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."

Comments

The babe from Firefly?

[Lilith's Heart-shape]

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.

Re:The babe from Firefly?

[Nursie]

This.

Jewel Staite is hot...

Never did watch this Terminator series. To be honest I'm getting bored of the whole series model. 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. Then you string it out for as long as you can until you get cancelled. If you're lucky you get a really rushed ending in two episodes that clumsily attempts to tie up the storyline. Quite often not though.

Re:The babe from Firefly?

[pzs]

Quite.

I wasn't always a fan of Babylon 5, but you have to admire the coherency of the plot. Straczynski designed the plot for the first 4 seasons before he even started making the first. He even made forward references to future seasons in the first.

Place this in stark contrast to Lost, where it's clear that there is no long term game plan and they're just trying to keep people guessing for as long as possible. What's the point in guessing if there isn't, and never has been, an answer?

Re:The babe from Firefly?

[CopaceticOpus]

A series is a great way to tell stories, though. It allows for much more depth and character development than a single movie. It also allows for stories to be told without all the overhead of introducing us to the characters and the setting every time.

The problem is that series are typically weakened by the economics of television. They have to be designed so that people can pick them up in the middle of the series, which means they have to be made simplistic or repetitive. (This wouldn't be a problem if we switched from broadcast to on-demand distribution.)

Also, the length of the series is determined by whether money is being made, rather than being based on the ideal length for the series. This is less of a problem for BBC shows which are publicly funded. For example, the BBC series "Life on Mars" had two short seasons, and ran for just the right length to tell a great episodic story. I didn't see the ABC version, but I know it ran into the old problem of getting canceled and having to wrap things up in a flash.

Re:The babe from Firefly?

[El_Muerte_TDS]

Or Prison Break.

Re:The babe from Firefly?

[mdwh2]

To be honest I'm getting bored of the whole series model.

I agree, though I think the network/funding is to blame. The idea that you have to write, film, produce even half of a season, without knowing whether the second half will be ordered, seems rather mad to me.

It's entirely reasonable that the writers have to allow room for another season - this is particularly an issue for Terminator where there is only one goal. Whilst say, 24 can have different terrorist threat each season, it would look poor for each season of Terminator to wrap up with "Skynet is defeated" and then the next say "Oh wait, no it isn't!"

Of course, all this could be avoided if they at least had advance warning on whether the season would be the last one or not. It would also help if they could write even just one complete season as a whole, without having to produce half of it, then not be able to change an earlier plot if something doesn't work out when writing the second half. Apparently shows like 24 are written as they go along, with shows airing before the rest of the season is written. And it shows.

Re:The babe from Firefly?

[IamTheRealMike]

Eh what? Lost is the most extreme case of forward planning I've ever seen. If you think they don't have it all planned out you're not paying attention. Did you notice that the 4 toed statue was first encountered in passing in season 2, then barely featured again until the last episodes of season 5? How about the way Pierre Chang first appeared with a prosthetic right arm in a mysterious video way back at the start of season 2, and right at the end of season 5 you see the accident in which he got that bad arm? He wasn't just thrown in randomly as "mysterious dude with bad arm" and then reintroduced later, it hangs together too well for that.

Re:The babe from Firefly?

[tomzyk]

P.S. If you haven't watched "Firefly" / "Serenity" yet, you're missing the best show that was ever on Sci-Fi.

Well, I don't know about other people who didn't watch this show, but _I_ stopped watching it halfway through the pilot episode. I was just baffled by the technology available to the characters. They have ships that can move from planet to planet with relative ease (and seemingly great speed) and yet they still used 6-shooters and shotguns as their weapon of choice. WTF Mate?

Re:The babe from Firefly?

[Deathdonut]

Lost was originally written to be resolved in a single season. The fact that the "long term game plan" was rewritten repeatedly based upon actor negotiations and popularity doesn't mean that it was wandering randomly.

