SyFy response to the cancellation

[AJ86]

Do you really need to 'care' about characters to find them compelling though? I often find that the most dislikeable ones are the most interesting, and I'm not talking 'love to hate' types either.

Yes, because if you have absolutely no interest in what happens to them, the show/movie has failed at creating a compelling narrative.

Who said anything about having no interest in what happens to them? You don't need to write a character that the audience can care about or find endearing to make their storyline compelling, that's just a cheap and easy way of getting it done. An audience will generally stick around to watch a likeable character regardless of how uninspired their storyline might actually be, but I wouldn't really call that in itself good writing.

 

[Yminale]

What’s surprising is that the network execs seem to think that, if they just take off one “niche” show with a strong but small base audience, they’re sure to get that huge show that everyone wants to watch.

Well yeah it happened to SyFy before with FARSCAPE. SG1 and later BSG did have better ratings.

 

[Valley Forge]

Hi all,

Sigh....dunno....

I continue to have a hate/hate relationship with SciFi.

I caught a few eps of SG1 when it popped up on Showtime. "Hey, it's MacGyver in space...cool".

Now before you all pile on me, keep in mind that folks take their SF in all different ways...sort of like coffee. Some like theirs dark and bitter, some like it sweet and frothy. Some don't like it at all, and stick with diet coke.

Personally, I like my SF serious with only a hint of comedy, and it better be really far out when it's there. Loved Farscape for that very reason...you just didn't know what was going to happen.

SG1 was always a bit light for my tastes. That didn't make it a bad show, but just one that wasn't to my tastes. I had no idea what SGA was trying to get to, so I never spent much time with it.

As someone else pointed out, the first two seasons of ST:TNG could be really pretty awful. Had it been named "Star Voyages" with a no-name cast/pedigree, and there would have been little chance of it making it to season 2, let alone 3, where it really started hitting.

It still amazes me to no end we got 5 seasons of B5. And we got the whole story. Sure the first and last were weak, but man, the middle made it all worth while. Makes me wonder how Crusade would have turned out.

BSG tried too hard to be dark. But, OTOH, it couldn't not be dark...that was it's mileu. It couldn't help but try to make everything a political reference or 9/11 drama...that's how it did what it did, although his Holy Grumpyness trying to fly a Battlestar through a planet on occasion certainly didn't hurt.

Caprica had so much potential. 12 colonies, political intrigue...a near future setting where we could see ourselves if we happened to live in a star system with 12 societies a stones throw from each other. But as others have beaten to death, it tried to go in too many directions at once.

I liked SG:U. I liked it for the same reasons I liked Farscape and BSG. Imperfect characters doing the best they can, or the worst they can, depending on their motivations.

I actually the liked Col Young character. Not everyone is Kirk or Picard. Not everyone is a master of the force after 5 minutes with a laser sword some crazy old dude handed you. Some people don't graduate from the top of their class. Heck, some don't even graduate in the middle. People of all levels get stuck in crap situations.

But I digress. Like someone above said, I was the "mythical viewer". I never tuned into SG1 or SGA, but really liked SG:U. Here's some folks in a shit situation doing the best they can, and a lot of times, that's not good enough. But we had a hint of a story arc, and some really random situations that were played out nicely with maybe even a touch of the Space 1999 metaphysical thrown in for good measure.

But like the gaps with Caprica, and BSG, the games Skffy played with the seasons and the timing really, really annoyed me. And I'm pretty tolerant.

I swore off Skffy after the Farscape fiasco. The redeemed themselves with BSG, but the nonsense with Caprica and SG:U has really ruined it for me.

Nonsensical rant over....

Vf

 

[Distorted Humor]

SG-U was expensive and had low ratings. That is going to doom any show. Now, it is just hearsay (and I will admit it as such) but my friends who I respect there opinion indicated that SG-U lacked likable characters, and recently I noticed that to be "Dark and serious" some writers and producers are forgetting that you have to like some of the characters to tune in to see their adventures. Even BSG had some characters that while rough and hard edged, where likable as they told a sad story. Now that don't have to be NICE (House from House MD is a Jerk, but likable) but you need a very good actor to pull that off.

