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Sci-Fi Television

HBO Max Cancels Raised By Wolves After Two Seasons (theverge.com) 139

HBO Max has canceled the sci-fi TV show Raised by Wolves after two seasons. From a report: Originally ordered to series for the cable channel TNT, its first season premiered in 2020, and four months after HBO Max launched, it ranked as the service's top streaming series. The first two episodes were directed by Ridley Scott, and the plot, which focused on two androids raising human children on a desolate alien planet, aligned well with the hallmarks of his style. [...]

Before the cancellation, cast members were calling on watchers to advocate for the show's future. Abubakar Salim, who played "Father" in Raised by Wolves, hinted in a Twitter thread last week that the show's fate was in jeopardy with the hashtag #RenewRaisedByWolves, while referring to the merger of HBO Max parent company WarnerMedia and Discovery, which was completed in April.
HBO Max said in a statement to Variety, which first broke the news: "While we are not proceeding with a third season of Raised by Wolves, we are beyond grateful to the stellar cast and crew, our creators Aaron Guzikowski, Ridley Scott, David W. Zucker, and the entire team at Scott Free Productions, for their beautiful artistry and unique ability to immerse fans into the world of Kepler-22b."
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HBO Max Cancels Raised By Wolves After Two Seasons

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  • by i88i ( 720935 ) on Wednesday June 08, 2022 @02:05AM (#62602668)
    The show was batshit insane but I really loved watching it unfold. Definitely one of the more original shows out there.
    • by sg_oneill ( 159032 ) on Wednesday June 08, 2022 @02:12AM (#62602684)

      I really hope HBO doesnt get in the habit of cutting off popular shows mid way. SyFy got in that habbit and it completely killed any desire to watch them anymore.

      The Expanse was the last straw for me. That thing was probably the best sci-fi series since the original star trek series. Thankfully Amazon picked it up and let it run to a natural(ish) conclusion for another 3 seasons.

      • I didn't know if they had finished The Expanse, that's good to hear, I'll go back and finish watching it now. It's not really safe to get invested into a show until at least 3-4 seasons in and by then I hope they're starting to wind down to a nice conclusion.

        • Agreed. I always wanted to watch The 4400 since it has a lot of actors I love in it. But knowing I would be watching a show for 5 seasons that ends on a cliffhanger stopped me from ever buying the box set. Same with the Dead Zone - although I learned that had no ending after purchasing the 1st season box set.

        • by jacks smirking reven ( 909048 ) on Wednesday June 08, 2022 @08:29AM (#62603374)

          Credit where credits due, it happened apparently because Jeff Bezos was a fan so he played a personal role in continuing it.

          I think it did enough numbers on Amazon that they are developing another series from it.

        • They "finished" the Expanse with a bunch of dangling storylines that are incomplete, and a rushed and somewhat botched conclusion for the main cast. It felt like one of those book series where the author clearly intended for there to be another book or two to wrap it up, but just never quite got around to it so decided to tack their planned ending on midway through the story. It's good, but it's not satisfying, if that makes sense.

        • I wouldn't go as far as saying it had either a nice or an actual ending. The last couple episodes left too much still up in the air (it needed another season, a couple more episodes, or a better editor)... but it did end though.
      • by tragedy ( 27079 )

        Is The Expanse any good? I was considering watching it but then I heard that, in the show, Ceres, which is used as a mining colony, had been spun up so that it has artificial gravity, outwards with a colony built in a ring around the equator where they just drop things out of an airlock in order to launch them. There are just so many impossibilities (for example, the non-existence of naturally occurring rock with that kind of tensile strength) and impracticalities (the energy levels and technology required

        • The Expanse gets as close to realistic as possible for a futuristic scifi show. It is the best i've ever seen. The only thing I have seen that beats it from a hard science perspective is For All Mankind.
          • by tragedy ( 27079 )

            The Expanse gets as close to realistic as possible for a futuristic scifi show.

            So is the spinning up Ceres thing just a big exception then? I just can't personally reconcile that with the concept of hard sci fi. The gulf is just too great.

