Slashdot Mirror
Sarah Connor Chronicles — Why It Died
brumgrunt writes "Sarah Connor was a non-populist, meditative, complex piece of television on a smash-bang, show-me-the-ratings kind of network. The two were never going to get on. Plus: how the Terminator name proved more hindrance than aid."
... you're a fanboy, aren't you?
Too bad because i liked it. The first couple of episodes were painful to watch but later on it actually turned into a good bit of sci-fi. Plus it had the babe from firefly in it.
Sarah who? I don't think I've seen this.
...in some fashion. Fox has learned that geeks buy DVDs of TV shows they once loved. Sometimes they even make new content.
It had Summer Glau in it. Jewel Staite and Morena Baccarin are the babes from Firefly. Little Summer needs to grow up a bit, and eat a sammich or two before I'm willing to call her a babe.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
Not enough scenes of Summer Glau in a wet t-shirt.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Oh, you mean dull. Or as Homer Simpson would say:
B-o-o-r-i-n-n-g.
My blog
A simpler explanation is that this show was just another attempt to increase the profits of the terminator franchise. I suspect that given the number of people involved, and the number of people that had to be paid off to gain the rights to the characters, ideas, and franchise made the show too expensive. p It seems to me that the same show could have been made with new characters at a lower cost. I am sure the network thought the fact that this was terminator meant that more people would watch it and they would recover the additional costs. Obviously they were wrong.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Watched 15 minutes of the first ep, thought it was stupid, never came back. Don't feel like I missed anything.
Get a life, people. This isn't Farscape we're talking about.
Simple answer. It sucked.
haha
The reason it died, is because the first season and a half were mediocre, and it only really ramped up to 'being good' right towards the end of season 2.
As slow starters go, it's not really any suprise it's canned.
Which is to say, "Elitist, Slow-Moving, Muddled."
Never watched the show, but thanks for the tip; you've told me all I need to know to stay away from the torrents and DVDs.
I think more to the point it was none of those things. He's using the terms to rationalize why the show was canceled. Basically saying the show was too good for FOX and that's what FOX canceled it but if it was on another network, it would have lived on...honestly, no, because it SUCKED!
Bottom line: another Logon's Run.
The reason I want to see the movie today is because I enjoyed the TV series.
I have to wonder if part of the problem is the "ratings" system itself. Isn't it possible that while Neilsen families aren't watching it, college kids and others are watching it... owe WERE watching it?
Fox and other networks are going to have to put up their OWN bit torrent shares of their TV shows and start seeing for themselves which ones are the most popular and which ones aren't. It won't stop people from looking at the TV when it's on. It won't stop people from buying the DVDs when they come out. (I downloaded every episode of the terminator TV series, bought season one and am waiting for season two on DVD so I can clear up the space on my drives.)
These media publishers and their digital phobias... they need to USE the digital and not fear it so much.
1. Moved time slots about a dozen times and finally was paired with another lackluster show: Dollhouse. Let the flame wars begin!
2. Summer Glau as a terminator? Let's just call her the model iRiver and be done with it. Let the lawsuits begin!
3. Science fiction? I don't think so. This show was a trap from the get-go. It's a DRAMA. Don't try to fool me. Let the purist cleansing begin!
4. Sarah Connor: showing the world one episode at a time that the only thing that will save us is feminazi sentiment. Let the misandristic comments begin!
5. Not nearly enough Shirley Manson. Mmmmm.
It was a good advertising, a nice marketing move to promote the new Terminator movie. Here are the release dates: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0438488/releaseinfo Except for the Premiere, the movie will show up on 21 May 2009. oh... wait... what day is it today ?
because it was on Fox. nothing good can survive on fox. just look at Firefly. Joss Wheaton needs to get Dollhouse on another network, or it will not last the year.
The first movie came out in the 80s, the second one was a smashing success. The third one sucked and Arnie is Governor so couldn't care less about it anymore. Why was the rest going to be any good? My expectations for the movie coming out are low, the only reason worth seeing giving it a shot is for Christian Bale. How far can they take the story with the termniator franchise anyway?
Analytic & algebraic topology of locally Euclidean meterization of infinitely differentiable Riemmanian manifold
Why it Died: cost > income
Combination - fun iPhone puzzling
The show was good, a handful of people here saying it sucked makes no difference in the big picture. What the article dosn't talk about was the change-over in corporate leadership and show time scheduling. As the studio leadership changed over, they had new people take over that wanted to push their perfered shows; the re-do the scheduleing and put Terminator: TSCC at a time slot that was certin to kill the show, just so they could take the better time slot and push their programming. Also, they never really announced when they changed from the orignal show day and time. The die hard fans picked up on this, but the regular viewers who enjoyed the show had no clue and figured, hey guess it got cancelled and never bothered to look into it further, so the ratings dropped, and the show finally did get cancelled. Too bad, it was a good story line, and they never had filler episodes, each episode was a continuation of the previous, which i liked very much.
god damn it! every time a show starts to actually pick up steam and get good they throw it off the air. how can they leave us with a cliffhanger like that?!
"A non-populist, meditative, complex piece of television on a smash-bang, show-me-the-ratings kind of network"
Translation:
non-populist = unpopular;
meditative = asks sophomoric meaning-of-life questions that appeal to angsty teens;
complex = employs loghorrea and ductile plot devices to do so;
piece of television = recreational medium, giving the brain a rest from thought and concentration;
smash-bang = not an epic novel;
show-me-the-ratings = business.
If there are enough of you that disagree, feel free to get together and found some organisation dedicated to producing your idea of entertainment. Back in 1992, Demon Internet - the first real commercial UK ISP - started its operations by getting enough people to pledge money toward start-up costs. I hear the Internet's doing quite well now. What are you waiting for?
Maybe it was because audience size couldn't draw in the advertising to cover production costs and make a profit?
I actually thought it had been renewed for another season, oh well.
I ignored the "Terminator" part of the show and let it stand on its own. From that standpoint it was OK. Certainly better than all the "Ow, my balls!" crap on TV and at least the show progressed, unlike some others (*cough* Lost).
The ratio of people to cake is too big
From the sounds of it, the story was written in such a way that television was not the right way of transmitting it. If, like the link said, you needed to have seen every single episode to fully understand what was going on - then something like iTunes (or other download service) could be a perfect home for it.
If the programme is really that amazing (I don't know, I never watched it) then there could be a good chance to make money that way and so fund future seasons.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
FOX has a pretty horrendous track record with Science Fiction shows in general(Space : Above and Beyond, Firefly and now this to name a few.) Why don't they just stick with what they know is beyond me. I'd wager we can kiss Fringe goodbye next year, too.
I watched it a couple of times to see some cool terminator robots. Everyone was human-looking. Yawn for no-budget and no cool terminator robots.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Movie 1. Robot from the future comes back in time to kill someone but another human is also sent back in time to try to save them.
Movie 2. See 1 but there is another robot sent back instead of a human.
Movie 3. See 2.
TV series, see 3.
Will the killer robot kill the hero this week? Will the hero robot kill the killer robot this week? And the plot never changes. The killer robot doesn't take out the rest of humanity. It doesn't even try to kill his grandparents. Great-grandparents. Etc.
When I first heard about the show I didn't bother to watch it. These were basically my assumptions about the show. I'm not saying that my assumptions were correct but that this is just what I was thinking
1. self-fulfilling prophecy. I figured it would get canceled so I didn't want to start watching a show that wouldn't have a proper ending.
2. no one from the films was involved. Sure the govenator is too busy to be in it but when I saw that no one involved in making the films was in it I wasn't that interested.
3. the scrawny girl from Firefly is supposed to be a Terminator? Just the idea seemed lame and meant to target horny boys.
4. there was a movie coming out that had nothing to do with the show. So it seemed kind of pointless since this tv show didn't seem to "count" as a "real" Terminator product since the new movie didn't have anything to do with it.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
Mod me troll if you want, but that show simple wasn't good. Why would I watch such a lame show?
I can understand trying to build a storyline to try to build a base to build the story on, but to spend an entire season doing so...not the way to make good TV. They spent the entire season moving towards something, but we never really got any idea of the something until the last 45 minutes of the season.
let me spell out a basic point here: Terminator = Action there was little action this season.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
because it sucked!
Now that they've cancelled this show as well as My Name Is Earl, the networks can fill the space with more reality and talent shows.
The sad fact is that given the amount of attention Susan Boyle has received, I can see this happening quite easily.
Summation 2
Well, it's better now than when the rednecks all voted for the dry drunk they wanted to have a beer with.
Networks are now interested in "reality" shows where they can get a bunch of stupid, likeable-only-by-morons, "contestants" to make complete twats of themselves, and who are naive enough to be easily manipulated into becoming a corporate cash cow and puppet. That is, until the fickle audience grow weary of them; usually within a few weeks.