As much as some hate to admit it, you may need a family friendly, "Big Tent" show with say, three core likable characters to survive.

 

[Danny99]

Hi all,

SG1 was always a bit light for my tastes. That didn't make it a bad show, but just one that wasn't to my tastes. I had no idea what SGA was trying to get to, so I never spent much time with it.

As someone else pointed out, the first two seasons of ST:TNG could be really pretty awful. Had it been named "Star Voyages" with a no-name cast/pedigree, and there would have been little chance of it making it to season 2, let alone 3, where it really started hitting.

I liked SG:U. I liked it for the same reasons I liked Farscape and BSG. Imperfect characters doing the best they can, or the worst they can, depending on their motivations.

I actually the liked Col Young character. Not everyone is Kirk or Picard. Not everyone is a master of the force after 5 minutes with a laser sword some crazy old dude handed you. Some people don't graduate from the top of their class. Heck, some don't even graduate in the middle. People of all levels get stuck in crap situations.

But I digress. Like someone above said, I was the "mythical viewer". I never tuned into SG1 or SGA, but really liked SG:U. Here's some folks in a shit situation doing the best they can, and a lot of times, that's not good enough. But we had a hint of a story arc, and some really random situations that were played out nicely with maybe even a touch of the Space 1999 metaphysical thrown in for good measure.

But like the gaps with Caprica, and BSG, the games Skffy played with the seasons and the timing really, really annoyed me. And I'm pretty tolerant.

I swore off Skffy after the Farscape fiasco. The redeemed themselves with BSG, but the nonsense with Caprica and SG:U has really ruined it for me.

Nonsensical rant over....

Vf

Slightly edited the post, but it says a lot of what I believe.

I know Richard Dean Anderson wanted comedy in the role of O'Neill to play it and I don't blame him for that choice (it worked well most of the time for O'Neill), but it seemed to become Stargate's trademark. When they hired Browder and Flanigan, they again put in the humor. I applaud them for trying something different with Young,

SG-1 and Atlantis had a lot of comedy and as the original post says were light. Universe tried to be more serious, but I think they jerked the wheel too far over too fast for too many Stargate fans, coupled with the less than stellar writing really doomed it.

 

[Noname Given]

All I know is, something was off. My friend who never watched a Stargate in his life was hooked on SGU. That was the mythical new viewer that SGU tried to reach, and in my experience did reach. Perhaps he was the only one? I don't know. I hope not, but the picture SyFy paints is a pretty sobering one.

I liked Stargate SG-1 when it was on ShowTime; but after the pickup by Sci-Fi (IMO); it went downhill fast and I stopped watching or caring. I gave SG:A 4 episodes but honestly felt the cast had zero on screen chemistry and just plain hated the 'McKay' character, period. IMO - Doctor Smith from "Lost In Space" is a bad base template for a character and that's who the character came off.

I liked the premise and start of SG:U quite a bit to stuick it out even when the first seasopn meandered; and I thought the visuals were very good (the best seen in a StarGate series.) Once they had Rush discorver what the Ancients purpose in launching Destiny was, I was intrigured and as they adjusted bioth the Rush and Young characters to be a little less outright hostile (although the hostility was deserved and played well for a time); and moved forward, the show started getting better and at least had more of a sense of diorection and less of a 'incident of the week' feel to it.

Yes, the writing crew made mis-steps here and there, but overall, I thought it brought the Star Gate franchise more back the the nid-run quality I liked with SG-1 on showtime. I liked it amd am sorry it got cancelled.

As for SyFY - the only other shiow I feel they did well with after FarScape (and after Season 1, IMO - nuBSG really went downhill, and I hink if it wasn't a critic's darling, and Sci-Fi hadn't wanted to try and present a 'credible image' as a cable network at the time, it wouldn't have seen a Season 3 or 4); was (and is) Eureka. <--- That show deserves a full season and not these constant summer shot seasons (imo).

