Stargate Universe Cancelled

Torino writes "SGU has finally been cancelled, with the remaining 10 episodes to air in Spring. Apparently, the cast wasn't told ahead of time, and some of them learned of the cancellation via Twitter. SGU has had its share of problems, even spawning a community of people who dislike the show. Can it be saved via fan support, given the steadily declining viewership numbers? Do you think the show had the potential to improve?"

Comments

good

[greymond]

The Stargate series started off great, but it should have ended long before Atlantis even kicked off, let alone Universe.

Re:good

[Anonymous Coward]

No it hasn't.
At least not as a Stargate series.

Stargate was always about one thing.
Explore other worlds by people who want to do it by their free will.
Show how humans explore the galaxy solving riddles of great age.

Stargate Universe is basically a survival horror series.
And a bad one as well. You can see all plot twists from a mile away and
all the characters act like they are all stupid to no end, just like a old horror
movie.

Good it died.

Re:good

[God'sDuck]

My new rules of sci-fi:
 
1) Never, ever, EVER allow time travel. Every single timeline can be undone. Nothing is believable.
2) Just because the special effects are awesome doesn't mean you don't need great writing.
3) Episodic shows are sitcoms (Star Trek I), and each episode needs to stand alone in a compelling and memorable way. Progessive shows (BSG reboot) need to have a sense of progress in each episode. Using episodic episodes in a progressive shows is OK for a break, but not because you've run out of ideas for progress. If you have run out of ideas for progress, KILL THE SHOW now, on your own terms, before it is cancelled. Take a few months off, pick a new story arc, mix up some characters and start again. If you don't, be sure to buy lunch for your writers so that they will proofread your resume at the end of the season.

Re:good

[skids]

"What was wrong with Atlantis?"

1) Dreadlock surfer-dude badass strained credibility -- and ability to suppress gagging
2) Villiains stolen wholesale from Earth Final Conflict's Season 5 -- incidentally the worst travesty of a final season till she ruined Andromeda, too.
3) Once you thought the lame humanoid replicators were finally gone, here they come again! (Bring back the legos!)

Re:good

[interkin3tic]

My opinion: the first series' only asset was an oddly funny MacGyver faced with alternate realities, usually having to shoot his way out. The show really seemed like a one trick pony. Without MacGyver or the humor, what do you have? Sliders with alien gods that are incredibly advanced but somehow so incompetent that they always lose to 4 people with guns?

Re:good

[arth1]

What was wrong with Atlantis? While it was airing, there was nothing better on TV. I challenge you to provide reasons why it shouldn't have gone that far.

One reason is that, like BG, it turned into a soap, where character interaction became more important than plot and vision.

Re:good

[lennier1]

The fact that said horror show also felt as if written by soap opera writers didn't exactly help either.

Re:good

[Z00L00K]

I would say that SGU was at least something different from Atlantis, but it also looped back on itself. It's a closed environment that is hard to develop.

But in a way it's more psychological than action. Unfortunately the writers have never been able to keep the tension for the viewers right. Too much negative feelings.

And SGU is certainly not for the same audience as the original Stargate series. It's completely different. And I think that the "stones" feature where the minds are swapped between Earth and the starship is just degrading the story rather than improving it. I really dislike the parts where someones mind is transferred to Earth, it just blows the suspension completely.

However some kind of communication with Earth could have been a good feature, just ordinary voice/video would have done better. More viewer suspense and a broader spectrum of acting and more progress with the ship would have pushed the story forward a lot more.

Mind - you can do a lot of good stories with only a few special effects and simple costumes. And SGU at least have mostly simple costumes aside from a few aliens.

Re:good

[Opportunist]

It was worse than that, if you ask me.

There's like a billion generic sci-fi series today. So you have to have a twist in yours to make it interesting. The whole "Ancient Egypt Gods travelling through ancient world gates" angle worked great for Stargate (the original). It was great Sci-Fi without a lot of space opera. Their main angle, at least for me, was "plausible today sci-fi". You could believe it, stretching your imagination a bit. Usually, when you try to place a sci-fi setting into our current reality, you're facing a few plausibility loopholes. How comes no amateur astronomer finds the space ships? How do you mop up and hide all the fights happening on earth (after all, what's a sci-fi show without lasers?)? How do you keep governments from wanting all that spiffy alien technology and using it against other countries?

Stargate solved all that pretty well, originally. The Stargate is hidden in an underground base, and traveling to other planets is done through that gate, where we conveniently also place all the fights. Great solution. Nice plausibility.