A lot of TV shows have vanished from our screens because of this: Terminator, My Name is Earl, Scrubs, Frasier, Samantha Who... the list is endless.
And when you have much of the western world swooning over a 48 year old singer who shows up to Britain's Got Talent, why the fuck would you want to pay script writers, actors, researchers, and marketers? These people cost money; they're a drain on profits.
From the boardroom's point of view, you can't beat a bunch of teenagers with mobile phones who are willing to text 30 votes a night, at £1 per message to shove someone onto a global stage and thereby generate even more revenue when you dig them out a year later.
This is the future of television, people; that's why I watch so little of it these days.
THE HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS - CC Licensed Sci-Fi Novel
I didn't know it was canceled until just now. Really, I thought it was in hiatus after that cliff hanger ending of the last episode.
It's not easy to get in my Hulu Que, now that Galactica is gone all that's left beside Terminator is Dollhouse, Family Guy, Simpsons, and American Dad.
It's easy to tell which major network is the only one I watch. That, and that I don't have/need cable.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
I didn't give this show as much of a chance as I intended to. I watched five seconds, in which all the characters had to run naked across a highway for some reason. In that five seconds, I saw twenty things which conflicted with established continuity from the movies.
"Oh, |/FOX\| is running some vaguely-scifi show which uses the name "Terminator" in a shallow attempt to gain ratings, while pulling cheap stunts to make people giggle."
end of program
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
My assumption was that it was going to be a cheesy capitalization on the Terminator franchise to drum up attention for T4. Fortunately, episodes were on Hulu (take note network execs) and it quickly became my favorite television series.
I'm sure this was a pervasive problem. The movies are mostly generic action movies (although I think T2 stands out). The best selling points of the Sarah Connor Chronicles--intricate plot, interesting and well-developed characters, emotional conflict, etc.--are exactly what you would assume to be weak-points if you watched the movies. Even though I enjoyed the movies, I was ready to skip the series, because even if they kept up with blockbuster quality shooting, I just didn't think that I'd like to see the same kind of plot stretched over a season. But now I wish the movies had been more like the series.
I loved especially how they would often shoot episodes using different styles of storytelling. It is a nice break from formula-shows (another huge surprise coming from the Terminator franchise!) and shows a true mastery of skill.
I am alright with the series ending where it did, however. They tied up all the loose ends introduced previously despite popping a few new ones, and I'd rather have a great series come to a dignified close than have it devolve into some dumbed down marketing-droid version which would force me to start hating it.
I hope like other well-done film, which was not immediately popular, that the Sarah Connor Chronicles will gradually gain wide renown and inspire emulation.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
IANYAUAFB.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Weirdo.
Anyone who actually watched the show would know the plot was not like that.
It wasn't some Kung-Fu the Legend Continues. It had a very complex plot with many main characters. Outstanding writing, acting, suspense, and plot development made this the best show on television.
One of the reasons mentioned is the same reason I didn't like Heros and 24. If you missed the first couple of episodes, you may as well go home.
I'm pretty good at gathering threads up just from watching a show for a few minutes (pisses off my wife who can't seem to follow along and she's watched 24 from the first episode).
So I suspect, and the article seems to confirm it, that the show was written with an eye towards releasing it to DVD.
My wife and I watched Heroes first season and I really like it. Enough that I wanted to watch it when it came on for the second season. But with the commercials every 10 minutes and 5 minutes of commercials at the end, I finally bailed. I'm sure I'll get the DVD for the second series and will probably like it a lot.
24 is similar. It's written from start to finish. Like a long movie. You wouldn't come in in the middle of a movie and expect to understand what's going on.
So we'll get Heroes as they're released, my wife'll get 24 (she already has the first couple of seasons), and we'll get SCC when it's out on DVD (if it isn't already).
[John]
Shit better not happen!
The 1st season I pushed myself through. By the 2nd season it was different but actually getting a little better. There's nothing worse than a show that is cancelled before it can finish off the show, even if doing so makes less sense due to the axe. T3 was a crap rehash of T2. I look forward to Salvation, but am not expecting much, as I fear they might be taking this part of the fabled mostly unseen story down the wrong path. But I expect it cannot be worse than T3. I would've liked one more season to try close off the story.
I'm a geek and think Obama is a fucktard and wouldn't have voted for him for all the money in someone else's wallet that he'll be taking from them to give to people who don't do shit to help themselves.
non-populist, meditative, complex
... and yet they way I learned it existed was through bus stop posters of a woman in a vest with a shotgun slung over her shoulder.
Target your marketing.
One of the most unintentionally funny scenes is in the second half of the second season when John and Sarah are hiding out with Charley. He's making soup and pours John a bowl. John takes one bite. Charley pours him a second helping. Sarah walks in asks for soup and Charley tells her that it's all gone.
One bite of soup empties out two bowls? And who the hell makes only two bowls worth of soup when three people are staying at the house?
It's these details that frustrated me to no end with the show and made it hard to watch.
didn't think so
It died because no one was watching it and this was its second season.
If it was making a profit for Fox, it would have been renewed. But viewership numbers were very low.
It's that simple. Viewership == renewal. If not enough people like it to watch it, then it gets cancelled.
Cliff: Well ya see, Norm, it's like this. A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo. And when the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole group keeps improving by the regular killing of the weakest members. In much the same way, the human brain can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells. Excessive intake of alcohol, as we know, kills brain cells. But naturally, it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the brain a faster and more efficient machine. That's why you always feel smarter after a few beers.
The big problem with the series was that it had no story to tell. Say what you want about how lame the third film was, at least it had one last revelation: Skynet was software, not hardware, and it's appearance was really the direct result of the increasing complexity of the Internet (well, more or less, but you know what I mean). That was a cool idea, and as the bombs went off, turning the planet into a gigantic barbecue spit, I found myself thinking "Crap, why didn't *I* think of that?"
So, what else was the series going to tell us? What else are the new movies going to tell us? Anything? Face it, the series had nothing to say, and so (as the article tells us) did a lot of naval-gazing to justify its existence. It was down right *boring* (anyone see that god-awful episode where they all wandered around someone's funeral the whole hour?). Yes, dramas revolve around *people*, but those people have to *do* something. There has to be a *point* to it all.
Unfortunately, the whole show was pointless!
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
It died because they moved it to Friday night. That's when I stopped watching.
And because it became more about angst than sci-fi.
Two seasons, about 30-ish episodes IIRC, isn't so bad as things go. But the problem is that due to the lack of any kind of notice, I'm left with the feeling of only seeing half a story - as if I'd been watching a film that cut out half way through. Sure, the first half might have been really really good, but you'd be annoyed - and you'd never recommend it to anyone else for watching.
Whilst I realise that a lack of long term planning seems to be common for networks like Fox, it seems like most other shows have had a chance to wrap up their story, whether they went on for 10 seasons, or were cancelled after a few episodes. Even Firefly got a DVD to finish up. Rome is another example which was cancelled after only the second season, but they knew in advance, so could pick up the pace and at least tell a complete story.
Terminator OTOH ended on a cliffhanger in Season Two, with many loose ends unanswered through the season. To add to that, Season One suffered due to the writer's strike, and that also had many loose ends that were simply dropped and never resolved. Given that season two had several episodes in the middle that were slow moving and didn't seem to go anywhere, there would have been opportunity to drop some material out to finish the story, if only they knew in advance.
Thankfully they'd made the decision to keep the storyline a separate story from the canon of the films - and a good thing too, what use is half a story to the franchise? Which is a shame, because it was a good story they were telling.
As an aside, I'm curious what ratings are considered "popular" in the US. Here in the UK, over 10 million would be mainstream major success, and about 3 million would still be okay - and that's for a mainstream terrestrial channel. Of course there are also much more people in the US - but I was also under the impression of there being a lot more channels. Given the hundreds of channels of rubbish that gets churned out, it seems odd that good shows have to fight to survive...
Virgin 1, which showed Terminator in the UK, gets ratings of the order of hundreds of thousands ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/oct/02/tvratings ), which would be considered good for a non-terrestrial channel. I'd be curious to know what the UK figures for Terminator were like (they were over a million for the debut, record ratings for the channel - http://www.digital-tv.co.uk/blog/terminator-debut-breaks-virgin-1-viewing-figures.html - but I realise it would've dropped off since). Anyone know?
Exactly, the sequel should have been a robot going after the Great Great Great Grandad in the Wild West, or Industrial Revolution era Northern England.
I'm not sure why this got marked as 'troll'. He's absolutely right. I love me some sci fi TV, but this show was best watched in Fast Forward on my DVR.
It wasn't complex. It wasn't meditative. It wasn't non-populist either. It was crappy, though.
Just because something has a shoddy storyline that barely pieces together doesn't mean that it's complex or meditative.