The difference between Lost and shows like Terminator is not one of planning but rather subplot encapsulation. Once Terminator reached the level of maturity it had in season 2, most single episodes were written with individual plot lines, themes and even styles. These were often intertwined with extended plotlines, but watchable with their own climax and resolutions.

While there were exceptions to this formula, this is the type of serial television that impresses me in the writing department. Most shows that attempt this format have "filler" episodes that alternate with "progression" episodes. The former have their own plots (frequently cutesy) while the latter are watchable only in the context of the entire show. Terminator was one of the few shows that did a good job of breaking this mold.

Am I a fanboi? Maybe against my will. First season was mediocre at best, but in the second season it seemed to come into its own from a writing standpoint.

Re:The babe from Firefly?

[RiotingPacifist]

don't forget the whore, shes hot too!

Re:The babe from Firefly?

[cayenne8]

"...Summer Glau does need a sandwich, though."

Don't encourage that...you ALWAYS wanna start out with them skinny. They do get bigger with age. Ask most any married guy, and they'll tell you the same. They always thought their girl would stay in shape and good looking.

Wedding cake kills that scenario.

Re:The babe from Firefly?

[Lemmy Caution]

What that tells me about Lost is that they do a good job of managing their prop inventory.

I think it is likely they just mine earlier episodes for visual and (ahem) "plot" elements and then drop a subsequent reference or explanation to them in later. No foresight or planning required.

Re:The babe from Firefly?

[JWSmythe]

    For those of us who like our women skinny, she's beautiful.

    My apologies for those who prefer their women thick.

Re:The babe from Firefly?

[gaspyy]

Yes and no.
They do have the overall story planned. It progresses nicely and logically. They don't have all the minor details in place; they can't even plan very well ahead as there are many unforeseen events (just look at Babylon 5 and how they had to replace Sinclair with Sheridan for example).

When you have the story laid out correctly, you get Babylon 5 or Lost. When you don't, you get Heroes.

Re:The babe from Firefly?

[Molochi]

That seemed to really bother a lot of people though I never understood why. Nobody complains that Han Solo uses an 1896 Mauser that shoots some kind of energy beam that travels slow enough to visually track. But weapons that a colonist blacksmith could make, that's just crazy talk.

Complex? Non-populist? Meditative?

[morgan_greywolf]

Oh, you mean dull. Or as Homer Simpson would say:

B-o-o-r-i-n-n-g.

more plausible

[fermion]

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.

Re:more plausible

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it's been years since the last movie, and with the next sequel in the pipeline (now out in the theaters), it seems the real purpose of the show (or at least one of the main goals) was to renew interest in the Terminator storyline.

When you think about it, the show couldn't go on too much longer, without stepping on the metaphorical toes of the storyline used in the sequel(s).

Although I have to admit as a Terminator fan, this show turned out to be bettter than I thought it would be.

Re:more plausible

[WindowlessView]

terminator franchise

Maybe the problem is with the franchise. It seems so-last-decade. Reality is so much more interesting than silver liquid robots from the future.

I could never accept that in the two seasons barely any mention was made of the forces that are really behind robotic and large database development. It was as if DARPA, the defense industry, the "war on terror", the growth of domestic surveillance, insatiable corporate data aggregation, battlefield robots and drones in Iraq and Afghanistan, etc., didn't exist. The series had ample opportunities to be relevant and insightful about human psychology, social trends and politics. But it wasn't.

Re:more plausible

[KeatonMill]

This.

Heck, even BSG was able to weave some aspect of current events into the psychology and philosophy of the show.

To be handed this great plot tool ("hey, we're going to take the premise of Terminator but not comply with the timelines") and not use its capable writing to explore present-day dilemmas was, in my mind, a travesty.

Of course, maybe they did and Skynet (by which I mean FOX) made them change the scripts.

"Non-Populist, Meditative, Complex"

[RobotRunAmok]

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.