It went downhill when, for some godaweful reason only the script writers could explain, we had to add starships. Why? We had a formula here that worked and that was refreshingly different from the usual "aliens vs. humans, fighting a battle in space" generic formula.

Seriously. The series died for me a long, long time ago. When the "explore strange planets and fight the Goa'uld" formula was replaced with "oh hey, let's have space battles".

Re:good

[Rick Genter]

Not to be a total geek, but:

In SGA, the "Pegasus Galaxy" is supposedly about 3 million light-years from the Milky Way Galaxy.
In SGU, the Destiny is supposedly 7 *billion* light-years from Earth, or ~2300x as far.

So the Wormhole Drive would have to run for hours instead of seconds....and as we all know, the dipolarized unobtanium that powers it goes supercritical if used for more than 30 seconds and destroys the universe, so SGU *obviously* couldn't have used that... ;-)

Re:good

[omnichad]

I really don't find the addition of starships to be a huge problem or all that forced. It was also always a story of the underdog Earth, beating the odds using technology that they don't understand. The one planet among many that overthrew their oppressors even in ancient Egypt. think it would be harder to believe that the military DIDN'T try to build fighters and starships, especially with the looming thought that Earth is now a target.

Re:good

[lgw]

The space ships didn't bother me until parhaps the final season, when they had started to replace the "go through the stargate an discover something" theme entirely. I really liked the fact that the setting evolved in SG1. We started capturing all this cool tech from the enemy, and we learned from it, and some of that was game-changing. I can't think of another SF show that has followed things through to some (vaguely) logical conclusion like that.

Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[skids]

Seriously, it was no BSG, but other than Caprica, what exactly does SyFy have going for it now?

A watered down remake of a barely-two-year-old BBC series (Being Human) which will lose all value without the fun accents?

And

[Anonymous Coward]

nothing of value was lost.

bad writing, bad acting.

[Anonymous Coward]

shitty characters who make stupid decisions (e.g. not dumping nerve gas into the ducts when your ship is being overrun with superior forces ? wtf? this guy is a general ?, leaving your only scientist with any knowledge of ship systems stranded on a planet ? etc), crappy acting and dumb dialogue, shitty plot.
kill that show and bury it.

Re:bad writing, bad acting.

[GooberToo]

That's a great premise to defend some of the horrible writing, but it quickly breaks down once you apply even a modest amount of critical review.

He's such a wrong leader that he's been selected to travel to one of the most important events within a super secret, most important project known to man kind. Really? In such a situation, even the worst would still be far better than average - and most here border of flat out ineptitude.

In that situation you might have people make decisions which seemed bad after the fact, but these are bad decisions both before and after for absolutely no reason other than to create a poor story in hopes of hiding a poor writing style.

I actually believe most of the acting is okay. The primary problems I've seen is when the actors have had problems choking out some of the horrible lines and idiotic sub plots.

Universe could have worked if they had decided that details such as plot and story arch mattered. But rather than do that, they decided that they'd be dumb and trendy and follow JJ Abram's poor plot style; which fails to deliver almost every time. Ultimately, the "just make shit up every episode and the viewers will believe you're really fucking deep and mysterious", is what ultimately doomed Universe.

Re:bad writing, bad acting.

[Tiger4]

and that was a great premise. "Everybody into the lifeboat, we'll deal with the other problems later!"

That sets the stage for all kinds of good interaction and dynamics in the crew. Which I thought were playing out pretty well. the main leadership had worked up a truce in hostilities, the secondary characters had mostly worked out their personal frictions and hook ups. Then the writers had the option of playing on those notes again, or introducing new external threats. Which they did.

A bit too much recycling of soap opera style plots, but in the end a good mix of character development, external threats, and sense of unknowns. A multi-faceted adult sci-fi show, with some T&A for the fanboys. But apparently not formulaic enough.

Re:bad writing, bad acting.

[ArhcAngel]

You've hit the nail on the head but failed to realize that this is probably EXACTLY how real humans would act in this situation. It's like a fiction reality show. Don't tell me you have never been faced with a situation where you had a right and wrong decision and you chose the wrong decision for personal/emotional reasons. Smokers do this every day. Hell I'd beat the snot out of Rush myself on a regular basis just for recreation. I must admit I was off-put by the first season but the recent episodes are starting to gel better and they actually have a "mission" even if it is chasing after ancient static noise. I think they should give it at least one more season to flesh out all of the plot elements they've set in motion to see if they can improve viewership. I mean are there actually that many people watching these ghost shows?

About time!