Blessed be he who reads this post, Cursed be he who tells my boss.
If the fans apply enough pressure, they might just do what they did with Jericho. Make a 6 episode season where they can potentially end the show, as well as leave the possibility that the show could return if the fan base stays. At least this way they will be able to tie up that huge cliffhanger at the end of season 2.
The trade press reported very early this year that one of the only reason the show was renewed for the past season was because the production company (Warner Bros.) ate some of the normal costs associated with it so that it could serve as advertising for Terminator: Salvation. Absent a willingness for the production company to do that in the future, FOX can no longer make money on the series.
Compare the show to a show with worse ratings that did get renewed: Dollhouse. Dollhouse is produced by 20th Century Fox, so licensing fees stay within the Murdoch empire. The production company was willing to cut costs on what was already a relatively low budget production. (Ever notice how for a sci-fi show, the set is remarkably unglamorous? It's cheap!) So FOX figured that even with crap ratings, they could turn a profit once DVD sales and the like were figured in.
In both cases, it was entirely a business decision based on whether or not they thought that they could turn a profit.
I'm a geek and think Obama is a fucktard and wouldn't have voted for him for all the money in someone else's wallet that he'll be taking from them to give to people who don't do shit to help themselves.
+1 OfftopicButAccurate
And shows with cool killer robots from the future (or renegade space cowboys*) can't last more than a few years?
* = Obligatory Firefly Plug
Someone from the future came back to put an end to it. /Terminated
IT SUCKED!
The answer is obvious, not enough Summer Glau in a bikini.
The math doesn't add up. Each of those seasons cost about ~$30 but a new 500GB hard drive will run about ~$60 and can hold more full seasons of other TV shows. But that is just me.
But I do agree with you that the media publishers should use the digital and not fear it. I just haven't figured out how yet.
I can't believe they canceled it either! I'm in on any fan write-in campaign for this one. They won't hear the end of it until they bring Dark Angel back!
The first Terminator? Awesome, perfect blend of 1980's schlock with a semi-decent sci-fi plot and idea. A little Linda Hamilton tit. That cool old school "future" style. Gold.
T2? I wouldn't have done it personally, leave good enough alone when you can. That liquid metal special effect is what it'll be remembered for, that looked pretty damn cool at the time and then they kind of tied it all together without too much damage to the plot. The terminator robot was a bit too human though and then the super advanced t1000? It was too non-human for something designed to mimic and attack. Original cast, sort of explored a dark spot in the timeline, didn't do too much damage to the franchise. Made like a billion dollars. I left not needing another movie or anything, the story was done. Let's not get in to complex time travel problems...
Beyond that? I have no idea what they are doing. The whole idea just isn't complex and rich enough to keep going. The characters aren't deep enough. Even Star Trek which is way more thought out played itself out. Just seems like they're milking it for what they can and killing the whole thing in the process. It only bothers me because I actually enjoyed the first 2 movies. Look at Predator, solid first effort, the second one? Crap. The AVP movies? They're killing Predator and the amazing Alien movies. Maybe you can blame it on Alien, it was strong until Alien 3, which very clearly should have been the end. Why they went ahead for the forth movie and then the laughable AVP stuff, it's beyond me. A TV series? You kidding me? Maybe on HBO like a 6 part series.
Invent some new sci-fi world, guys, don't just keep killing the ones from our youth. Just copy the story and call it "Kill Machines" or something.
I felt the same way; for me it was never about Sarah Connor, it was about answering the question of how John Connor grew a pair and started taking on the characteristics of a real leader - the third movie's ending made it all look like an accident of fate when in reality, the seeds of leadership had to be planted somewhere in his life in order for him to cope with the reality that confronted him. It could have served as a nice lead in to the upcoming movie, and in some ways it still accomplished that much.
Charley was the only when there when he started cooking. The reason he ran out of soup was because he only made it for himself. And then when the Connors showed up, he gave it all to John. This is to tell you that he is over Sarah but still cares about John's well-being.
I have to wonder if part of the problem is the "ratings" system itself. Isn't it possible that while Neilsen families aren't watching it, college kids and others are watching it... owe WERE watching it?
The worst part about the Neilsen system: the target audiences are never polled.
Perhaps it failed to make money, but is making money the only definition of success? I watched the Sarah Connor Chronicles for and enjoyed it. It was well written and well acted. The production values were high and I think everyone associated with the show can be proud of their work.
I don't think the storyline was suited to a long running show. It would reach Gilligan's Island levels of absurdity to have them constantly trying to prevent an apocalypse that keeps getting delayed more and more. But as a snapshot of some additional events after the movies and leading up to the apocalypse it was well done. if you think that any show with only two seasons is a failure then I disagree with you, two seasons of TV is far more screen hours than any movie.
I think it was a successful show.
How long can you watch a show where the two main characters are self pitying whiners?
Ahhh. Another idiot who doesn't seem to understand that you're paying for the content, not just the shiny plastic disc (or hard drive) that contains it.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The execs at fox (or whoever sets the schedule) put this show on a FRIDAY evening. I don't know how it is now, but when I was a kid, we didn't stay home (especially during a school year) to watch tv. We were out running around, going to the movies, on a date, raising hell. If the people who produced this show were to somehow relaunch this show on another network, say USA or Sci-Fi, and stick it in a good time slot, it would do better. Sticking a show on a Friday evening is like sticking nails in a coffin.
I remember that scene! But I think you missed a bit... for one, the "one bite" thing is a little exaggerated, John was eating while they were talking, and tho it was kinda quick, that's really minor.
The more interesting point was that Charlie purposely didn't make any for Sarah, and told her to make more for herself. I saw it as a demonstration of still caring for John and at the same time telling her to shove it.
And none of them mattered.
Once the killer robot gets a head shot on the boy (he's dead, no chance of resuscitation) the show is over. The "very complex plot with many main characters" collapses because there is nothing else to carry it.
A well written series would not have that flaw.
I avidly watched that show, but come on. This is all about the fun of seeing Sarah Connor and Cameron trying to look normal. And Cameron beating up people of course (cue xkcd etc).
It's by no mean meditative or complex. Take for example the Turk. A chess program is one of the root of Skynet? Give me a break. Chess programs were cool and impressive 10 years ago. Chess is a narrow game, it's not a measure of intelligence.
Say the writers had picked "Poker" instead. Now that would be interesting. First of all, the show would ride on the wave of popularity of the game... second the game is much more complex. Third, the game requires bots to have a model of the opponents behavior, especially human behavior. Now that's interesting. There are many many ideas that could have been explored. Instead the writers choose the cheap trope, chess = intelligence, chess program = AI.
They could also have tried to explain why skynet does not entirely wipe humanity in the first second of its existence... I mean terminator robots? A super intelligence can surely engineer something more subtle, like a virus.
The only explanation I find is that skynet is mildly retarded, it has the mind of a teenager from the 80's and think robots are cool.
I'll stop here. TSCC is cool but not meditative or complex.
\u262D = \u5350
when will people learn:
firefly (yeah if you put a series in the wrong genre and then move it around soo much it wont get rating)
Family guy (I don't actually like this one, but hey it was big enough to eventually come back)
Futurama (Why would you let the Simpson die such a slow death, while futurama was killed while still good)
im sure there are more.
They seam particularly bad at handling sci-fi, where due to their constant shuffles, it seams the only way to get ratings is to put crap that anybody can watch (in any order). This leads to monster of the week series with no plot/character development (e.g they pumped out 2 extra seasons of the x files when everybody was ready to let it die).
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
I admit, things slowed down a bit when they moved it to Fridays, but I still enjoyed watching it. I always enjoyed the first 2 Terminator movies, and this actually stuck well to the storyline. I was surprised to see Dr. Silverman who was in the first 2 movies, and the fallout from his brief experiences(he became a nutjob). While this was more drama than action, it still held its weight. Sci Fi shows aren't too terribly common in the big scope of television, so I welcome anything that graces the screen.
Fox is not really associated with Fox News network besides being owned by the same parent company; both networks operate autonomously.
... post mortem & raise you a Cracked article about the stupidity of the entire franchise.
http://www.cracked.com/article_17390_5-reasons-terminator-franchise-makes-no-goddamn-sense.html
There is a war going on for your mind.
Because it had no plot and was boring. I liked season 1. I couldn't get through 4 episodes of season 2. They planned on failing.
My Babylon
So another show with a nerd-fanboy target audience got canceled? I'm shocked - SHOCKED!
Okay, not all that shocked.
#DeleteChrome
make a screen saver that "searches" for sarah connor
There are 6,470,000 references to Sarah Connor.
There are 6,470,001 references to Sarah Connor.
That's good to know. I don't trust Fox News to report the weather without a political slant. I guess I'm crazy but I have a tough time having someone tell me I'm evil and then rewarding their company by watching their advertising.
