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'Stargate: SG-1' Cancelled
Ant writes "The Sci-Fi channel has announced that it will not be renewing its (very popular) original series Stargate SG-1 for another season.The spinoff series Stargate: Atlantis will get the nod, though, airing for a fourth year. SG-1 aired its 200th episode on August 18th, and the SF series is the longest-running SF show on American television." Gateworld has further details: "New episodes of both Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis continue Fridays this summer starting at 9 p.m. Eastern/Pacific, leading up to the mid-season finale on September 22. The second half of the season will begin in March, leading to SG-1's final bow on SCI FI in June."
It could also be there simply isn't much more story to tell. A lot of fans will agree that there wasn't much point to the last two seasons. The main story threads were cleaned up at the end of season 8 (in an episode entitled "Threads" no less). Introducing the new Ori really took away from the series, as there wasn't much originality in how they were used. I am looking forward to seeing Morena Baccarin on Friday, but in my mind that has been the only highlight of the last two seasons (and the few good laughs I got from 200).
In general, all good things should come to an end (especially with an episode entitled "All Good Things...") and it actually isn't that uncommon to end a series at its height.
Personally, I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, I don't like where the show's been heading. The Ori aren't good villains. I don't like the concept, and the execution has been even worse. They're fighting gods, for all intents and purposes. It's the same problem as Superman: you're constantly getting stronger because instead of writing within the same levels of powers, writers take the easy out and make a challenge that is overcome by making the protagonist(s) stronger, instead of writing for the same strengths, but dealing with choices they make and the consequences they face. On the other hand, the characters are well fleshed out, well written, and the show is still good in SPITE of these crappy villains. The relationships are among the best written on TV right now, in my mind only second to Battlestar Galactica, maybe tying with House. I only hope that they can end the series as well as it would have ended had it not been renewed after Season 7 like they thought.
"If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living."
- Seneca
You nailed it. This is my biggest problem with science fiction today. They give too much power to the good guys, and then they have to scale up the bad guys to compensate. Eventually the battle reaches a point where you can't even relate to it anymore. The matrix committed this error along with nearly every anime I've ever seen.
My other problem is that eventually you end up at a point where some genius with access to the script decides to, for example, destroy a sun in an easily repeatable way, and then for the rest of the series, blowing up a sun is a solution for every problem but has to be ignored. It is short sighted and every writer should read their script and look for these obvious and completely avoidable future plot holes.