's definitely worth sticking with until the end.
A few months back, after watching the whole thing on Netflix, I found a description of what Season 2 would have been, and it sounds like it would have been really crazy.
I don't remember everything exactly, but the big things are that they created a whole new 'verse where they had now always been connected, Charlie looked like 01 and 01 like Charlie, and they were going to deal with The Men in Grey Suits.
Turns out the site is gone, but I did save the PDF of the season 2 plan if anyone who watched the show is interested.
 
I don't remember an unresolved cliffhanger for The Dead Zone. I remember something low-key, but not unresolved. I could be wrong though, since I had long since lost interest in the show and was just riding it out at that point.
 
A few months back, after watching the whole thing on Netflix, I found a description of what Season 2 would have been, and it sounds like it would have been really crazy.
I don't remember everything exactly, but the big things are that they created a whole new 'verse where they had now always been connected, Charlie looked like 01 and 01 like Charlie, and they were going to deal with The Men in Grey Suits.
Turns out the site is gone, but I did save the PDF of the season 2 plan if anyone who watched the show is interested.
Yea, I saved the PDF myself, when you provided the second link in my thread, since the first link dried up. It definitely sounded like an excellent expansion on the Series, even though Season 1 ends quite satisfactorily on it's own.

SGU and Carica, I thought their endings were quite sufficient as Series finales, though I would definitely have liked to have seen them continue. Sanctuary too, was a sufficient Series Finale, but, it definitely left me wanting a S5 in the new Sanctuary

Farscape was the really, really cruel Cliff hanger cancellation. Thank God we got Peacekeeper Wars, finally or Bad Timing (Talk about ironic title) would still be stuck in my craw with hatred
 
I don't remember an unresolved cliffhanger for The Dead Zone. I remember something low-key, but not unresolved. I could be wrong though, since I had long since lost interest in the show and was just riding it out at that point.

They did wrap up the season's arcs, but ended it in a way that introduced some major new complications and problems, particularly
bringing back Greg Stillson as a major Big Bad and revealing through Johnny's visions that the Apocalypse hadn't been averted after all -- not to mention revealing that Johnny's son was psychic too.


SGU and Carica, I thought their endings were quite sufficient as Series finales, though I would definitely have liked to have seen them continue.

I agree about SGU, but less so about Caprica. Not that it wouldn't have been interesting to see the story continue, but I think the pilot and one season were successful at revealing the backstory of the human-Cylon conflict, so I feel the saga is complete as it is. Maybe some worthwhile stuff could've been filled in, but it didn't need to be. (And the Blood and Chrome pilot about the First Cylon War is a complete waste. It's mostly just action and spectacle and inconsistently convincing virtual sets, with a boring lead character and a thoroughly unpleasant second lead and a storyline that doesn't add anything new or surprising to the saga.)


Farscape was the really, really cruel Cliff hanger cancellation. Thank God we got Peacekeeper Wars, finally or Bad Timing (Talk about ironic title) would still be stuck in my craw with hatred

Actually I would've been satisfied if "Bad Timing" had been the end. I mean, Farscape never did anything conventionally, and the characters were always bouncing from one insane crisis to the next. I would've been happy with an ending that made it clear their wacky and bizarre adventures would continue. It would've been fitting. Kind of like one of those "Well, here we go again!" endings you often see in cartoons or sitcoms.
 
As I recall, DARK SHADOW's final episode wrapped up its current storyline, but ended on a cliffhanger that was presumedly intended to launch a new storyline. The show dealt with this by adding a final voiceover along the lines of:

"But, for the first time in Collinswood's history, the marks on Carolyn's neck were just caused by an animal. She soon recovered and everybody lived happily ever after, no longer haunted by . . . Dark Shadows."

(I'm paraphrasing from memory here, but that was the gist of it!)
 
I stopped watching Charlie Jade when my dvd player died.

I took that as a sign from god.
You must have misunderstood the sign.

Charlie Jade is very good.

The first 5 or 6 episodes are pretty confusing and difficult to get your bearings and understand the different 'verses and travel between them and so forth, because you are seeing the show through Charlie Jade's eyes, as he learns stuff. Once you get your bearings, though, it's a fantastic show, every bit as graphic, gritty, and realistic (and more so) as NuBSG, but, wth a character providing more obvious humor t break up the drama and hopelessness, so, you never get the feeling of wanting to slit your your wrists that NuBSG somtimes left you.

For longevity's sake, it was perhaps a mistake to make the audience as ignorant and confused as the lead character, but, it's definitely worth sticking with until the end.
The entire writing staff left and were replaced after the first eight episodes. It's one of the few instances of mid-season total writer turnover that makes a show vastly better.
 
You know those moments when you feel like an idiot? I just had one when I was thinking to myself when Syfy was going to start running previews for Alphas this season. When I didn't see any, I decided to do a Google search and then I found this thread too.

Damm Syfy.
 
There's an episode of Big Bang Theory where Sheldon goes into a hissy fit when he becomes aware of this cancellation.
 
I'll miss Gary. The actor being English was surprising, he did such a good job in this role.
 
^He'd been on Bones for a while before that, playing a forensic intern, with his natural accent. So it was a huge surprise to me when we saw doing such an amazing job of being an autistic American kid.
 
I clicked on this link hoping there'd been a change in the show's status.

Now I'm depressed all over again.
 
No. Remember the final shots, where the camera keeps panning over all those people, struck down by the pocket version of Magneto's Statue of Liberty mutant maker machine? Since the series is over, if they looked dead, they are dead.

At least it has a definitive resolution!:techman:
 
For curiosity's sake, I'm wondering how the writers planned to conclude that cliffhanger if the show had returned for another season, especially with regards to the character of Lee Rosen.
 
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