...I was a devoted fan since the first episode. I was really looking forward to seeing where they were going with the series. Oh well.
The show didn't really fit with the continuity of the movies. Sarah is supposed to die of leukemia some years after the events of T2, (at least according to the "new" continuity; in the T2 book she is alive until just before Skynet is taken offline) and so if they were going to keep things consistent, the show couldn't have run for more than a few seasons anywayz.
I hope they actually do an episode where she dies, and if they do, I will definitely watch it. I saw the pilot, and liked it.
Lena Headey was perfect for the role; the only way they could have cast it better would have been with Linda Hamilton herself. Her appearance is very similar, she channels Ma Durga 100% as well as Linda Hamilton did, and the initials of both actresses are the same, in a particularly nice touch of consistency. Headey isn't in the series purely due to being low-budget, either; she played Leonidas' wife in 300 as well.
Anyone who's interested might actually want to check out the stories of Durga's fights against Mahishasura and (particularly) Raktabija from the Devi Mahatmaya; there are some very interesting connections between her stories and Sarah Connor/Skynet.
I have a slightly different take. I thought Season 1 was pretty good and showed promise. The best episodes were on Season 2. Of course, the most god-awful episodes were on Season 2, also.
During Season 1, I remember telling a friend of mine that I like the show, but that I worried it would fall into a cliched formula: meet a new character each week who was there for only the one episode, solve that character's problem, and then forget about the whole thing. Sadly, Season 2 had a lot of this "Touched By A Terminator" nonsense.
The last half-dozen episodes, tying up the whole Riley thread and all, were very, very good. But, the show died because it deserved to. It could have been a good show. Unfortunately, it was a very uneven effort.
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
I dropped out after the first season because it was just so damn silly. You had a headless terminator roaming around town (how it did this without eyes was never explained), a woman who was married to a terminator without suspecting something was up (wouldn't the bed eventually cave in?) and numerous dangling plot threads left unresolved. What was behind the school suicides?
WB produced it and they have the DVD rights. Even if it does REALLY good on DVD, Fox still won't have any motivation to make new seasons.
I watched the first season, it was ok. On the second season I started fast forwarding the drama scenes, then the recordings started pilling up unwatched in my mythtv box. I would pass on watching it for some reason. A couple months ago I watched another episode, then decided it sucked so I deleted all unwatched ones and canceled the schedule.
After long days at work I want to sit down and relax watching some mindless tv, don't want to be thinking or trying to remember wtf was this plot about. This series could have been so much better with less drama and more action scenes.
Take the latest Start Trek movie as an example of mindless entertainment well done. Hope somebody comes out with a tv series following that formula.
HTML is obsolete. It's time for a new, simpler and richer markup language.
They do use the digital. Believe me, they're watching the numbers for iTunes, Hulu, and DVRs. And if those numbers are strong, they can help (signs are that they helped Joss make his case for Dollhouse). But fundamentally, Internet and DVRs don't bring the ad revenue, and that's where the network's bread is buttered.
The thing about LOST is that it was never expected to go beyond a season. They created it to fill a time slot but it took off and ever since then the writers have just had to keep it going because it keeps getting ratings. Anyway now they have a whole season to tie it up.
LOST is IMHO a show that had zero direction and turned into great entertainment at least comparing it to the choices on tv right now.
Not one mention of Shirley Manson?
You make me sick!
The truth of all this aside, since I can't participate in that particular angle of the discussion (well, at least not intelligently, which I realize is not normally a hindrance to internet "conversation") since I've never watched it, if all the things the submitter said about the show were true, he'd be right.
Fox doesn't like complex narratives because complex narratives don't bring in the viewers, which means they don't bring in the advertisers. Fox is number one right now because of one thing and one thing only: American Idol. That's not a cheap shot at them or their viewers, it's a stone cold fact. American Idol is currently the bread and butter of the Fox lineup and it basically subsidizes experiments like TSCC. Fox is in the business of making money, and they've hooked the lowbrow demographic. Little potshots into "higher art" are really just stabs in the dark meant to try and get that rare unexpected success, and if they don't blow up quickly into reliable revenue streams, they get cancelled so that American Idol's simplistic, popcorn-style entertainment can fund another experiment.
Art and business don't work well together for a reason: they're motivated by different things. Anytime you have widely successful art in both a cultural and financial sense, it's pure dumb luck. Until sci-fi nerds start recognizing that fact, they'll just be disappointed over and over again.
It doesn't matter how smart, complex, or artistic something is, if it's on network TV, it's there to make money, and if it's only appealing to a small, highbrow crowd (whether that applies to the particular show under discussion or not, I have no idea), it's not going to do that, and it won't last long.
Sorry but the show was bad.
I watched a couple of episodes and it seemed to be a mix of:
- Standard T2 storyline
- Family porn (or super-softcore) (e.g. Enterprise)
- One liners
- Creepy sexual tension with the robot
- Lacklustre action scenes
It just didn't grab my attention. Granted I could have watched more of it, but how much effort should *I* have to make to like a show? Shouldn't two episodes pull me in to watch more?
I Am Not Your Average Under Age Fuck Buddy?
I watched it on HULU every time it came available. One tasteful, short advertisement, or the occasional long advertisement with no show interruptions, works for me. I'm beginning to think that the networks really need to rethink their programming. I'm also a fan of CBS's CIS and Numb3rs series, and watch it on site. I bet these numbers aren't counted at FOX for evaluating shows.
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
You know what? You're right
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
I have to admit: I never liked the franchise. I was dragged to T2 by my friends when it came out, and I completely ignored T3 until a year or so ago when I grabbed it on the DVR (and, boy, was that bad). So I wasn't willing to give T:SCC a chance until (of all things) my wife wanted to watch it. And, damn, it was good! After RTFA, I can agree: There were no concessions for new viewers. It's work to talk up a series to a bunch of friends or co-workers and then expect them to jump in. Even BSG had the (regular) catch-up specials that could be streamed or downloaded for free (I found myself regularly referring friends to those). T:SCC had nothing like that. But, it had style. And it had substance. And, as someone who has watched every damn episode again in the past few months, I can tell you that there was a clear plot line and a clear view of where the story was going. If you were too impatient to allow the story to be told, or have a hard time allowing for plot lines to unravel, then I suspect that most science fiction on TV isn't for you. If you enjoy a bit of philosophy and psychology (which IS a science, folks) mixed in with robot babes fighting each other in an elevator, then I suggest hunting down the complete series box set when it (inevitably) comes out. Maybe enough disc sales will prompt Warner Bros (who own the series) to do something more with it.
There was a lot of potential there, I think, for some serious tie-ins, some good cross-marketing that could have saved the show and really pushed the movie beyond mediocre pre-summer blockbuster status.
Unfortunately, the only connection between the movie and the TV show was that catchy "duh-duh dun duh duh" thing, which they pushed over the top in the movie and only used the open and ending.
The movie was a fun, blow-em type thing, typical Terminator fare, but didn't realize half the potential it had.
Funny, that's how I feel about ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, PBS, HBO...
So I just don't watch TV.
I'm no fan of big media, but if can help signal to them that TV is dead, and long live short (40 min?) serial film (ie. TV like Sarah Connor) on the internet by watching 4, 30 second ad spots, I'll do it.
Yeah... I have to chime in and agree: You missed the point. He purposefully didn't want to give any to Sarah. It was details, and jokes, like those that made it very easy for me to watch the show.
I see a lot of people bashing the show, having only seen one or two episodes (or seen none at all), but I enjoyed the show and am really sorry to see it go. It wasn't all just Another-Terminator-out-to-kill-John-Conner-Again-This-Week like some people suggest. That definitely would have gotten old fast.
I think the biggest problem was that it was too slowly paced. There was definitely a larger storyline being built up to about the creation of Skynet and a possible rift between the machines themselves, but it was being built up way too slowly. A little too much inner-turmoil and drama that dragged at times. Battlestar Galactica suffered from the same problems, but at least Terminator was clearly building toward something planned out, while Galactica felt like it was just making up shit as they went along after awhile.
Unfortunately the pace really picked up at the end, just in time for cancellation.
I think many continuing-story-arc shows make the mistake of starting out too slow in their first season or two (Even the first season of Babylon 5 was pretty dull). I'm sure they do it to let people jump into the show without having seen the first few episodes, but without the continuing story, there's less reason for folks to keep watching every week. Hopefully the writers of T:SCC will get a chance to continue the story in another medium, like novels or comics, just as Pushing Daisies will.
Nor are the geeks watching it.
Heck, only the *very* few who could slog through the snoozefest season 2 was did see the ending.
And where the ending was awesome it doesn't mean that the last four or so episodes make up for the 18 that were incredibly boring and badly written. And that's just in season 2.