            • by jacks smirking reven ( 909048 ) on Wednesday June 08, 2022 @09:23AM (#62603540)

              I would say even in terms of pushing the boundaries of realism like the case of Ceres they still have thought things through further than most shows would, like the fact that a small planet like that would actually have widely varying degrees of gravity depending where you are to even how the planet would have to be changed to hold itself together under increased spin. Sometimes narratives and budgets require bending the rules.

              The writers actually did a panel at Cal Tech to go over the science behind the books and shows which should give you an idea that they are not totally pulling things out from their asses.

              The Science Behind "The Expanse" - 1/25/17 [youtube.com]

          • by inicom ( 81356 )

            I stopped watching early in second season.
            To me, it felt like it fell into the Battlestar Galactica trap - it became more of a soap opera placed in a sci-fi setting than an actual sci-fi show.

            • More like real life, then?
            • by tragedy ( 27079 )

              I stopped watching early in second season.
              To me, it felt like it fell into the Battlestar Galactica trap - it became more of a soap opera placed in a sci-fi setting than an actual sci-fi show.

              That's not really a showstopper for me. As long as they don't pull all sorts of railroad plot nonsense to force the captain or whatever into contrived "dark" situations. You know, the sort where they have a "terrible choice" to make when there's a perfectly obvious alternative.

              For example, _Stargate:Universe_ - obviously trying to copy _Galactica_ - had an episode where there was a soldier trapped under debris after a shuttle crash and there's a ticking clock before the ship automatically leaves without the

        • I can't tell if this is a troll or now but The Expanse, while not perfect by any stretch, is probably one of the better if not best example of a show doing "hard" sci-fi very well, a lot of the science is shown correctly, from how spaceships would actually travel and get into orbit, the debilitating effects of being in low-g for years and the actual practical limits of ballistic combat in space. There is definite moments of suspended disbelief but I appreciate that the show made a good faith effort to not

          • by tragedy ( 27079 )

            Not a troll. Seriously though, in the show is Ceres spun up so that, at the surface at the equator, centrifugal force provides artificial gravity outwards, away from the center of the planetary body? Consider that for a moment. That means that any and all loose objects on the surface, except maybe right at the "poles" will have "fallen" off into space (either right out into the solar system or into an orbital cloud around the asteroid). Beyond that, the entire mass of the asteroid at the equator is experien

            • in the show is Ceres spun up so that,

              Dude why are you obsessed on this? I watched the show and have literally no idea because of how little time was spent on Ceres. But I can guarantee you whatever they did is realistic because they were very careful in all other regards.

              • by tragedy ( 27079 )

                I suppose I'm "obsessed" because it's apparently making a claim to being hard science fiction. Real hard science fiction does not have such blatant unrealistic physical impossibilities in it. I'm not sure why you think you can guarantee that it's realistic, because it absolutely is not. Consider a mountain, bigger than Everest, bigger than Mons Olympus. So big that you could fit hundreds of both of those mountains in it. Now picture a ceiling a thousand kilometers high above the Earth, and that mountain is

            • Are you wrong about the science? Not at all. However for me in judging the realism of a film or TV series it has to be judged relative to other examples in the medium. If you are going to judge everything against the most reality accurate, most hardcore rules then probably best just to stick to books or even really just avoid fiction altogether.

              People need to tell a story and sometimes you have to bend the rules to tell that story. Compared to other works in the medium of visual art (TV, Movies, Video Gam

              • by tragedy ( 27079 )

                People need to tell a story and sometimes you have to bend the rules to tell that story. Compared to other works in the medium of visual art (TV, Movies, Video Games) I would put the Expanse as one of the better examples in terms of science accuracy.

                People need to tell a story, sure, but a spun up Ceres does not seem necessary for that story. It seems like just a backdrop. Maybe I'm wrong and it was crucial to the plot in some way. Otherwise it seems like a completely pointless detail. Not just as a backdrop, but as something to do in universe. Why would you ever need to spin up an asteroid to create outward artificial gravity? I can't see how it would help mining at all. It seems like it would be way easier and safer in a low gravity environment. The

                • 1. If you watch the show it will become clear that living on Ceres and other asteroids is actually very crucial to the story which after all is about people, not science.

