Stargate Universe Cancelled 762
Torino writes "SGU has finally been cancelled, with the remaining 10 episodes to air in Spring. Apparently, the cast wasn't told ahead of time, and some of them learned of the cancellation via Twitter. SGU has had its share of problems, even spawning a community of people who dislike the show. Can it be saved via fan support, given the steadily declining viewership numbers? Do you think the show had the potential to improve?"
It was just okay (Score:5, Interesting)
Heavily influenced by the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica, SGU felt much more "adult" and real than any previous SG series (some of which were just downright hokey). And the characters and actors (especially the always-reliable Robert Carlyle) were interesting and pretty well fleshed-out. But the stories were a little weak and it was only moderately interesting viewing. Like Caprica, it kind of felt like Battlestar-lite. And at least Caprica had a powerful pilot. SGU never really had a stand-out episode. It was just sort of there, sort of mediocre. With a great cast, a decent premise, and okay writers--it certainly had the *potential* to be a lot better. But I suspect that if it had stayed on, the Scfy inclination wouldn't have been to smarten it up--but quite the opposite, to go for more action and tits and less character development and moral dilemma.
it was getting better (Score:5, Interesting)
I do think it was trying too hard to be Stargate: Galatica , however it was getting better as this season went on. I think it's a shame that SyFy seems to be cancelling all of the 'serious' shows.....they are left with only the super-cheesy shows (like Eureka, Warehouse 13, Haven...all got renewed..I don't understand how anyone can watch Haven...it's awful) - these cheesy series, along with their b-movies seem to be the only shows that get ratings. It's a shame.
Re:good (Score:2, Interesting)
Well I agree with you in principle, but not your timing. I LOVED Atlantis, mainly because of quirky characters like Dr. Rodney McKay. The last two seasons of SG1 (the Or'i seasons) were lousy but I enjoyed watch SGA.
And SGU had me on the edge of my seat for the first 10 episodes or so, but then you could tell the story writers ran out of ideas. The ship "deep in space & out of contact" setting didn't work just as it didn't work for Star Trek Voyager.
So yes cancel Stargate SG1 and SGU, but not Atlantis.
I guess I'm the only one who's bummed. (Score:4, Interesting)
SU premiered right when I needed it. I had just moved to a new city half way across the county to be a Police Officer in a pretty rough area. I kind of related to the whole being away from family/ friends and not knowing if you were going to see them again.
Watching SU Saturday mornings on Hulu was one of the little things that kept me sane.
Only "Stargate" in title (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, I guess they couldn't get a lock on that final chevron, because this Stargate is going nowhere.
Good! (Score:4, Interesting)
Ok, first, the story lines SUCKED. And they had access back to Earth. That was lame. And Eli is a terrible character acted by a terrible actor.......I so wished for him to just die......
The whole Civilian vs. Military thing in the beginning was stupid. And the whole "I lost the baby but the aliens took it"......really? Who writes this BS? It's like it was written by a 16 year old nerdy girl who's at an away camp missing her family and her female lover. Sorta like if the Twilight series author wrote SciFi (or SyFy).
So much potential and it was squandered.
Re:Dr. Who (Score:2, Interesting)
I think we (people who like this kind of sci-fi) just started watching all of our shows online. And by online i mean torrents, not Hulu or something else officially licensed.
Forget the soaps, gimmee the scifi! (Score:5, Interesting)
I watched the first season of SGU and have recorded subsequent episodes but really, I doubt I'll ever watch them because even watching paint dry is more interesting to me.
When I watch SciFi, I want something that makes me think, something that presents truly possible scientific scenarios in an exciting and entertaining way, a sneak peek at what could be in our future.
SGU struck me as being just another daytime soap opera, using space as a backdrop.
Too much "deep" character interaction, too much angst, anger, human emotion.
Call me old fashioned but I like a good dose of *science* with my fiction and SGU just didn't deliver.
There isn't even any real comic relief (like that which made SG1 so enchanting) to relieve the unending tension between the characters in SGU.
I've got the entire SG1 and SGA series on DVD (store-bought, not downloaded) and, apart from the obvious episodes when the writers were clearly in a "oh my gawd, I'm clear out of new story-line ideas" episodes, they're all a good watch. What does pee me off however, is that the DVDs seem to have episodes out of sequence and the disks are littered with promos for other SG episodes, movies, etc -- plus the obligatory, unskippable copyright warnings. When I get time, I *will* rip these disks to DVDR so I don't have to sit through all that crap!
