TV'Scifi Failure

[ialfan]

Star Trek: Voyager for not living up to it's interesting premise.

Enterprise for building up at a slow, slow pace for three years before kicking into high gear and getting canceled when it was finally getting good and leading into the two big "events" of the era: Earth-Romulan War & Birth of the Federation.

Firefly due to getting canceled before a first season had even completed.

Those are my big three.

 

[DevilEyes]

If you mean simply sci-fi shows that got cancelled, then I'll give the nod to adding Charlie Jade to the list (which is pretty darn good, btw.)

If we mean stuff that sucked like hell and had a lot of money sunk into it, then Space: Above and Beyond (I could not make it through the pilot, sorry, fans.)

Then maybe you should not be judging the quality of a show you didn't see at all except for a part of the pilot episode?

 

[Tharsis]

Jeez, alot of Voyager haters on the forums. I really liked it. Of course I like most anything that deals with space, the future, science, etc... Better than the reality garbage out there now, yuck.

 

[ToddPence]

I've of half a mind to say "The Starlost", but on reflection, it did damn well to last 16 episodes.

 

[bigdaddy]

Jeez, alot of Voyager haters on the forums. I really liked it. Of course I like most anything that deals with space, the future, science, etc... Better than the reality garbage out there now, yuck.

Wow... you have low standards.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

If by failure, you mean the worst case of not living up to its potential, I'd nominate Heroes. ENT could have been much better as well.

Jericho is another decent premise (the "new civil war" part - the silly conspiracy angle was a botch from the start) that was poorly handled.

VOY's premise was decent but not terribly unique - there have been worse cases.

Threshold/Invasion/Surface

Of those three, only Invasion had a strong premise and its main failing was boring the audience for too many episodes till it found its footing. I don't blame a decent show for getting cancelled; it happens a lot.

 

[Kegg]

Ugh, Bird of Prey. I saw an episode of that once, I can't remember why.

Then maybe you should not be judging the quality of a show you didn't see at all except for a part of the pilot episode?

The pilot episode was simply that bad, in the 'I cannot actually sit through this like I promised S:AAB fans online' sort of bad. I was of the rather tolerant mindset that "Encounter at Farpoint" was watchable at the time, so it was that terrible.

So yeah. A series with a really poor pilot is one that probably justly lost ratings and got the axe, no?

 

[MeanJoePhaser]

The original Battlestar Galactica, for being expensive and overly-bashed as a Star Wars rip-off (even 30 years later). Its toy line killed a kid who choked on a plastic missile, which is Mattel's fault, but that didn't help.

 

[bigdaddy]

Its toy line killed a kid who choked on a plastic missile, which is Mattel's fault, but that didn't help.

Actually wouldn't that be the kids fault?

 

[Jax]

Problem with STAR TREK are the long seasons like 26 episodes which is plain stupid and just creates too many run of the mill episodes. BSG and SGU now uses arc build up stories and like ENT did in season 4 it creates a better show due to the time to craft out a plot. Voyager was the perfect show for such a way of story telling and hopefully the next TREK show will do something similar-ish.

 

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

There's nothing wrong with longer seasons if you're making a show that's mostly or entirely episodic. In fact it usually works better from a ratings point of view for an episodic show as it cuts down the number of reruns. But highly serialized shows tend to work better with shorter seasons that keep things more focused.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

S1 of Heroes managed to be great with a full season but S2 sucked even with just half a season. I don't see the difference between 24 episodes of a serialized show spread over two years vs. one.

It's the same episodes, same story being told, you're just creating and airing them over a longer period of time. Maybe the writing staff is too small and being burned out by too much work, but you could hire more writers and solve that problem.

 

[Ptrope]

Star Trek: Voyager for not living up to it's interesting premise.

I wouldn't call it "interesting" - it was Lost in Space with a Roddenberry stamp. it was more a failure of imagination - given that they knew the voyage home would've reasonably taken longer than the remaining lifetimes of most of the crew, it might've been a better idea to base the show on their efforts to establish a sort of 'Delta Federation,' something that had open potentials. When the premise of your show is "we gotta get back where we came from," and that's what you do every week in one way or another, it becomes increasingly contrived to thwart the effort again and again and again; they can never come home or the show is over, unless they revamp the premise. That said, I'm not a VOY hater - it was still worlds better than ENT, if only because it was truer to its premise. ENT wasn't a failure - it was suicide. Or euthanasia.

 

[Zachary Smith]

"Planet of the Apes". FIVE successful movies made a lead-in and a franchise that is legendary to this day, yet the TV series (which starred one of the principle performers from four of the five movies) crashed and burned after about 12 episodes. And, yeah, sadly enough, it was at best a mediocre show.

 

[Ptrope]

Getting away from the Trek stuff, Century City was definitely a failure. A lawyer show, just a bit into the future; it actually was a decent show with some interesting ideas about where the future might be headed and how that could become the next legal battleground.

And let's not forget Max Headroom - a show definitely before its time.

 

[jefferiestubes8]

The new iteration of Bionic Woman, on the other hand, had an accessible concept and started with a big audience, but pissed it away very, very quickly (it went from 13.91 million viewers to 5.93 million in the space of eight episodes). The same can be said of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, albeit to a lesser degree (it didn't drop as fast in its first season and it managed to get a second season).

Bionic Woman gets my vote too. NBC could have had this as a scifi series for a while. Cancelled after 8 episodes...strong female lead character [helps with the audience demographics]. Good actress.
You can get Bionic Woman - Volume 1 on DVD though.

My 2nd runner up is Defying Gravity. Many TrekBBS fans did not like it but I really liked it.
Last week it was reported that the sets were just destroyed. For an International production not dependent on ABC's ratings I thought they may have gotten a 12 episode season 2.

 

[bigdaddy]

There's nothing wrong with longer seasons if you're making a show that's mostly or entirely episodic. In fact it usually works better from a ratings point of view for an episodic show as it cuts down the number of reruns. But highly serialized shows tend to work better with shorter seasons that keep things more focused.

I think the best is a mix, like Fringe or early X-files. Have a basic arc for the season but mix it with stand alone that prove a point to the big picture.

"Planet of the Apes". FIVE successful movies made a lead-in and a franchise that is legendary to this day, yet the TV series (which starred one of the principle performers from four of the five movies) crashed and burned after about 12 episodes. And, yeah, sadly enough, it was at best a mediocre show.

The humans spoke English, that's why it sucks.

Bionic Woman gets my vote too. NBC could have had this as a scifi series for a while. Cancelled after 8 episodes...strong female lead character [helps with the audience demographics]. Good actress.
You can get Bionic Woman - Volume 1 on DVD though.

I'm not sure what you are saying? Are you saying that the female lead was a good actress? Or are you saying the show wouldn't have sucked if there was a good actress?

 

[DWF]

That Was Then, it only lasted two eps. and then there's Space Rangers they only aired four of the six eps. they produced.

 

[DWF]

I mean, aside from Stargate: Atlantis, have there been any space opera shows this decade which made it past four seasons? And Atlantis only made five.

Andromeda also had five seasons.

 

[flipjack]

There's a show that I vaguely remember from childhood. Something about a family on vacation in Egypt that goes into a pyramid and somehow gets pulled into an alternate universe. The show then followed their escapades trying to get back home. I don't think it lasted one season, and whenever I describe it no one has any idea what I'm talking about. So either I'm imagining it or it was a pretty big failure.