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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."
Oh, you mean dull. Or as Homer Simpson would say:
B-o-o-r-i-n-n-g.
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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
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.
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.
Why it Died: cost > income
Combination - fun iPhone puzzling
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
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?
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.
I've seen every episode, and I still say the show sucked, but thats my opinion and it differs from yours.
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.
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
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.
Or Prison Break.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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