What the fuck is that supposed to mean? ASDGIOAHADPIRWH LOLOLO
I just simply had a difficult time buying Summer Glau as an unstoppable killing machine. It's the same way the T-X in Terminator 3 just didn't really work. It seemed like they were pandering to undersexed nerds.
I enjoy the Terminator films for the heebie-jeebies I still get from watching Arnold's terminator strafe Club Noire with robotic efficiency. Now that was some tasty sci-fi.
If it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet.
Sarah Connor was a non-populist, meditative, complex piece of television
From my memory of series 1, it was almost exclusively "uh-oh, here comes the boogie man" and "here comes the boogie man again". It was one long yawn-fest of relentless pursuit, that got boring after the first few episodes.
Season 2 was largely a mish-mash of disconnected and irrelevant episodes that didn't move the story along. It also gave the distinct impression of being mostly filler, or budget-constrained programming, just waiting for the final episode to wrap it up (or as we found out, kill it off).
What it really needed was for some directoin (maybe from a director?) to say "no, you're not writing that episode, it doesn't contribute to the plot". Although I didn't see much evidence that the writers had a plot. It frequently seemed as if they were making up each weeks offering on the spur of the moment to meet a deadline.
I'm sad that it, err, terminated. But since they were plainly incapable of writing coherent stories, with a vision and some intelligent commentary, it's probably best that it's over.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Oh right, it was shit.
Oppressing an entire population is never cheap.
--Jeckler (/. Beta IS GARBAGE!)
Which is why I think that any TV station using a very limited public resource (the radio spectrum) should be obliged to actually provide a public service rather than simply chase maximum ratings.
By all means have *some* of the lowbrow stuff (hey, idiots need entertaining too) but there's no excuse for filling the entire channel with it, as seems to happen with a lot of commercial TV.
You make a good point about series there. TV should do more miniseries in which a story is developed and completed drawing to a definite ending. The stories are more compelling when they don't look like they're contrived to keep the series going indefinitely.
I thought it was pretty good, and so did the rest of my family. But the local TV stations started putting it on too late for the rest of the family to stay up for it, and (always a bad sign) moving it all over the schedule so that we missed episodes.
Oh well. It was the last new show on cable I thought was worth watching. After BSG ended, I only delayed canceling cable on the off chance Sarah Conner Chronicles might be renewed. So much for that.
Goodbye FOX, your stupid reality shows, and all the other cheap crap on TV these days. You'll have several fewer viewers shortly. I'll take the few hundred dollars a year and do something more useful with it. If I really want to watch TV, I'll buy the season DVDs for a relevant show.
... that season one was pretty good. Writing was pretty clever, it was an interesting concept. By season two, at least the first couple of episodes I watched before I started hating it, the writing started to crater and it turned in to a classic case of writer trap due to time travel. I think the robot coming back in time to destroy the nuclear power plant episode completely lost me on the whole series. You can only do so much time travel before it starts become obvious its just a crutch for writers who can't think of anything better to do. It reaches a point absolutely nothing has consequences or resolution because in the next episode some time traveler can come in and completely undo everything that's gone before. Star Trek has pretty much had the same problem throughout its history.
Its also a problem with the terminator concept that as the terminators spend more and more time as humans and less and less as menacing robots the concept gets boring. The best parts of the first movie were when Arnold had all his skin burned off and he is a very menacing machine at the end. By movie two liquid terminator does some cool liquid effects but for some reason he is almost ALWAYS the same actor in the same police uniform and there is zero reason he wouldn't have morphed in to some other form except the director didn't want to hire another actor. By movie three the terminator is a hot chick, never changes form, there is no real sense she is a robot. She is just a hot chick the director wanted to milk and that movie just completely sucked. I'm hoping Salvation has lots of good ole menacing robots.
And the geek guy in me really starts hating all the soap opera love interest, especially John Conner's not very appealing love interest. I know they are trying to hook the female demographic but it is the aspect I hated most in Battlestar Galactica too. The series spent most of the time being soap opera and who is screwing who. Of course its cheap to film, good filler, and I guess people are really like that, but you spend half the show on it it stops being sci fi.
@de_machina
After that mind-twisting season 2 finale, I was REALLY looking forward to another season! My opinion of this show is that it was one of the most well-written series of the genre, and it explored a lot of important social issues, such as the morality of Power. Anyway, I was hoping to see what John did with his emerging leadership skills and personal charisma.
Sometimes, real fast is almost as good as real-time.
...so perhaps I shouldn't comment.
Except maybe that is the point.
Really? How so? Your liberties are STILL being eliminated one by one under the pretense of protecting you. Only now it's healthcare and global warming instead of the war on terror. Same fear-mongering, different face.
Look, if I'm watching a movie about humanity's war against machines, then I want to see machines and humans fighting it out.
Making the machines look like humans is simply a budgetary cop-out.
If I wanted to use my imagination for such epic battles I'd read a book.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Arnie was the terminator and his presence made the films what they were. Take him out of the show and it's just another doomsday time travel story, for which we know the plot but the central character is missing.
Surprised it made it to 31 episodes...
1. It was on Fox. They always cancel good shows after one season.
2. That this show wasn't good was why it got a second season. Being scifi was the final nail in the coffin.
3. It wasn't very good and didn't have much direction. Writers wasted too much time on meaningless filler.
4. Most fundamental problem -- the Terminator universe is tapped out. There's not really many more stories to tell, at least not with the current characters.
5. They're trying to follow up a mega-budget best action movie of all time with a small-budget TV series. Never will a budget be more painfully obvious than in that situation. "We can't afford to fight the Romulans, we don't have the budget for it! We'll have to negotiate."
After T2 I felt that there was really no more need for any sequels, the story was done. If they absolutely had to tell a story, the only one left was the future war. Keeping up with the time travel at this point would have just become a paradox wankfest. T3 turned out to be as weak as everyone feared. T4 has the potential of being good but some of the reviews I read are fairly devastating saying it has 'splosions but no heart, no characters to invest in.
As far as a Terminator TV show goes, it has all the weaknesses of a time travel movie sequel. More terminators have to get sent back, it runs the risk of becoming Highlander except instead of immortal of the week we get terminator of the week. You also end up with villain decay. Arnie was terrifying in T1 and it took a whole movie to kill him. In the TV show you have T-800's showing up and getting whacked with a single blow. Granted, in T1 they had access to shitty weapons and a T1 going up against infantry with heavy weapons would actually be at a disadvantage. Arnie never moved fast enough to avoid taking hits in T1, he was just tough enough to absorb the damage. If the cops were armed with 50 cal machine guns, he'd probably have been immobilized. Anti-armor weapons would blow pieces off of him, hyper-alloy combat chassis or no. But this makes a lot of sense. A Terminator isn't designed to be the perfect armored fighting machine, that's what the huge tanks and hunter-killers were for. The Terminator was about infiltration, trading protection for camouflage. It can pass for a human until it gets close enough to do some damage. It can crawl through the warrens the humans live in, places where the larger units can't fit.
The producers really should have gone and invented their own show instead of making a Terminator spin-off. But if they were dead-set on doing Terminator, they should have just set the whole thing in its own continuity and said "Let's do a Terminator where we don't ignore time paradoxes but embrace them." Show the timelines changing over the course of the show, some things the characters recognize and other things are left only to the audience to observe. Ok, so originally Skynet is getting its ass kicked and decides to time travel to stop the resistance. The war was sixty years in the future and there was no John Connor, it was trying to kill someone else. Kyle Reese was sent back in time, couldn't protect the original target but met and fell in love with Sarah Connor and fathers John Connor. Knowing that the war was coming, they can create a resistance movement before Skynet strikes. The war still happens and now Skynet makes the same time travel assassination decision but focuses on John Connor instead. It fails but pieces are left behind from the original Terminator which accelerates the research program that develops Skynet. Skynet itself is unaware of these changes to the timeline. When it tries sending back a T1000, it schisms the timeline and now there are two competing futures with one common past. Only one of these futures can be realized. So now Skynet is at war with itself since each one wants to be the sole victor.