Re:"Non-Populist, Meditative, Complex"

[cptnapalm]

Elitist != someone who is elite

An elitist is someone who sneers at anyone trying to make something readable, watchable or in anyway good. Typical elitist gatherings are gossip groups of people who all watch the same things, think the same things and read the same things. At these gatherings, they regurgitate the same pithy quotes which, typically, were read on bumper stickers of other elitists, which reinforce their opinion that they are the most morally perfect people to have ever walked the earth, all without actually needing to do anything.

Damn! What a shame!

[erroneus]

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.

Sarah Connor Chronicles, Why it Died

[Chris_Jefferson]

Why it Died: cost > income

Re:Sarah Connor Chronicles, Why it Died

[SlappyBastard]

Not true. The vast majority of TV shows turn a profit. The case is more that Fox feels they can make more money with a different show.

damn it!

[ilblissli]

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?!

The Real Answer

[bhunachchicken]

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.

Re:The Real Answer

[JustinOpinion]

A lot of TV shows have vanished from our screens because of this [reality shows]

Umm.... citation?

Shows have been canceled since the dawn of television. How are you so certain that those shows were canceled "because" of a corporate obsession with reality shows? Terminator was canceled because it didn't have enough viewers. Scrubs had 8 seasons and Frasier had 11 seasons... is that not a long enough run for a show? Are shows supposed to continue forever?

I'm not saying that the popularity of reality shows hasn't put a dent in the amount of money networks will spend on conventional fiction series. But to suggest that reality television has killed all conventional shows is demonstrably wrong: there are plenty of shows that are still airing and doing just fine. Moreover there is apparently a substantial audience that has no interest in reality television, so there is still money in advertising to them.

Frankly it seems to me that generic reality shows have simply replaced generic fiction shows: comedies and soap operas that didn't have much depth to them either. There has and will continue to be an audience interested in more inventive kinds of fiction. That audience has and will continue to be a minority, though. So many good shows will continue to be canceled, but some other good shows will make it. (Where "good" is of course highly subjective.)

Re:The Real Answer

[whisper_jeff]

Frasier? Seriously? You're blaming the end of Frasier on reality TV? Really? It didn't have anything to do with the fact that the show had an ELEVEN year run? It wasn't about the fact that the show ran its course, as all shows do? It died because of reality TV? Seriously?

I understand your basic point and actually agree with it in large part. Reality TV has changed the way networks view TV but to say that a show which had an exceptionally long run on TV ended because of reality TV rather than it just being the natural course of things is actually hurting your point rather than reinforcing it.

Re:Is that you, pedobear?

[Grimbleton]

Weirdo.

You never watched did you?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:You never watched did you?

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose you could make that case, if (cursed == stupid enough to work for FOX more than once).

She's only got herself to blame.

That said, I expect she'll be back as a Doll next season and cement her own typecasting.

Re:You never watched did you?

[Creepy]

But it IS exactly like that - the basic plot has not changed, ever - always exactly one "good guy" and one "bad guy" sent back in time and they duke it out for survival of humanity. As a very short synopsis, the main plot has not changed.

    Personally, I watched the first 6 episodes or so of The Sarah Connor Chronicles and completely lost interest - I didn't find the writing all that inspired or inspiring. Even the first episode was derivative - it was T3 all over, except set in a school not a veterinarian clinic. Or was it T2 all over when good Terminator saves John Connor from the bad Terminator at his house?

    I was much more disappointed with the cancellation of Life On Mars - I was actually starting to enjoy the US version (I still liked the UK version better, but the US version had merits). I can't think of a sci-fi show on TV right now that I really care about - most are uninspired or derivative (Caprica? Stargate Universe? Come on SyFy - come up with something interesting besides rehashed series and monster movies/shows [which is everything else - Sanctuary, Primeval, etc]).

Re:You never watched did you?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Summer Glau played River Tam, a disturbed girl with a mysterious past(TM), in the series Firefly and the follow-up film Serenity.