I wouldn't buy SGU -- in fact I wouldn't even wast the bandwidth required to download it.
And in future, I'll check out any TV series DVDs I might wish to buy before I lay down the cash. If they insist on selling me advertisements and treating me like a criminal -- I'll just find a friendly P2P network and show them that: if you treat me like a criminal, I will behave like one.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I can answer that question for you: (Score:4, Interesting)
Man, reading that list just made me sad that they never made a second season. I enjoyed the Serenity movie thoroughly, but there was so much more to be done with this show. I figure two more seasons before it jumped the shark.
On the other hand, I'll never have to hate the show or become disgusted with what it became like I have with so many other shows that had good first seasons then went down the crapper. In fact, maybe the *reason* so many of us still love Firefly so much is that it didn't get crapped on in later seasons, with played out plotlines, bored writers, and desperate attempts to keep things interesting.
Says you. (Score:4, Interesting)
The sad thing is that it's probably the whole "Stargate" aspect of the show that killed it, that it's its own fans that are twisting the knife.
I never watched the original Stargate series (well, maybe two or three episodes here and there), and I didn't watch Atlantis, either. I saw the movie way back when, thought it was moderately cool, but never really associated Universe with it because it was so long ago.
But I was looking for something on Hulu to help me kill time, and I started watching Stargate Universe. I really liked it.
Maybe as a "Stargate series," you think it's a bad one, but as someone who isn't invested in the Stargate, um, universe (lower-case u), I thought just as a series, it rocks pretty well. It holds its own very well against the state of the dreck that is pretty much all sci-fi on television these days.
It was definitely getting to the point where it would have to change to stay interesting, but that doesn't change that to date, it has been interesting. I'm sorry to see it go, and if this is how fans of the other series think of Universe, then it really turns me off of wanting to go back and watch those series. If watching those series makes me so elitist that I will no longer like Universe, then to hell with it, I'll just quit while I'm ahead.
Re:good (Score:5, Interesting)
Voyager's ratings sucked compared with previous Trek shows. On a broadcast network, in an era when cable networks were only beginning to gain steam and cut into the networks' ratings, it got barely 2.1 million viewers on its next-to-last episode (the lowest rated episode for that series). Stargate Universe is doing almost that well in a much more fragmented market and on a cable-only network with many fewer potential eyes. Voyager was a flop by comparison. It ran for five seasons in spite of its ratings because Paramount execs were scared s**tless of going down in history as "the guy who cancelled Star Trek again". It took Enterprise being a similar dog to convince them that they had worn out the franchise.
SyFy isn't canceling Universe because of poor ratings. It's one of the higher rated shows on the network, last I checked, comparable to Atlantis in its last couple of seasons. They're canceling it because NBC Universal doesn't give a flying f*** about science fiction; they know they can make ten times as much money by showing professional wrestling and absurd paranormal crap like Ghost Hunters. The same company that cancelled the first Star Trek series has once again shown exactly what they consider entertainment, and it's reality TV shows, paranormal shows, and other such dreck.
I say screw 'em. By pushing science fiction fans away, NBC Universal is sealing their fate. Science fiction lovers, being highly technically savvy, are far more likely to find a way to make internet distribution work, eliminating unnecessary middlemen like the NBC Universal and going straight to the production companies (mostly in Canada). Once such a model is proven to work for one genre, it will only be a matter of time before the other genres follow, and dinosaurs like NBC Universal will shrivel up and die. No great loss.
BattleStargate Voyager : A Human Drama (Score:4, Interesting)
Fast forward a few years and we take that formula, add in an overarching story line with an evil warring race, maybe a few extra characters to the team and, while it's not the same, it's still pretty damned good.
Fast forward a few more years and we take the mythos, remove the humour, and apply what we'd seen in the successful Battlestar Galactica franchise minus the deadly yet cool robots, and we have... a cancellation.
It seemed as though we were moving in a decent direction at the end of the most recent season, where they were finally gaining control of the ship and moving in a Star Trek Voyager direction but maybe it's too little, too late. Where's the sci-fi? Where's the space exploration? They're in deep space for crying out loud, why aren't they encountering bizarre worlds with amazing effects, aliens with odd customs and why are they continually engaging in human drama. How many episodes of Rush friction do we have to deal with?