                  2. If you don't find transporters jarring then we are fully into subjective evaluations then. Any show that takes place on another planet at this point is doing some degree of "magic" because at this moment any human travel at close to 0.25c or above is "magic" from where we are now. Also I never claimed it was "real world" physics just

                  • by tragedy ( 27079 )

                    1. If you watch the show it will become clear that living on Ceres and other asteroids is actually very crucial to the story which after all is about people, not science.

                    I'm sure that living there is crucial to the story. Having the asteroid improbably spun up does not seem like it would be. As we're both aware, spinning it up that way would only provide decent simulated gravity near the equator. Mostly the only place it's actually useful is habitats at the poles and there are methods to do that which are literally trillions (and that's probably an underestimate of how many times) of times less energy intensive and simpler.

                    2. If you don't find transporters jarring then we are fully into subjective evaluations then.

                    I find transporters jarring when they're in near-fu

            • Ceres is spun up, but only to a partial G, not to a full G.

              They have a scene with a small bird flying where its wings are barely moving to demonstrate how low the G forces is. It is a minor portion of the show, as most of the show doesn't happen in Ceres. It is like The Martian, they made serious efforts at being as scientifically accurate as possible without ruining the story. Their engines also run on fairy dust levels of efficiency, and there isn't really a protomolecule, hard sci-fi is hard, they mad

              • I haven't run the numbers but chances are that even 0.01 g would violate asteroid material strength conditions. I mean, a solid steel cable tears itself apart at just 20 km at 1 g. Here you have 500 km of rock "hanging" from itself.

                Their engines also run on fairy dust levels of efficiency

                Do they? They're supposed to be quite normal fusion drives, with thrust increased through water injection, from what I recall (pure fusion drive wouldn't have very high thrust). I'm not sure what about them would require "fairy dust levels of efficiency".

                • http://toughsf.blogspot.com/20... [blogspot.com]

                  I'm not able to find it now, but there was a quote way back from the author James Corey about the most impossible of the features of his universe, and he said something about the engine efficiency. The ships in the show/book don't have very large fuel bays, which in reality, most of the ship would be fuel for the kind of burns they do without refueling between.

                  As for Ceres, I don't know how much spin it could take, but there are asteroids that spin, though probably not as f

                  • by tragedy ( 27079 )

                    I'm not able to find it now, but there was a quote way back from the author James Corey about the most impossible of the features of his universe, and he said something about the engine efficiency. The ships in the show/book don't have very large fuel bays, which in reality, most of the ship would be fuel for the kind of burns they do without refueling between.

                    From what I can see, it still looks like Ceres not flying apart is the most impossible thing of the two. No amount of fusing the rock together will provide it with more tensile strength than steel as K. S. Kyosuke said (and the numbers were for the absolute strongest kind of steel).

                    Asteroids that spin generally are not going to spin fast enough for material at the surface to overcome the surface gravity by any significant amount precisely because they would come apart. One thing to note about Ceres is that

        • by clovis ( 4684 )

          If you can't get past the Ceres station technology, then your brain will freeze up completely when they introduce the proto-molecule.
          So, no I cannot recommend the show.

          Just for fun, here is a writeup on the Ceres Station laying out some of the Ceres problems.
          https://sciencevshollywood.com... [sciencevshollywood.com]
          My solution is to wrap Ceres in a spider silk web made by giant space spiders.

          Besides, worrying about Ceres will take up much less of your time than trying to figure out how you would get ANY of the females in the show i

          • by tragedy ( 27079 )

            Oh dear. That writeup brings up a lot more issues to my mind. It had already occurred to me that landing a spaceship at the equator would be a difficult task and you would have to land at the poles, but the really large speed increase going from the poles to the equator would create some interesting forces moving the ship from the poles to the equator to launch again. That article reminded me that I'd seen the clip of one of the characters pour a drink and there's a huge effect on the pour from the Coriolis

        • > Ceres, which is used as a mining colony, had been spun up so that it has artificial gravity, outwards with a colony built in a ring around the equator where they just drop things out of an airlock in order to launch them

          Completely infeasible... unless you assume that all the surface ice and most of the useful materials on the surface stripped away such that the planet's size was greatly reduced... and what was left was mostly forgable metals... ?