She also had a recurring role in an early series of The Unit, playing a disturbing girlfriend with a predictable future(TM).

I don't know whether her agent should be praised or cursed: she's already had prominent roles in three fairly high profile TV shows, which is no mean feat at her age, but on the other hand her characters (despite being by far the most interesting in the two shows where she was a lead) almost forced her into off-the-wall, somewhat stereotyped portrayals at times. I suspect she made as good a job as she could given the script and direction, but unless she particularly likes that kind of character, I'm guessing she ought to do something a bit more "normal human being" next to prove that she's not relying on the eccentricity as a crutch to cover acting weaknesses.

Re:You never watched did you?

[One Monkey]

She was also the schizophrinic with the power to compel people to do as she said in The 4400.

Another great show that could have offered more if it hadn't been cancelled. Still what there was of it was stupendous.

Written to be released on DVD

[Bigbutt]

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]

Sad, as it was getting a little interesting.

[RATLSNAKE]

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.

Re:I[t]'ll be back..

[MoonBuggy]

I think the point was Dollhouse vs Firefly, not Dollhouse vs SCC. Dollhouse got pretty interesting towards the end, but it was not a patch on Firefly.

Fox have now acknowledged their mistake in cancelling Firefly by saying "Hmm, we made a mistake last time. Rather than resurrect the show we shouldn't have cancelled in the first place for a second season, we'll renew the newer, less popular show by the same people."

Re:going out on a limb, here ...

[Richard_at_work]

I've seen every episode, and I still say the show sucked, but thats my opinion and it differs from yours.

Re:Here, I'll summarize.

[Golddess]

It doesn't even try to kill his grandparents.

Considering the explanation in Terminator about why the Terminator killed those other Sarah Connors, I don't believe Skynet would have even known where to begin with trying to kill John's grandparents. And anyone who knows timetravel knows you don't just go back and kill everything in sight. Skynet could end up ensuring that it never gets created.

Re:Complex? Non-populist? Meditative?

[Loco3KGT]

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.

Re:Here, I'll summarize.

[JoeMerchant]

I've jumped around watching a few TtSCC shows from hulu, and from that perspective it's just as full of the same high-school coming of age / romance angst as the rest of teen television (see: Buffy, Roswell, 90210, and a dozen others I'm sure...)

The real question is: What's Summer Glau's next psycho chick series role going to be?

Actually the 'fanboy' wrote a nice piece

[kaizendojo]

The read was actually worth it, and shouldn't be written off so quickly. In a paragraph from the original article:

The name also did it a disservice in that this was never Sarah Connor's story, at least not for me. The series shone brightest when a light was trained on John Connor's transformation from whiny teen to reluctant leader. It was in relation to John that the other characters made sense. Despite the title, Sarah Connor doesn't really deserve chronicling - she isn't that interesting a character. Obsessed people very rarely are, especially when the cause of that obsession has been explained. Sarah's obsessed with protecting her son, because he's going to save the world. This means that her attitude to everybody is always exactly the same: aggressive, surly and suspicious. She doesn't change. It's her moulding of her son that strikes a note. Her attempts to protect him increasingly push him away, turning him into the man he needs to become, even as she's trying to connect. It was this journey that was at the centre of the series - watching John grow into the role he didn't want. Watching how the other characters shaped him, and he them. Watching a mythology being spun.

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.

Re:Friday Night

[TnkMkr]

Actually I think you hit it with the second sentince. It became more about angst (and artificial angst) than about Sci-fi or anything else meaningful. I watched up thru the first half of the second season, and I got frustrated with the characters constantly finding soap-opera reasons for being angry with each other.

The characters just did not seem to take the situation they were in seriously, despite everything they had seen and experienced up to that point. And what ever writer came up with the overused plot device, where a 'good guy' lies to the other 'good guys' or decides not tell them a very important fact because he/she feels they need to 'protect' the others from the truth, needs to be shot. It is a tiresome device and makes the characters appear to be moronic and (to me) makes the characters difficult to watch and the show difficult to enjoy.

