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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."
... you're a fanboy, aren't you?
...in some fashion. Fox has learned that geeks buy DVDs of TV shows they once loved. Sometimes they even make new content.
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.
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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
She's that woman your PC searches for with its free cycles.
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.
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.
Oh, that must be Maria Ozawa's real name, then.
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.
It'll be back.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A better example than Lost would be Heroes
Hmm... It's kinda hard to compare a cutie who can tear a spaceship apart & put it back together, then have a beer with the guys and laugh at stupid jokes, all the while being so frickin' adorable you just want to buy her a pony or something - and a super-killer-tough-chick who seems to have been born with an axe in one hand and a gun in the other. Two different worlds, man, two worlds.
...Summer Glau does need a sandwich, though.
P.S. If you haven't watched "Firefly" / "Serenity" yet, you're missing the best show that was ever on Sci-Fi. Srsly. It's so good that fans bought advertising at their own expense.
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.
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 actually had the main plot threads laid out for all five seasons several years before the show started filming. The uncertainty of the show being picked up for a fifth season forced him to rush the end of the fourth season a bit, so he had to fill in a few episodes for the fifth season. If I remember correctly, the fourth season was supposed to end with what became episode 17 or 18, so most of the fifth season was part of the original plan.
Or Prison Break.
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.
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.
I Am Not Your Average Under Age Fuck Buddy?
Quite. It was known during season 1 that Carleton Cuse, Damon Lindeloff, and J.J. Abrams (The main writers and producers of Lost) had worked out the ending to the series already. The only season that began to meander around was season 3 because the network had not finalized an end date. Once that was negotiated it was right back on track and it is amazing how few plots holes exist in the epic storyline of LOST...which has only one more season remaining.
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.