          Then it would be little more than a starting point for a

      • I wouldn't consider the ending "wrapped up" by any means, there were several major plot threads left completely dangling. But given the way the books progressed trying to do season 7 would have been hard.
      • Part of the reason why a lot of successful shows are stuck with Nostalgia pandering, is the general difficulty getting a new show off the ground and having to compete with established shows that people now have access too.

        It takes a while for us to know and connect to the characters, and this is often slow when there is a more complex story arc going on as well. Back in the old days shows were too episodic to get truly complex stories, so it was rather easier to focus on a the few major characters. So we e

      • > SyFy got in that habbit and it completely killed any desire to watch them anymore.

        Indeed. SyFy has done this multiple [screenrant.com] times:

        * Continuum (2012)
        * Dark Matter
        * The Expanse

        It is like the execs are completely clueless about good Sci-Fi.

    • Season 1 was this great slow burn scifi that takes a left turn into extra weird territory that just keeps amping up the wtf. I attempted to summarize the plot for someone once and they couldn't take me serious. I loved every second of it.

      Season 2 felt a bit aimless. The plot wasn't of the same quality.

      • I had not started season 2 yet and chances are I will not now but after the first I agree, it had a bit of that feeling like a band having an amazing first album.

        You spent years writing and perfecting all these great songs, it was a big hit, now do it all over again with less time and more pressure.

      • They slashed the budget and the season length for season 2. That affected the story the writers could tell.

    • by Askmum ( 1038780 )
      So if viewers liked it and apparently there were quite a few viewers (or why would it be "ranked as the service's top streaming series"), why does it get cancelled?
      • So if viewers liked it and apparently there were quite a few viewers (or why would it be "ranked as the service's top streaming series"), why does it get cancelled?

        Because after Netflix had such a massive fall, all of the streaming services are extremely skittish about what they produce, especially if it's any way out of the mainstream and/or expensive... and Raised By Wolves was both.

        Right after Netflix dropped, I was pretty sure Raised By Wolves was toast... it's a shame as I also really liked it. Maybe

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The first season was good, but they abandoned the really interesting core idea: Robots bringing up human children. Instead it became about shitty CGI flying snakes and religion.

      • by Misagon ( 1135 )

        It was because the second seasons was so frustrating that it is such a blow that the show is cancelled.

        I want to see the series redeem itself by tying up the loose ends and explain the weird crap to make it comprehensible.

    • I agree. I really enjoyed it. After I finished the last episode of season 2 I was like, "I hope they don't cancel it now!"

      I guess I jinxed it. Sorry guys.

    • by clovis ( 4684 )

      The show was batshit insane but I really loved watching it unfold. Definitely one of the more original shows out there.

      I'm really enjoying Raised by Wolves so far, but I haven't gotten to the flying snakes part yet.
      I suspect that any show that has religion as a major component in it is always going to be walking on thin ice, no matter how they present it or how many viewers it has.

  • by SlashDotCanSuckMy777 ( 6182618 ) on Wednesday June 08, 2022 @02:16AM (#62602690)

    Waste of time watching a half competed story.

    • by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Wednesday June 08, 2022 @03:25AM (#62602788)

      Waste of time watching a half competed story.

      Your approach is silly. For most shows a "season" tells a self contained story. While it may not wrap up every tiny plot point in the wider saga it is portraying, for most shows you can watch a season and get a completely satisfactory feeling of having seen a start, a middle and an end, often with a tiny teaser of something still to come.

      Raised by Wolves is no different. When I finished season 1 I suspected a season 2 was coming, but wasn't left with a gaping hole that the core plot point of season 1 was left open. Speaking of which I haven't seen season 2 yet.

      All you're doing is pointlessly denying yourself potentially fun entertainment on dubious grounds. Especially in America where shows are designed for perpetuity until popularity drops to the point of cancellation. You may as well give up on TV.

      • Waste of time watching a half competed story.

        Your approach is silly. For most shows a "season" tells a self contained story.

        Not really. Most shows just meander around from season to season until they find out they're not going to have another one, and then they try to make it all make sense. Most shows don't have a cohesive plan, and it shows.