Very simple reason it failed!

[p51d007]

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.

Medidative and complex ?

[Arthur B.]

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.

Touched By A Terminator

[mariox19]

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.

Re:going out on a limb, here ...

[russotto]

I've just gotten tired of Yet Another Uber-Aggressive Fight Babe stories.

You've WHAT? Turn in your geek card. And your man card, if you're male.

Re:I[t]'ll be back..

[portnoy]

They gave Dollhouse another season because although the people watching the show live were pretty low, the number of people watching the show on DVR, iTunes, and Hulu were big and kept growing. More importantly, Joss convinced them that he could do the show for less money, and had an episode that he'd basically put together for free to seal the deal.

Everyone says it's because Firefly turned out to be huge after the fact, but I doubt that would have swung the guys at Fox if they weren't able to see a real increase in the bottom line.

Re:Here, I'll summarize.

[kv9]

Indeed, and IIRC, T1 has Reese explicitly saying that records were lost after the war, so all they had to go on was the mother's name.

aand... a time machine? problem solved. what the fuck?

Re:Damn! What a shame!

[portnoy]

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.

Re:Why it died

[smooth wombat]

I never watched an episode either, but when you consider the easiest ways to keep a male viewers attention are to a) have an attractive woman (see Chuck or Burn Notice) b) who can kick ass (see Chuck or Burn Notice) or c) cause big explosions and who d) wears skimpy/revealing clothes (see Chuck or Burn Notice), it would be logical to assume they would toss this out from time-to-time to keep that segment of the viewers happy.

Why it died?

[Manip]

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?

Re:I don't watch TV, never missed an episode...

[galfridus73]

A high school classmate of mine works at Fox and told me not to watch anything online which I fear will be cancelled because they don't count those views.

I then had to ask him why would Fox put it up for viewing if they weren't counting the views in the ratings and he couldn't answer.

The reality is: Fox and the other networks (with the odd, possible exception of CBS, which makes noises that makes me think they are beginning to get it) just don't understand how to handle new media or how to place a series in front of an audience in a way that it reaches the optimal number of eyes and works will for the owners of said eyes to watch the show on their time.

Personally: I recorded it and then sent it to my Apple TV (I just can't stand staring at the computer screen when I have a 50" TV in the other room). Even if I missed an episode, I grabbed it off of iTunes as opposed to watching it on Hulu. But, that's just me. Viewed live, recorded, streamed, or downloaded, Fox (and the others) should be counting those numbers.

Re:You left off the second half of that.

[rhyno46]

Too many shows are successful with that flaw. See 24, Chuck, and more.

Re:Here, I'll summarize.

[rhyno46]

Not to mention that Chronicles introduced the point that with all of the time traveling going on, not all of the time traveling characters were from the same future even thought they knew each other in the future. Some had entirely different future-histories.

Re:Here, I'll summarize.

[blind biker]

And anyone who knows timetravel knows you don't just go back and kill everything in sight.

The cold green tea just went through my nose when I read this. But then I realized that it's more pathetic than humorous, that you take your science clues from bad SF.

Talking about bad SF: very few SF movies have approached the question of time travel in any meaningful way - a fantastic exception to this is "Primer". Excellent hard-SF that takes into consideration time travel paradoxes.

Re:I[t]'ll be back..

[Altus]

Maybe this time, because of firefly, they actually thought to look at more than just the hard ratings?

Its actually a pretty impressive jump for TV executives.

Re:Here, I'll summarize.

[Nick Ives]

I think it works as a closed paradox. Without giving a spoiler, there is a similar paradox involving a character in Babylon 5. The Vorlons refer to him as "The Closed Circle" as he, with their help, goes back in time and leads to the circumstances that allow him to go back in time.