But, back to the point: No, your friend having interest wasn't a fluke (imo).

 

[peteym5]

Being a fan of Star Trek and Science Fiction, I really like "Stargate Universe" for the first time I thought Brad Wright had a show that can stand up with Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica. I am very disappointed that it had a cancellation before it had a chance to prove itself.

This cancellation is stirring up a rift as big as when "Star Trek Enterprise" came to an end. People are signing petitions, formed a huge Facebook group, and heavily comment on the Syfy Channels forum.

 

[archeryguy1701]

SGU would of been better off starting this way to build a big enough audience it could then afford to have some erosion.

How? BSG already milked the whole 9/11 nonsense with the destruction of an entire civilization.

I don't think Jax was shooting for the idea of recycling BSG's concept... I think the idea was to get the show started off fast, get the interest built up, and then slow things down, like BSG did.

I can't blame SyFy for cancelling SGU, but I am disappointed and frustrated. Mainly because I'm growing tired of watching TV because anything I've tried to watch over the last five years has ended up canceled.

 

[peteym5]

If you like Stargate Universe and want to help persuade the powers to be, do a Google search for Save SGU. There is a facebook thing with 40000+ fans, gaining around 1,000 per day. There is a petition spot thing with 12,000+ fans signed so far growing.

I do not agree SGU lacked likable characters because Eli, Chloe, and Lt. Johanson were less dark. The 2nd season pushed the conflict between Young and Rush was subsided. They were making them more likeable as the series progressed.

 

[Deks]

I have to say that I got into SG:U in a heart-beat than I ever did with BSG.
Why?
Because for one thing, SG:U had a voice of reason/logic to it that didn't have religion banging you on top of the head at every single turn, plus I definitely enjoyed the premise.
It reminded me a lot of Voyager's situation, only this one had a deeper story, and I was excited at the prospect of the crew repairing the ship over longer periods of time.

In this particular setting, I definitely enjoyed the show... plus finally, we had open gay characters in SciFi (though I would have preferred some of the males to be gay... such as the Lucian alliance guy who hit on T.J., gotta say, that man is hunky to me).

 

[137th Gebirg]

Latecomer to the thread, here, but I noticed the reference to the "hiatus" as one of the contributing factors to the show's downfall. I just gotta say, seriously, when will they learn?

Think about it - this long hiatus nonsense really started (at least, if recent memory serves) with the Sopranos. I remember the flak HBO was getting from the fans who complained that if we were forced to wait so long (I think there was once a 1+ year wait between two seasons late in the series) then the writing and production quality had better blow our socks off. It wasn't. It was about the same as it was before, which wasn't bad, but it certainly wasn't worth the long wait, either. It started stinking of pretentious arrogance on the part of the producers, assuming, hey! It's the Sopranos! We could feed them shit and they would still come back to the table for seconds and thirds. Many of us had felt that Paramount had taken this same tactic with later incarnations of Star Trek, both on TV and in film. I know MANY have voiced that concern over Lucas and his odd creative "choices" in the new trilogy.

Now EVERYBODY is doing it! Shorter seasons, separate "Season X" and "Season X.5" box sets (and of course the now-common Season X plus X.5 double-dip box set), longer waits between seasons, delayed air-dates despite the fact that the final cuts have been in the can months prior. Battlestar, Caprica, SG-U, Sons of Anarchy, Justified and a whole butt-load of other examples that I'm sure others could name that I'm not aware of. Many of these shows are now gone. They complain about bad ratings and they have only themselves to blame for their scheduling ineptitude. In the meantime, good shows with potential suffer and the fans get bent over, again and again.

Don't get me wrong, I don't mind shorter seasons necessarily, but I recall that the UK does have shorter seasons, but they have at least two seasons per year! That's the way to do it! And give some of the shows a little more of a chance than 10 measly episodes and less than a half-a-season (The Cape). Yes, other shows have run their course (Lost, Heroes, soon-to-be-House), but some just never seem to be given a real go of it to find their stride.