        Raised by Wolves is no different. When I finished season 1 I suspected a season 2 was coming, but wasn't left with a gaping hole that the core plot point of season 1 was left open. Speaking of which I haven't seen season 2 yet.

        So just to be clear, raised by wolves is no different even though you don't know yet if it's different because you haven't seen the second season? Look, we found a psychic!

        • by tragedy ( 27079 )

          Not really. Most shows just meander around from season to season until they find out they're not going to have another one, and then they try to make it all make sense. Most shows don't have a cohesive plan, and it shows.

          What, like _Lost_ where fan theory was that there were no answers and that they were actually all dead and in some sort of weird purgatory and the showrunners insisted that there were answers and that they were alive and there would be a conclusion that made sense of it all. Then the conclusion was that they were all dead and in some sort of weird purgatory and there were no answers? Note that the writers apparently say that is not the case and that they really were alive on an island and just all dead at t

          • What, like _Lost_ where fan theory was that there were no answers and that they were actually all dead and in some sort of weird purgatory and the showrunners insisted that there were answers and that they were alive and there would be a conclusion that made sense of it all. Then the conclusion was that they were all dead and in some sort of weird purgatory and there were no answers? Note that the writers apparently say that is not the case and that they really were alive on an island and just all dead at the end, but that apparently was not obvious to people who actually watched the show, so I'm going with they were dead the whole time.

            Nobody who was paying attention thought that. It's made abundantly clear in the show what's actually happening.

            I've never watched _Lost_.

            That much is obvious. Spoilers ahead, FWIW: Most of Lost takes place on a remote island where mysterious things happen, including the deaths of quite a few main characters. There were a lot of fan theories about the island, whether it was a government experiment, the afterlife, limbo, someone's dream, etc. None of these were correct. The first five seasons, and most of the sixth, all take pla

        • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

          Not really. Most shows just meander around from season to season until they find out they're not going to have another one, and then they try to make it all make sense. Most shows don't have a cohesive plan, and it shows.

          Most TV show episodes have only been written at best a few weeks earlier. It's extremely rare for a TV show to have everything completely laid out before the show's first episode if filmed.

          This is generally because of the way the TV shows are done - you generally get a pilot and a couple of

        • So just to be clear, raised by wolves is no different even though you don't know yet if it's different because you haven't seen the second season? Look, we found a psychic!

          No. It's no different because Season 1 had a premise, a story, presented a conflict, and resolved that conflict all before the season was finished. Whether a season 2 exists is completely irrelevant which is precisely the fundamental point I was making.

          If you're going to quote me at least read what you're quoting before posting.

      • I'd agree if most shows didn't end the season with a big cliff hanger.

        That said, I enjoyed the V series remake and was able to view the final episode as humans losing with possible hope. The Colony was another one that I enjoyed without an ending.

        That said, there are a lot of shows who's unresolved endings are just painful and make me wish I hadn't started the show.

    • by Ecuador ( 740021 )

      I prefer to go to complete series as well nowadays. As much as I liked for example the single seasons of Odyssey 5 and Earth Above and Beyond, leaving the stories unfinished was quite annoying. Sometimes they do come back and give us a conclusion, like with Firefly or Sense8, but I'd rather not risk it given so much content.
      It's fine if a show gets cancelled but had sort of told a story first, just had a sort of open-ended finale - e.g. Freaks and Geeks.

    • That's how you guarantee a series never gets completed.

  • Didn't expect HDO Max to pull a Netflix so darn soon. This is in line with cancelling fringe shows such as the OA, The Expanse (dropped by Netflix, saved by Prime, then dropped) or Sense8 (saved by Netflix but ALSO dropped). It seems to me top execs in streaming services must have something against the spiritual/esoteric or deeply Scy-Fy shows, even if they actually make it. Star Trek/Wars must be the only exceptions.

    • Re:Disgusting (Score:4, Interesting)

      by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Wednesday June 08, 2022 @02:48AM (#62602744)

      It seems to me top execs in streaming services must have something against the spiritual/esoteric or deeply Scy-Fy shows, even if they actually make it.

      It's more likely they "have something against" shows that don't draw a large enough audience.