The way that would play out in the show would have been a fucking head trip. Events of previous episodes may or may not have happened. Characters who were killed may end up being alive again no
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Just going to chime in with some agreement. I hate it when authors/producers blame their failure on "oh, our show was just too amazingly great for you idiots". I only saw a couple episodes of the Terminator TV show - but what I did see was boring, ham-handed, and a bit self-congratulatory about how special it was.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
The show had great potential and Summer Glau did a heck of a job, but between Sarah Connor always being depressingly overprotective and John Connor being afraid to grow a pair and do more than scowl a little from time to time, she had to carry the show without being given enough screentime to do so. IMHO she played a believable robot, which is a hard thing to do and the touches of humanity that shone through once and again were intriguing. There were episodes where the few seconds she was on screen made it worth watching. The showed simply lacked a sense of direction, resulting in long drawn out plotlines that then had to be unraveled in the final episode. Like too many shows, it seems as if a lot of things were thought of on the fly instead of the writer (-s) coming up with a roadmap and -then- creating the episodes. When writing the show becomes an afterthought, a show suffers, viewers turn off, ratings plummet, revenue drops and the network is left with no option but to pull the plug. If only they had concentrated more on the John-Cameron interaction, that would have set the stage for Cameron's development, possibly with huge consequences and for John's growth into a man of action instead of someone who didn't really want a part in all that "destiny" stuff. The show getting cancelled would come as no surprise to me and I liked the show. AFAIK nothing is official yet, but I'm not holding my breath. Only real fans of the show will regret that decision, but most people won't even notice, which is exactly the problem. A show can't survive if only a small group of people watches it.
Oh, you mean dull. Or as Homer Simpson would say:
B-o-o-r-i-n-n-g.
Who's Homer Simpson?
Honestly, this is sad that so much time is spent commenting on yet another tv show. Seriously, I know we are all computer geeks here, but turn the tv off and go outside and live your life a bit more. In the grand scheme of things, it's just entertainment, and is of no consequence whether the show existed or didn't and/or why. Just throwing a little "there is a real world" perspective in ;)
At least admit that it was the best sucky show EVER. (this and supernatural are the only two shows I regularly watched but refused to ever discuss, and sometimes openly mocked when brought up in conversation).
I for one will miss this show.
...killed it. A relationship based, talky, meditative series that was deliberately constructed it seems NOT to be attractive to male psychology. The latest Star Trek movie is a success because it appeals to male motivational and psychological structures. Let the male hero be the hero, not an angst-filled, reluctant non-hero dominated by females. No female magic/future-reading/esp crap.
And a point about fear - don't make the enemy local, familiar, and understood. See that movie with Dennis Weaver where he is chased by an anonymous truck driver. We never see him. We never really know his motivation. We haven't met his wife and kids and sympathized with him over his Vietnam experiences etc etc etc. Star Trek made human the Borg and destroyed it as the unknown, outside menace. The machines-made-local and human in Chronicles made it possible for relationships in the story line (maybe even sex) and explaination, but that just muddies the menace. Black and white. They are the unredeemable enemy and we are the good guys. They aren't human and never will be -- we are. Galactica did the same thing. The enemy is the enemy. You don't make some of them friends. You don't make them indistinguishable from humans. You cut the balls off the menace when you do that, and you doom your scifi series.
E Proelio Veritas.
You mean Logan's Run. You had a problem with that movie? It had nudity, murder, big-microwave-oven-stadium, and a HAL1000 (a combined processing power of 1000 answering machines).
Basically saying the show was too good for FOX...
I never watch FOX, never saw the show, and I'd have to agree most things are too good for FOX (those scum!). If it had been on Sci-Fi or some other channel, things might've been different.
Please place your geek card in the depository on your left.
Thank you, and have a nice day!
My blog
I ended up not getting into the show because by the time I heard about it (yeah, I don't watch much TV) Fox wasn't hosting the first few episodes on their web site any more. It's not worth trying to jump into the middle of a strong story arc driven show like that (which was the problem with Babylon 5 as well, which I didn't get around to watching until around 4-5 years ago).
Story arc series like this are doomed (despite often being much deeper) because they can never hope to gain significant ratings after leaving behind people who didn't start watching from the beginning.
Arguing about vi versus Emacs is like arguing whether it's better to make fire by rubbing sticks or banging rocks.
The casting was great although I found that John could have been played by someone else without the loss of a tear. What failed them was that writing was piss poor a good 60% of the time and this intermixed with all that was good and we wound up with slop.
a non-populist, meditative, complex piece of television
vs.
was John actually having sex with a robot?
Enough Said.
If I was writing a scifi, I would not have episodes where the main characters are in a therapy session for an entire episode, or a sleep clinic, or have a cyborg spending hours in a library reviewing cold cases from the 1920's.
You've just described people with several attributes. They are homogeneous, shallow, and sanctimonious. But elitists can be diverse, profound, and humble as well. An elitist is simply someone who believes in power of the elite, that the most capable and proficient people should be granted privileges above the common man. The opposite, a populist, believes that people should never be subject to another's power.
hah, for that kind of $$, why not just buy another 500g drive, and still have plenty of space left over? :)
Can a series so tied to one actor really be separated from him?
The cast of bland young Hollywood "beauties" is also partly to blame. Gritty stuff requires weird-looking people, not the kind that can pose like that promo photo. (Also, that style of promo shot is getting kind of stale, guys.)
There are 0x40000000 types of people: those who understand 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point, and those who don't.
Believe me, they're watching the numbers for iTunes, Hulu, and DVRs. And if those numbers are strong, they can help (signs are that they helped Joss make his case for Dollhouse).
No, Dollhouse was renewed because Fox only has to pay about half per episode as before. At that point, it can't be a money loser on broadcast as far as Fox is concerned.
In the future, I suspect that the only way that TV shows that don't rocket to the #1 spot in their first season are going to have a chance of lasting is if they start thinking long-term and sell at a loss to the network and make money on DVD and reruns.
I found the script well written and a plot that actually flowed with continuity from one episode to the next, which is unusual with popular programming these days.
Unusual? What are you talking about? It's VERY common these days, look at 24 or Lost or Heroes or Alias or Prison Break or Sopranos or The Shield or Sopranos or any number of shows that have been playing for the past few years. Terminator rode those coattails.
If the franchise is intractably tied to Arnold, it shouldn't be.
There were some other equally memorable performances in the movies as well. (Robert Patrick's, Linda Hamilton's)
More to the point, some of us also find Skynet and the stuff related to the robots etc to be very interesting, as well.
Schwarzenegger did put in some great performances, yes, so I'm not trying to detract from that at all; but if anyone out there feels as though he's the only good thing about the entire Terminator series, then IMHO, they're not looking hard enough.
We also enjoyed SCC especially the last 1/2 season. Let's face facts, it's all about the instant gratification mentality. X-Files would have been gone in 3 episodes today. All 3 major networks sci-fi shows (Invasion,Surface,Threshold) didn't last very long. We enjoyed watching all of them. Did any of these have super amazing writing, no, not really but they weren't reality show crap.
We refuse to watch junk like Big Brother, Biggest Loser, Survivor, etc. Prison Break, well, that show could never have been conceived to last more than 1 or 2 seasons. You break someone out of prison and break back in!
It looks like I'll be on the internet hunting up more foreign series to watch since in the last 12 months about a dozen shows got canceled that we used to watch.
Sarah Connor was a non-populist, meditative, complex piece of television on a smash-bang, show-me-the-ratings kind of network
Oh please. It was about as meditative as a football game. The few episodes I bothered to watch were as smash-bang as anything else on Fox.
There's been a depressing trend for some very shallow entertainments to position themselves as "serious drama". The BSG remake, all those pretentious cop shows on FX, and movies like Crash all come to mind. They throw in serious issues so they can take themselves seriously, but they never really address them. It's like sticking celery in a milkshake and saying it's a balanced meal.
But this TV show didn't even do that. It was just a serial action thriller with dark tones, not very interesting mysteries, and way too much soap opera. Don't fanboy it into War and Peace.
This is the credited response.
Each network does have its own in house (or at least loosely affiliated) production company. But those production companies do not always sell their shows to their affiliated networks. For example, the studio that produces Medium is owned by CBS but the show was aired on NBC for the last five years until this week when NBC announced it would be cancelled. CBS, unsurprisingly, is picking it up.
But not all production studios are affiliated with networks. There are a fair number of independent studios. Most of the product from independent studios goes to cable channels or syndication rather than to one of the big networks but some network shows are still done by independent studios.
Add to this mix the increasing number of cable channels owned by various networks or other media conglomerates. Cable channels are getting reruns from the networks much more quickly than they used to. Some shows are bouncing back and forth between networks and cable channels. (Law and Order is famous for this.) In one interesting case, NBC is sharing the cost of producing a prime time drama (Friday Night Lights) with DirectTV.
Please place your geek card in the depository on your left.
Thank you, and have a nice day!
It was a joke. Place your comedian card...
Oh, never mind.
THe show was cancelled because not enough people watched it.
Not enough people watched it because, like a few other shows I might name, it was so obsessive about its mythology that anyone who'd missed a few minutes somewhere along the line was left dazed, confused and clueless about what was really going on.
You cannot build a successful TV show by assuming everyone has seen every episode and two or three movies, to boot. If you depend on mythology, you've got to explain the mythology in every show.