So leave the shows alone and stabilize the damn schedules already!

My 2 cubits' worth anyway.

 

[Sindatur]

Latecomer to the thread, here, but I noticed the reference to the "hiatus" as one of the contributing factors to the show's downfall. I just gotta say, seriously, when will they learn?

Think about it - this long hiatus nonsense really started (at least, if recent memory serves) with the Sopranos. I remember the flak HBO was getting from the fans who complained that if we were forced to wait so long (I think there was once a 1+ year wait between two seasons late in the series) then the writing and production quality had better blow our socks off. It wasn't. It was about the same as it was before, which wasn't bad, but it certainly wasn't worth the long wait, either. It started stinking of pretentious arrogance on the part of the producers, assuming, hey! It's the Sopranos! We could feed them shit and they would still come back to the table for seconds and thirds. Many of us had felt that Paramount had taken this same tactic with later incarnations of Star Trek, both on TV and in film. I know MANY have voiced that concern over Lucas and his odd creative "choices" in the new trilogy.

Now EVERYBODY is doing it! Shorter seasons, separate "Season X" and "Season X.5" box sets (and of course the now-common Season X plus X.5 double-dip box set), longer waits between seasons, delayed air-dates despite the fact that the final cuts have been in the can months prior. Battlestar, Caprica, SG-U, Sons of Anarchy, Justified and a whole butt-load of other examples that I'm sure others could name that I'm not aware of. Many of these shows are now gone. They complain about bad ratings and they have only themselves to blame for their scheduling ineptitude. In the meantime, good shows with potential suffer and the fans get bent over, again and again.

Don't get me wrong, I don't mind shorter seasons necessarily, but I recall that the UK does have shorter seasons, but they have at least two seasons per year! That's the way to do it! And give some of the shows a little more of a chance than 10 measly episodes and less than a half-a-season (The Cape). Yes, other shows have run their course (Lost, Heroes, soon-to-be-House), but some just never seem to be given a real go of it to find their stride.

So leave the shows alone and stabilize the damn schedules already!

My 2 cubits' worth anyway.

SciFi channel was doing split seasons all the way back to Farscape.

Britain doesn't do 2 Series a Year, just 1 Series a year, so if Series is 6 or 13 episodes, that's all you get that year.

10 episodes twice a year is not a problem, no difference between that and have 2 seasons per year, which is what it sounds like you were thinking Britain does.

The problem is, the flow of the Series. If the Writers and/or Show Runner know, they are on a network that splits the Season that way, they should write accordingly and pace the flow of the show/arc according to how it's going to be aired.

The problem comes, when you don't get all 10 of those episodes in one shot (Like Caprica), or you get yanked around the schedule (Caprica and SGU)

Before the split schedules became the norm, what you ahd was 5 or 8 episodes new, then 2-6 reruns, then 4-5 new, then 2-6 reruns, so people never knew when a show would be new or a rerun. Having a straight 10 episodes and then a hiatus is much easier to deal with, IMHO froma writing point of view, and for the audience to follow

 

[137th Gebirg]

^^^ Thanks for the clarification - I stand corrected. Although I could have sworn that, back in the 90's, shows like Red Dwarf had two short seasons a year. Oh well...

Re. inconsistent new/rerun scheduling, I suspect that was more largely due to an episodic way of storytelling rather than arc-style serialized storytelling that had become more popular in the past 1 - 2 decades. If the episodes were largely stand-alone (like TOS Trek), the jumping around of the schedule wouldn't have as much of a perceivable impact. It's when you try to shoe-horn an arc show into that format is where you get serious problems and a loss of viewer investment.

 

[Sindatur]

^^^ Thanks for the clarification - I stand corrected. Although I could have sworn that, back in the 90's, shows like Red Dwarf had two short seasons a year. Oh well...