      It's the same old issue that's been killing shows since back in the day when broadcast TV still ruled the roost.

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Season 1 was mostly decent, the snake baby thing was where it started to go off the rails. Season 2 had it's head firmly wedged up its own arse so I'm not surprised viewers abandoned it.

        It feels like they had a good idea for half a season, but that's all and HBO couldn't help them figure the rest of it out.

        • But it's a snake, right?, And it flies.... Oh what's the point, who could write a story that went somewhere with that?
          • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            It reminds me of One Punch Man. Guy had a great idea... But nothing else. Once the obvious gags were out the way it was directionless and quickly became uninteresting.

            • It reminds me of One Punch Man. Guy had a great idea... But nothing else. Once the obvious gags were out the way it was directionless and quickly became uninteresting.

              Season One, with self contained episodes and short arcs was fantastic.

              Season two, with one long arc, not so much.

              • Season two lacked some of the finesse of season one story telling wise, but Season one only had self contained stories at the start. It became very clear there was an overarching story being told and if you just randomly skip from episode 1 to episode 10 you wouldn't have the faintest idea what is going on.

                There's nothing bad about having a long arc. The problem was season two was just rubbish and barely about one punch man at all. The protagonist was absent completely in some episodes.

            • by tragedy ( 27079 )

              It reminds me of One Punch Man. Guy had a great idea... But nothing else. Once the obvious gags were out the way it was directionless and quickly became uninteresting.

              But is it more or less directionless than the typical anime where the protagonist continuously gains more and more power, but so do their enemies (or just new enemies appear who are more powerful than the last ones, but have, for some reason, been waiting their turn). Those technically have a direction (protaganist keeps unlocking new powers and abilities) but it still often seems kind of pointless.

              • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

                What you describe is "battle manga", or in your case "battle anime" I guess. At least they usually have short term direction, One Punch Man didn't even seem to have that.

                • by tragedy ( 27079 )

                  I was just thinking about how, in many cases, that kind of anime/manga can often come off as a bit of a tedious grind, at least as far as the action goes. One Punch Man seems like a bit of a reaction to that. There's no more grind, he's just at the pinnacle and there's nowhere else to go. Is it tedious because there is no grind?

                  • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

                    That was the basic idea. The author got it when he grinded too much in the early stages of an RPG, and was then able to plough through the rest of it effortlessly, defeating most opponents in one punch. The game became boring as a result.

                    In the manga the protagonist does the same thing, trains really hard before starting his career as a crime fighter, only to discover that it's boring because every opponent, even Earth-shattering asteroids, is dispatched with a single punch.

                    They try to flesh it out by intro

        • Season 1 was mostly decent, the snake baby thing was where it started to go off the rails. Season 2 had it's head firmly wedged up its own arse so I'm not surprised viewers abandoned it.

          It feels like they had a good idea for half a season, but that's all and HBO couldn't help them figure the rest of it out.

          Agreed. I enjoyed the show for the first few episodes, if nothing else for its glimpses of a technologically advanced human society where all of today's religions had been somehow displaced by a completel

    • that's all. So they have to be more selective in what they keep. It also means they don't have a lot of chances to get things right.

      Maybe a different model is called for. What Anime's been doing is put out 12-13 eps, stop for a bit, and see if the DVDs and merch (where the real money is) sells enough. But Netflix doesn't like selling DVDs since they bite into streaming revenue. The way anime got around that is with "bonus" content (mostly uncensored panty shots) on the DVD or, for really popular shows,
    • It seems to me top execs in streaming services must have something against the spiritual/esoteric or deeply Scy-Fy shows, even if they actually make it.

      I'm sure lots of executives have something against shows that are expensive to make and serve only a niche audience.

    • Mostly because Star Trek and Star Wars are now spiritually as deep as a puppy's piss puddle.

      • Mostly because Star Trek and Star Wars are now spiritually as deep as a puppy's piss puddle.

        The human mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.