Accept that most people on the planet do not know and do not care about about Sarah and John Connor. What they saw was a wierd little show populated with angry people, the occasional robot who liked to kill for inexplicable reasons, a mild-mannered naive guy with a coax cable stuck in his head and a red-headed women from Scotland with one facial expression.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
I have never understood that and it feels logically backward. You are targeting a group of people for your show, you need to know how many of that group is actually watching the show. If the target audience is never polled then you only know how many of the non-target audience is watching but you do not know if the show is successful in getting viewers from the group that might want to watch the show.
Ouch....inverted...logic...hurts...brain.
So, you're an unusual Ueber-Aggressive Fight Babe?
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
>>Bottom line: another Logon's Run.
Would the sequel to that be Logoff's Run?
And this is why I rent shows I like on DVD, to send a message that ad-supported is dead (my time is worth more to me than the show, sorry) and that I will pay to get the content from the creators. With things like Netflix, it's a shame more shows aren't made direct-to-DVD so they can be funded directly by the people who like them, rather than being sold to advertisers who care more about the timeslot than the show.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I realize that there are serious commercial reasons for shows being canceled and that's life. However what I have a major beef about is shows that I've been a faithful viewer of being canceled after a major season finale with a massive cliff hanger. It is just not fair to the viewer to leave the a series on such an unresolved note. Just this season they did this with Life, a couple years ago with Invasion and Surface and I'm sure more that I can't think of right this minute. But this just sucks so bad and the network just doesn't care about their viewers.
They DO use ratings from torrents and DVR's for I believe two weeks after the original viewing of the show. On DVR's, If you watch it after two weeks, it doesn't register as a viewing. I think if you download the torrent within two weeks of the original showing, it is considered a viewing.
Bye!
Not being familiar with her, I did a quick search. I fail to see why you imply she looked like a "half-grown teenage girl". Try getting out of the basement. You will see that grown women can look like that in real life, probably more often than they look like the "actresses" that you are accustom to seeing.
That pretty much sums up the problem with a lot of enterprises. Producing high quality products for mass consumption often doesn't make good business sense.
First Season? Yeah pretty average.
But it really picked up in second season. Not just your standard "Terminator sent back in time" plot; there were several overarching plots which all came together brilliantly at the end of the season. I am very sad to see the show go.
Ok, I'll admit it, I watched only about 1/2 of the first episode. BUT anytime you have a show staring killer military robots from the future who can't hit a large reasonably stationary target is destined to fail even if the characters are really good. Remember this little thing called "suspension of disbelief" I have to think the days of running up to the enemy (who is shooting at you) and punching them while you holding and assault rifle are over (Think 1980's GI Joe cartoon). The show had great production quality and apparently the scrip was good. But you have these "kids" running away from super predators and and narrowly escaping EVERY TIME. It gets old and cold. We love the Terminator movies, they are 2 hours long, loud and fast and even the narrow escapes are believable in the setting. The final reason that the show was canceled beyond the "suspension of disbelief" issue is that Networks really only like crime or medical drama. This type of show has no place in the homogeneity of regular television. Are we all not disappointed that a show we really like is canceled to quickly though many seem to like it? In the end it's just TV. I am going to go for a walk.
6.8SPC TR of 550, l xwind at 6, drift rt at 26" drops 77". AT has 503 ft-lbs at 1403 fps. FT 0.86
I thought it was good, but complex and it seemed that if you missed even part of a show then it would be hard to follow. The show seemed to slow down at the end and it didn't seem like they were looking to stop skynet at all. The last 5 or 6 episodes maybe even the last 10 seemed to have nothing to do with skynet. It would have been better if they made it a run for your life, race against time type of show. It would have survived if they had of done more fighting with the terminator machines. The episodes were full of the machines attacking important parts of the future. Like killing people who would be important in the future, blowing up buildings or stopping them from being built. They did this in the beginning and stopped. An example is when they killed the character andy goode who made the turk. Sara Connor should have tried to kill more people important to the future just as the Terminators should have. Maybe the terminators have some new type of laser gun and the sarah connor crew tries to kill the person who designed the prototype. Also these are machines with a sophisticated AI ...why were they not using the internet more? I would have added time travel as one of the themes and suggest some of the complications with that. The shape shifting Terminator should have been a person of power like a mayor or politician. Rather than working in some obscure research company building John Henry. In fact the shape shifting terminator should have been the head of the FBI leading some type of search for John Connor. They had a good two part show when the Terminator chased them into a small Mexican town. That's how the whole show should have been. I would have made Sarah Connor more Jack Bauer like, intense rather than paranoid and obsessive. She should have been more ruthless and single minded, chasing down skynet like some rabid she-wolf. If I could do the show there would be 3 more sexy hot uber-agressive women on the show two of them would have been shape shifting terminators.
These shows start out fast-paced then they slow to a crawl I think the writers just run out of ideas.
FYI: I was a Neilsen Family when I was in college. They try very hard to capture all demographics. If they didn't, advertisers wouldn't buy their data sets.
Of John wanting to sex up his bot and being angry at his mom for not allowing it?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The only way for the closed time loop which created Skynet to be broken is if the Terminator is completely destroyed such that no trace of its existance can be found. This happened in the last scene of Terminator 2.
Well, no. There was still an arm trapped in the gears, traces of the T1000 stuck to things. As for the processor, lets face it, a little corporate espionage, drunken researchers sharing stories with buddies, The data sheet on the processor randomly mailed out when the researcher infected his machine with a virus, a researcher began to publicly host things off a work server, or one of their DB servers getting pwn'd by a hacker could explain how the processor info is still around.
which is ironic considering the message being sent by the content of the show in question. . .
At the beginning of T1, when this Big imposing looking dude with biker gear on bangs on the door. "Sarah Connah?"
"Er. No. Wrong house; she doesn't live here."
"Ok. thank you..."
Take your fat chick love to the fat farm then, porky.
Actually, they are required to serve the public interest to some extent or another, at least in the U.S. They're obligated to preempt regular programming for emergency broadcasts, for example, and the FCC mandates certain standards for educational and informational programming:
http://www.fcc.gov/mb/audio/bickel/amfmrule.html#TV
I think, however, that if you have a problem with them not fulfilling these roles, it's on you to complain about it, same as obscenity complaints. From time to time I've seen different local broadcasters put up announcements that the station's license is up for renewal at some date in the future and that if you want to comment on their application to the FCC or see their records about educational and informational programming, you can stop by their offices to do so.
Its a no-brainer why it failed.
For some retarded reason all the TV companies are drving full-bore at so-called reality TV.
Now everything has to follow the same stupid trend.
Take for example the new Knight Rider, and every successive Star Trek tv series since the original, and nearly all other recent sci-fi remakes.
They are killing the whole thing by removing all the toughness, action, technology and imaginative plots and replacing them with emotional touchy-feelyness and endlessly droning on about terminally dull details of the characters interpersonal relationships.
Maybe if the writers of Sarah Connor had a clue and realised that what people actually liked about Terminator movies was the big bad chrome robots, car chases, scary landscapes and big explosions they might have been able to produce something good.
The show held it's own. It was better than the Arnie films, but did not appeal to as simple an audience.
Seriously, until nerds start realizing that it doesn't matter how long they stare at their navels and argue the finer points of groan-worthy, cornball dialog, popular sci-fi will continue to suck.
My PS3 can watch videos at 1.5x speed while keeping the sound. This show was perfect for that. Which says something sad about a show...
is competition good, or is duplication of effort bad?
IANYAUAFB
I am not yet another Uber-Aggressive Fight Babe
Sig Return: 204 No Content
Just because something has a shoddy storyline that barely pieces together doesn't mean that it's complex or meditative.
Previously, on Lost...
I watched the first three or four episodes before deciding this show was too stupid to waste my time on. Randomly jumping through time, 15 year old terminators, and soap-opera quality acting? I'm sure it got better, but man, this was not good TV. If it didn't have the terminator moniker it would be right up there with Dollhouse.
But Brian Austin Green really helped the show. The whiny Australian-Asian woman that was supposedly his girlfriend, however, did not.
A sentence you'll never see on an Internet discussion board: "You know what? You're right."
Strange - I was engrossed in the story of Terminator - the driving forces, the emotional depth - the way the impending future and being hunted by killer robots weighed on the cahracters. I loved it. It *was* meditative and the characters made choices that felt true to their dilemma. It felt pretty solid and powerful to me, in a way virtually no other show has.
Now, Battlestar Galactica - there was a snooze-fest to be watched on fast forward. And I did.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
It was just too long. I expected it to have a plot that would go somewhere. But they made it open ended and each episode seemed to be independent of the overall story. Lost is a similar case but unlike SCC, Lost got more and more complicated as the writers tried to outwit the audience.
So in other words, it should be Terminator: Rise of the Dentons? ;)
The idea these days seems to be to start off as many subplots as possible and then take care never to resolve anything so that there's always room for another season.