[Anonymous Coward]

I watched every episode of SG1 and Atlantis, and I couldn't stand SGU. It had way too much drama, infighting and incompetence to be an enjoyable series.

I think they were trying to make something like Battlestar Galactica, but forgot to add a plot.

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[Nadaka]

Pro wrestling and 7 flavors of fake reality ghost hunting shows.

Re:it was getting better

[Surt]

I'm pretty sure it's all about budget. From what I hear the budget on a Eureka/Haven is 10% of the cost of a SGU. That's a drastically lower threshold for advertising profitability. The cost / episode of WWE is even lower.

Saw it coming when they renamed the channel SyFy

[Winchestershire]

More proof that SyFy is well on its way to become just another SpikeTV/MTV/G4 clone. Remember when the Sci-Fi Channel showed showed Science Fiction B-Movies and TV shows (I sure miss Mystery Science Theater 3000)?

This is the 21st century for Frak's sake

[Mindragon]

How many more? How many more uncompleted series, idiotic product placements and other Brainwashing Network TV Executive decisions are we going to face before we finally get away from the middle man? I’m probably going to disconnect my DirecTV box now because there really isn’t anything left to watch on network TV. The networks keep eliminating anything resembling creative content and continue to deprive America of some of the finest writings out there. How much longer do we have to wait before enough of us get together to form an online media company that works? I’ve got a nice monitor / computer setup. For what it costs of DirecTV for one year, I could afford a very nice Computer / Monitor setup. And if I’m patient enough to time-shift my TV, I could do the same for online content. The model would be extraordinarily affordable if folks were to band together. One million regular viewers of a TV series on network TV is laughable. One million regular viewers of online content is a smash hit. Add in some micro currency ($0.99 cents a month / viewer) and for twelve million a year, anyone certainly could put together a creative and production team that works. I don’t know why Network TV folks don’t take content and put it in web only mode if it works better. For example, SGU and Caprica maybe is a better model for the online universe. That is where the audience is anyway. So put ads up on TV saying “Exclusively online”. If viewer-ship rises enough on the web then maybe transition it back to TV. Why the hell does everything need to be TV centric anymore? This is the 21st century for frak’s sake.

Re:It was just okay

[PhxBlue]

Heavily influenced by the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica, SGU felt much more "adult" and real than any previous SG series (some of which were just downright hokey).

Only if, by "adult," you mean "emo."

As someone who watched SGU regularly...

[SheeEttin]

As someone who watched SGU regularly, I can say it wasn't too bad (it was getting better), but it didn't have a theme of its own. Sure, you're on a ship, but you're not trying to get home... You're basically just along for the ride. It's not that interesting. At least be human and try to build on what you've got...

I miss the planet exploration of the old Stargates. :(

Ridiculous... I hate network execs

[anlashok]

The channel had great ratings for BSG, and had a lot of potential wasted by execs that didn't understand or care about a scifi audience that built the channel up. Could have done a better budgeted B5 show, or one of the many Fox shows killed too early like Firefly. Why the heck is wrestling and ghost stories on a scifi channel?
I actually like SGU more than many of the episodes of the SGA episodes. Previous commenter was right in calling it more adult. It could be great, but NBC doesn't know what it has. Its a good money maker for a niche that doesn't have competition in the subject matter.
I'd invest in a new SciFi type channel if I could. Maybe Speilberg, Lucas, or Cameron would see the possibilities.

The reasons for failure

[rar]

My take at some reasons for failure:

1. Most of their viewers identify with Eli (the slacker nerd genius), but he ended as a minor support character, often just tangentially involved in the plot. He should have been SGU's Rodney.
2. Unlike previous Stargate iterations and BSG they tried to pull off 'crew against nature' plot lines rather than 'crew against enemies' . To get such plots feel like 'action' is really hard. A lot of them (especially in the beginning) was "crew lands on planet, somehow gets stuck, must get back in time before the ship leaves". There is only so many times you can do that before it becomes repetitive.
3. Point '2' got even worse since the planets often were ridiculously uninspired, "Desert planet", "Freezing planet", "Jungle planet", etc.

All this said, I think the show was heading in an interesting direction. I'm sad to see it go.

Fuck Syfylis

[otis wildflower]

I hope they turn into the Wrestling With Giant Insects channel and leave room for an actual Sci-Fi channel.

Also, "History" can eat a dick, and change their name to the Ice Road Truckers network.

Plus, IFC, you suck balls with commercials now, and have no worthwhile series to show for it. I can barely tolerate or forgive AMC, and only because they have _Breaking Bad_.