        This is both a strength and a huge weakness.
        Trek characters can "explore strange new worlds" in perpetuity.
        But Trek viewers can't third-person watch the exploration of "strange new worlds" in perpetuity, because with each episode the mind expands and thus needs to organize its knowledge. So it starts sorting stories according to their conceptual abstracts, which over time get grouped into categories. Once the human mind has

    • For better or worse, NuTrek seems to drive ratings (and thus subscriptions). I'm not a fan of it personally but there must be millions who are for it to continue to spawn more and more new seasons and shows.

    • It's not hard to imagine a HBO Exec watching season two and saying 'what is this shit'? While it had some visual and narrative ideas that were interesting, it was a hot f/n mess.
    • The Expanse was NOT dropped by Netflix it was dropped by SyFY network and amazon picked it up as an Amazon Original on Prime. The Expanse was not dropped again by Prime the season came to an end because it is based on the books. The next thing that happens in the books are 30years into the future so the story had to end at season 6. They are even talking about a new series based on the rest of the books.
  • One of the few actually different shows on... guess there wasn't enough gratuitous un-necessary sex and violence in it for them.
    • enough gratuitous un-necessary sex and violence in it for them

      I don't know, I'm sure latex fetishists thought the show was raunchier than anything else HBOMax had put out.

  • Eventually every series will be canceled in Hollywood. If the story has no end, why should I even start watching it?

    • You could make the same argument for Firefly (which I finally got to watch this winter and
      recommend!). At least you know in advance how much of a time investment a show is.

      BTW, with broadcast TV dead for fiction, this will only get worse, since streaming services have more
      data on the success of a show and kill of series much faster.

      Maybe you should get into foreign drama (like Scandinavian series) from countries funded by tv licence money.
      These usually have more stamina to keep a show they committed to on t

    • Unless you're watching a TV show based on a book, there is pretty much zero chance the writers have a cohesive story beyond a single season. Most of the best shows (and seasons) of TV are based on books.

  • by bloodhawk ( 813939 ) on Wednesday June 08, 2022 @05:10AM (#62602960)
    first season was so bad I never bothered with the second
  • It was Lost. But in _space_. Worse, actually. Each decision faced by any character spins the Wheel of Idiocy which, as this is populated by fields bearing only the numbers 9 or 10, results in said character striking out confidently with 9- or 10-level dumbass derring-do. Millennia-old android appears on the scene? Father: I've got so many qu... Director: SPIN THE WHEEL GODDAMIT! Father: I think you should look after the children. Laters!
    • by Kludge ( 13653 )

      It was Lost. But in _space_.

      But not Lost in Space [imdb.com].

      • It was Lost. But in _space_.

        But not Lost in Space [imdb.com].

        Which is a very appropriate show to bring up when peaking of spinning a wheel to produce chaotic storylines where characters do whatever random/facile/sentimental thing is required by the writers to set up the next plot cliffhanger.

        That final season was a great workout for the muscles which control eye rolling.

  • A TV show got cancelled. It happens every day. So what else is new?
  • It's was more artsy than story. Very hard to watch.

  • About as original a story line as you can get, but it was a little hard to watch try to pull different plot lines together, and God forbid you miss a few episodes, suddenly thereâ(TM)s this ginormous Monster Zero snake thing flying around killing everyone⦠wtf

  • I never saw it, but it sounds like it might feature some of the regulars on Slashdot?

    (When there is no Funny, be the funny. But also I recommend not holding your breath waiting for me to get funny.)

  • Warner Bros. Discovery is looking to merge HBO and Discovery. Anything original with a large enough budget was simply axed pro-forma.

  • by Outland Traveller ( 12138 ) on Wednesday June 08, 2022 @04:36PM (#62604946)

    I am a fan of the scifi genre, and started watching it with modest expectations. I was able to finish season 1 but towards the end I found it increasingly unenjoyable and difficult to watch.

    There's so many parts of this show that feel grating to me. Whether it is the overall casting, the android voices and inflections, or the less-than-nuanced religious lore, or the way you feel like you're being lead around by your nose through the plot by bunch of predictably dramatic actions worthy of a laugh-track sitcom.. the story did not appear to flow naturally... There were many rough edges and I could have overlooked any one of them with the usual suspension of disbelief for the sake of the story, but in this case it was too high of a hill to climb with not enough reward. It wasn't for me. It was everything that the Expanse is not.

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