I liked the Veronica Mars model where there was one main plot for the season (which gets resolved cleanly), and a few fun things that happen in each separate episode.
This way you can tune in for an episode and still get something out of it, but you're rewarded for sticking with it. Some episodes focused on one style more than other. (Of course it didn't hurt that Kristen Bell is a hotty.)
GitS:SAC had a similar model.
"There were two possible endings to the story in Terminator 1 "
There is at least a 3rd ending and many many more if you sat and think about it.
The machine is destroyed utterly. Nothing but dust remains of it.
No. Really. It wasn't a good show. It shouldn't have continued. The story and acting were both B at best. I stopped after the first episode.
More room for more Famaily Guy now lol.
Ave Molech Setting
Exactly. For reference of this, watch any or every David Lynch film.
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
Here's my take on it - the same take I've had all season two.
First, some background. I can't remember when I first heard that they were doing a Terminator TV series, but like everybody else, I questioned the likelihood of it being any good. Then I heard they cast Summer Glau as John Connor's protective Terminator, and my IMMEDIATE thought - like everyone else's - was: "The kid's gonna get it on with a Terminator!" Naturally, I had to see that.
So when the original pilot - not the one that aired - was leaked to the Net, I downloaded it. I thought it was OK, if a bit derivative of T-2. But I realized it had to be in order to connect the series to T-2, because the series was set post-T-2 and pre-T-3.
So when the series aired, I started downloading and watching. From episode 2, I could see this show had enormous potential. Fact One: The protective Terminator didn't obey orders from either John or Sarah Connor! That immediately started me wondering whether in fact Cameron had been sent back by future John at all - or whether she had come back on her initiative for her own reasons. As the season progressed, I became more and more convinced this might be the case - especially due to hints dropped in several season one episodes. Not to mention what appeared to be a deliberate attempt to seduce Connor in the episode "Vic's Chip", as well as the hiding of the referenced chip. The excuse Cameron gave for retaining that chip was obviously bogus, so what was the real reason?
Then in the final episode of season one John explicitly committed to finding the missing AI platform, "The Turk", and stopping Skynet, the primary focus of the entire first season. Then Cameron blew up.
And then it all went to hell.
Season two started with a decent bang. John kills a man, and Cameron goes loopy and tries to kill him. During a frantic effort to remove her chip, she tells John she "loves him". He doesn't buy it and rips her chip out. Later, he makes the strategic decision to put it back in and re-activate her, despite the possibility that she is still damaged. This scene reflects the deleted scene in T-2 where Linda Hamilton's Sarah wanted to destroy Arnold's chip, but the young John persuades her not to. This is the first sign we see of the future John Connor, who is supposed to be the savior of mankind.
Remember how in the finale of season one they committed to finding "The Turk" and stopping Skynet? Well, for the next 18 or more episodes, they forget about "The Turk" completely! They spend the entire season running around on ancillary missions - preventing a nuclear meltdown, saving future Resistance members, beating up criminal fences, etc. - and dodging the bad Terminator. Meanwhile, a T-1000 Terminator has obtained "The Turk", and hooked it up to a server farm to develop what we all thought was going to be the nascent Skynet. The Connors were oblivious to this, despite having had at three ways of tracking back from the situations they were involved in to the Zeira Corporation where "The Turk" was located. Instead, they did not follow-up whatsoever on the situations they were involved in.
In the meantime, John Connor, in reaction to his killing a man - his first kill - in episode one, turned back into a whiny, rebellious twat besotted with some big-boobed blond he ran into at school. The character of Riley was the most universally despised character by the fans for quite a few episodes. In the process, the Terminator who was chasing Connor, Cromartie, got himself blown away - rather too easily - in Mexico after one of John's really stupid besotted kid tricks. As a result, the T-1000 manages to acquire his body using the services of the man who has to be THE DUMBEST FBI AGENT in human history, James Ellison. Of course, Sarah Connor did nothing to recruit this FBI agent despite the obvious value of having someone like that in a position to help your team. The T-1000 hooks him up to the AI platform and renames the combo "John Henry." At lightning speed, this AI program gets developed to the poin
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Just going to chime in with some agreement. I hate it when authors/producers blame their failure on "oh, our show was just too amazingly great for you idiots". I only saw a couple episodes of the Terminator TV show - but what I did see was boring, ham-handed, and a bit self-congratulatory about how special it was.
Yeah, except that they are probably right. Look at most of the shows that get the best ratings. They're fucking stupid. Not just a little overly dramatic from time to time, or prone to constant action or ridiculous situations. They're just downright dumb.
Those are the kinds of shows that stay on the air. They require no investment in the plot, and no real progression in the characters. Rarely does anything of consequence ever happen. The networks want shows that anyone can just sit down and start watching at any point. This ensures that anything like a real plot or story is out the window. If you can't tell it in a single episode, then don't bother. It's like saying that a good book is one where you can just read chapter 12 and get a fairly complete story. It's crazy.
We need something besides fucking TV networks to fund these shows so that they can actually hang around a while. SCC had already done a good job of developing the characters and was getting really interesting by the end of season 2. Dollhouse, despite my misgivings at where the hell they were going to go with it, was getting pretty interesting too. Sci-Fi shows always get the shaft, even when they're the best thing on TV (like Firefly was).
[krusty]
Bloody morons at Fox wouldn't know a good show if it bit them in the..
hey, hey!
[/krusty]
I am the maverick of Slashdot
I find it inconceivable that the terminator Sarah Connor chronicles show was canceled. You have Summer Glau and Garbage lead singer Shirley Manson both playing terminators, and it gets nicked before they get to start having fight scenes together. How did the slashdot crowd let this happen?
Even more mind blowingly stupid is the fact that fox creates such a great show, and doesn't sell it to say the SciFi channel or something like that. That way it could survive, plus they could recoup some costs.
Party at O'zorgnax's Pub! Buy me a Slurmtini aye?
Meditative? Hah! I tried watching the show. It was pretty boring and trivially simple. Just repeats of Skynet sending another robot...yawn.
I never caught more than a few minutes of a couple of episodes, and trailers. Never saw any robots.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
I liked the show but I really liked the last few episodes. Yes, we all know the 'main' story. But there are so many other stories that can be told in and around that main story. The fun thing about programs like this one are all the loose ends that appear as well as the circles within circles. Decent writers can take one on a merry ride. LOST is a great example of that. I wish someone else would pick it up but I think all the main actors are onto other projects, at this point. Lots of new scifi/fantasy stuff coming in the fall--let's hope for something decent.
I like my women to look like half-grown teenage girls, you insensitive clod!
In particular, ones I wouldn't have to worry about going to jail for banging.
inb4 "you'll never have sex with summer glau you basement-dwelling pedo".
The original mini-series had no such ending.
Couldn't reconcile your comment with my memory so I did some brief research: looks like here in the UK, "V" and "V: The Final Battle" were combined into one miniseries just called "V".
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
They were firing plasma weapons and stuff at the moment (head was torn off due to a direct hit from a "ray gun") which MIGHT account for "creating a temporal anomaly" or "reversing the polarity of the tachyon field" or something like that.
I could go with that with some suspension of disbelief.
Also, I've just checked, and it went kinda like this.
The skull rolls towards them, there is a pause, then they make the jump.
In the next episode, in 2007, first the energy ball spreads then the skull flies out at the camera, then Sarah, John and Cameron arrive.
Soo... there is room for speculation how and why that happened.
But the body just sitting in a dumpster somewhere for 8 years?
Three people break into a bank, demand to be locked inside a vault and then blow it up from inside.
Fourth person walks past a swat team, directly through glass (doors) and starts pounding on the vault door.
Shit goes down and they find only the corpse of the fourth person at the scene, only it is obvious that it is made of metal covered with skin - and they throw it into a dumpster?
Hello? Anyone seen Terminator 2? There was this part about a company almost single-handedly building Skynet out of a broken chip and torn hand of a terminator...
Here instead we have an entire robot body sitting in a dumpster for 8 years.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
"I'm ready for my treatment now."
(Dollhouse)
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I used to enjoy watching this series til I realised that The Wire existed. The bar has been set way too high to even entertain the idea of going back to the Sarah Connor chronicles, ditto Lost.
And here we go again. Yet another show I actually enjoyed watching (on a different day and time) is canceled prematurely. I am so sick of TV these days. 10 minutes of show for 20 minutes of commercials, one episode then two weeks of something else, then another episode. Only 10 or so episodes in a 52 week year. Crappy time slots. All these things are contributing to the downfall of TV.
- James
we've already seen with their previous decisions how arbitrary it can be. you should have written an article on how family guy is just not ever going to work on the fox network:P the series was good, and was really getting interesting in the second season, i enjoyed it more than the current film. the current films being panned, and underperforms, they kicked the legs out of the wrong part of the franchise