Re:The Miniseries Model

[Lemmy Caution]

But it's the fans that insist in keeping these series alive well past their sell-by dates. They don't want art or narratives that are well-crafted and remark interestingly on the world we live in - they want imaginary worlds that they can escape into, with reassuringly familiar characters.

Re:I nearly didn't watch it.

[Thumper_SVX]

Pity... because a lot of the sci-fi that "looks cheesy" is in fact among the best. This is precisely why we have such execrable movies as "Armageddon" trying to pass for science fiction these days; spectacle is everything, story is nothing.

By modern standards, 2001 "looks cheesy", yet is a seminal science fiction movie. See also The Andromeda Strain and THX1138.

No, I'm not an old fogey... all of these movies are older than me but show an incredible piece of science fiction as art... despite the cheesiness. Terminator... I was too young to see it in the movies when it was released... but it's also a great piece of cinematic science fiction, and one of the few time travel stories that actually contains within it the logic that makes it all work. Most time travel is used as a crutch in so-called "science fiction" (witness most Star Trek time travel stories) or as a simple tool to tell a bigger story (Doctor Who).

Terminator was a time travel story that was internally consistent as well as being a great and tense chase movie. You really got the feeling that no matter how fast and how far Sarah ran, the Terminator would catch up eventually even if it took years. That's why she had to turn around, face and destroy it.

Re:going out on a limb, here ...

[ppanon]

Oh, sure! Blame Heinlein!

Re:You left off the second half of that.

[TheRaven64]

In the '70s, Doctor Who was shown in 20-25 minute episodes. At the end of each one, it was not unusual for The Doctor to be in some seemingly-hopeless situation, which he would usually escape within the first minute of the next episode. One reviewer commented:

We don't watch to see if he survives, we watch to see how he survives

It's the same with a show like this. We know the protagonist isn't going to die, but we watch to see how he manages it.

This is so messed up...

[NormAtHome]

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.

Re:Meditative?

[JockTroll]

War and Peace? WAR AND PEACE??? Fuckin' Voya i Mir is the worst example a loserboy nerd can come up with. It's a terribly overlong family drama with some cool fight scenes and a bunch of characters who need a Jethro Gibbs slap starting with emo loserboy piece of shit Pierre Bezuchov and all of his bullcrap schemes. You want to love Natascha Rostova 'cause she was played by Audrey Hepburn in the movie but she's as shallow and emo as fuckin' Pierre the Lousy Shot. Only good character is Andrej Bolkonsky with all the veteran PTSD stuff, and the fourth freakin' volume is just a bunch of pseudophilosophical rambling by the writer on the nature of history and so on.

Read Dostojevsky, now that's some cool shit: Crime and Punishment rocks, I'd love to learn Russian so I could read it in the original language. And then drop some borscht-laden shit on you nerds.

Re:Here, I'll summarize. with a few mistakes.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:going out on a limb, here ...

[profplump]

I agree it's sad from a universe-story standpoint, but it's really unavoidable if you'd like to have a terminator on more than once a season. You could look at it from the opposite standpoint and say that the movies scaled up the terminators because they are telling a one-off story with one bad guy.

Re:going out on a limb, here ...

[clone53421]

I've just gotten tired of Yet Another Uber-Aggressive Fight Babe stories.

Oh please. My bitch about the series (and I really did want to like it, although they made that hard) was that Sarah and John were constantly acting like such PUSSIES. Sarah from T2 was a psycho bitch-lady. Sarah from T:tSCC was just a psycho paranoid freak. I just can't picture the Sarah from T:tSCC even considering killing Miles Dyson, much less actually shooting up his home and nearly going through with killing him.

There's also no way in hell the Sarah from T:tSCC could have done the pull-ups she did in the movie. You see her doing pussy pull-up things that sort of resemble pull-ups but aren't really and the camera changes angles between EVERY SINGLE ONE because she couldn't do more than that...