Re. inconsistent new/rerun scheduling, I suspect that was more largely due to an episodic way of storytelling rather than arc-style serialized storytelling that had become more popular in the past 1 - 2 decades. If the episodes were largely stand-alone (like TOS Trek), the jumping around of the schedule wouldn't have as much of a perceivable impact. It's when you try to shoe-horn an arc show into that format is where you get serious problems and a loss of viewer investment.

Although, there are some folks who refuse to watch re-runs and are insulted by them, I think, in the case of, for example, LOST, the reruns could be a good thing for folks who don't hate reruns, if the right ones were shown.

For example, if you had a new episode coming up with Danielle, and you had a couple weeks to run reruns, you would want to rerun the previous Danielle episode to remind people of the important plot points prior to the new episode airing (IE: Use the 2 or 3 weeks of reruns as a "Previously on LOST" to remind all the things you will expand on, in the next run of new episodes.). Though, like I said, too many folks who hate reruns

But, yea, it always confused me when people use the "Only 10 episodes and then we have to wait for 6 month, I'll forget where we left off by then" complaint, because you would have a hiatus between seasons, and as you mentioned, some British shows only show 6 episodes or 13 episodes amx per year. So, that's 9-10 1/2 months gap between episodes, and people seem to follow the series just fine under those conditions.

 

[Distorted Humor]

I don't mind the gaps IF, and this is a big IF, the 10-13 episode block is a self contained mini-series. I almost rather have the HBO format of say, 13 episodes a year as a block, then 20 episodes in 10 episode blocks with a major gap in between. (Yes, I know HBO did some series as two blocks, I am ignoring that .

(has a silly idea of some science fiction series where you have one set, film 13 episodes, redress it and film another series of 13 episodes (Or a miniseries), then do the modifications for the next season(s) to cut down the cost of the sets.)

 

[Broccoli]

If you like Stargate Universe and want to help persuade the powers to be, do a Google search for Save SGU. There is a facebook thing with 40000+ fans, gaining around 1,000 per day. There is a petition spot thing with 12,000+ fans signed so far growing.

And it will all be in vain. The show is done. The actors have already started to move on. The sets are likely taken down. MGM has canceled any sort of Stargate continuation movie. There is ZERO interest.

Online petitions almost never work. 12,000 fans is nothing compared to what is needed to sustain a show. Facebook is a meaningless way to show support as "liking" a page has no substance to it.

I hate to be a Captain Bring Down, but if all of these people were watching SGU to begin with (a small percentage of the overall whole), it likely wouldn't have been canceled.

 

[AJ86]

Unless they have Nielsen boxes (which they probably don't) it wouldn't matter whether they were watching or not. A fan campaign can't help get a live action continuation made, might help get some movement on novels or comics though. I'm guessing the core fanbase would be more then enough to support those.

 

[peteym5]

MGM will more likely have someone come in and reboot Stargate sometime in the near future. Not specifically SGU, Atlantis, or SG-1, but something more transitional that can open up a new series. Probably end some of the story arcs of the prior shows to satisfy the fans. That way there won't be any loose ends. However Stargate is coming to time for a reboot and if the franchise is to go forward, it will do it with a whole new series and characters. Maybe have the major SG-1 characters appear in the premier episode to hand it off.

 

[BlobVanDam]

MGM will more likely have someone come in and reboot Stargate sometime in the near future. Not specifically SGU, Atlantis, or SG-1, but something more transitional that can open up a new series. Probably end some of the story arcs of the prior shows to satisfy the fans. That way there won't be any loose ends. However Stargate is coming to time for a reboot and if the franchise is to go forward, it will do it with a whole new series and characters. Maybe have the major SG-1 characters appear in the premier episode to hand it off.

Then that wouldn't be a reboot. It would just be a very loose continuation of the SG universe with a whole new crew. Personally I'd be for this, a show that is completely new, but respects the original continuity just enough to keep it consistent, in the same way that TNG continues on from TOS without being bound by it. Since most of the storylines were wrapped up, it's not something urgent they'd have to spend time on, so it wouldn't get in the way of them starting fairly fresh anyway.

 

[Corran Horn]

syfy...methinks thou doth protest too much.