Why do channels even have themes anymore? Why not just 'Network Blue' or 'Shazbot' or something stupid? TLC did that, there's no more Learning there (and I fuckin miss the James Burke series' they used to show regularly)..

Meh, who cares, the only 'network' that matters anymore is eztv.it ..

Dr. Who

[Viewsonic]

Who would have thought that Dr. Who would be the only scifi show on the air at one point?

Where did the market go for shows like Star Trek and ST:TNG?

What is going on?

A terribly flawed show.

[Anonymous Coward]

The characters and writing were horribly flawed from the start. They were all largely unlikeable, so why should I care what happens to them? The premise of the show was supposed to be that the wrong people got sent on this mission, and now they're all stuck together on this ship. The characters were all essentially a series of individuals with no sense of group among them. The writing was such that they constantly pitted one character against another, but none of the characters had any particularly admirable qualities. With no sense of group purpose, we're only left with individuals to latch on to.

Which one am I supposed to identify with? The megalomaniac brilliant doctor guy who's unpredictable and can't be trusted to help anyone, but has to be since he's the only one that knows anything? The crappy leader who nobody respects? The brilliant nerdy guy in the dumb shirt whose only purpose seems to be lusting after the young hot chic? The young hot chic who's only purpose seems to be hot? The backstabbing hot lesbian chic? The other leader guy on earth who makes the crappy leader guy who nobody respects look good by comparison? They're all two dimensional cardboard cutouts that I couldn't care less about. Having a few unlikable, horribly flawed characters is fine, and adds to the quality of the show. Having a whole cast of them is a disaster.

I watched the first season, hoping it might get better. It never did. I bailed and decided the series was hopeless. Looks like I was right.

Wasn't up to the challenge.

[tempest69]

It was pretty. But it was missing on too many spots. The writing was bad, poor plot, poor dialogue, and they didn't connect the audience to the characters. The Sci-fi parts didn't have solid thinking parts. The enemies were boring and just kinda there. It seemed that ammo was super abundant.
The characters didn't develop, with the exception of Greer. And given the alien infestation and lost baby I would have expected some depth of character to start coming out.

Compare it with Firefly or BSG.. Most of the principle characters have some depth, the dialogue worked. And enemies were everywhere and complex. SG1 managed some solid character development.
I liked the FX, the acting was good, and I'd still probably keep watching, because there isn't jack out there to watch in space based sci-fi genera . But they can do better.

Re:Yay. more money for mansquito II!

[EdIII]

Fuck SyFy.

I am little upset that SGU has been cancelled. I got into the first season... but on Netflix.

SGU would have at least one more viewer if those cock monkeys at SyFy had stopped those annoying animated overlays. They are so much bigger than any other network and so damned intrusive. They cover up to much of the scenes and one time covered Rodney's face as he was talking on Atlantis.

I'll take the opportunity to complain again about those fuckstick retarded executives.... but seriously..... viewership must have taken a hit when people can't stand watching it because of the interruptions and choose Hulu or Netflix over the more lucrative cable company fees.

I was worried about this. This could happen to not just SGU, but any other really good show out there for the same reasons. They have no real handle on the statistics and demographics of the cord cutters out there and the only way they can speak (at least myself) is by renting and purchasing full seasons of the shows while they are still on the air.

Re:It was just okay

[Have Brain Will Rent]

I agree that SGU was more adult. It had better acting, 3 dimensional characters and plots that weren't totally linear. That's why the ratings were so bad - if it is any guide take a look at the comments on Episode World... almost all complaints were that there wasn't enough shooting and there was too much "soap opera" and "drama" (I guess that's the term for anything involving emotions). The real problem is that most of the SF audience is juvenile - and I don't mean physically.

Yes it had some problems - most shows have growing pains. But I think it was the best of all the SG series. The people were more believable as real people. There was none of the virtual invincibility displayed by the characters of other SG franchises every time some technological problem was faced.

For example compare Rodney McKay to Nicholas Rush. MacKay was completely two dimensional - I think the actor playing MacKay did a great job with what he was given but the character was ridiculous. Rush was more believable as a human being, had motives that weren't completely transparent, showed a bit of the dark side of human nature etc. Or compare Rush to Carter on SG1... same thing, Rush is far more interesting and believable.

Remember the scene where Rush has been abandoned and regains conciousness to look up at the alien night sky, all alone half way across the universe. Great scene - it wasn't hard to imagine how you would have felt in his place. Yes I wasn't impressed when I found he had gotten off the planet and how but I can't think of anything as good as that scene in any of the other SG franchises. Given a bit more time to mature it could have been a great show. Oh well - RIP SGU.