[Eug]

Originally Posted by bstone 

When is the next SGU episode?

January.

EDIT:

Oops, maybe not. I think in January up here there's going to be a repeat of the original 1st half of the season.

[Eug]

So what does this mean?

On Space (in Canada), Stargate Universe is airing:

Sunday
January 2
2e.11p

I believe it's a marathon beginning at 11 pm, but they're trying to fool us with torrent-like s02e11-like text.

[bstone]

Ok. At least we'll get to see the season out, right? It actually has been getting really interesting lately.

[ThinkInsane]

Of course it got cancelled just, it was coming into its own and I was starting to look forward to it. I guess SciFi (I still refuse to acknowledge the name change) needed to free up some more room in the schedule for wrestling.

[voodoo]

Originally Posted by Doofy 

I haven't seen SGU because I don't want SG1 and SGA to be tarnished.
But is it in the miserable greyed-out style of BSG, trying too hard to be grim and introspective?
The nothings are nearly over, time for a new decade, one with colours and sparkle, one with more cowbell.

Oh yes it is in the miserable greyed-out style of BSG and considerable effort is put into being grim and introspective.

I tried giving SGU a chance and am going to watch all the episodes for sure, but it is not *very* surprising that it was cancelled. It's sorta like BSG except without the pretentious "stuff".

I agree that it is time for some shine and fun in the next decade. BGU lacked soul, but it was well made and when all is said and done, one of the best sci-fi series being made today.

[Ice33]

I am not surprised they killed the show.
It was too slow moving for most of the first season and by the time it picked up a lot of new viewers found little reason to get invested in the show. Even though BSG worked it did so because its format was innovative and it still had a ton of action spliced in between the Grays Anatomy acting. SGU failed because they borrowed too much buzz killing melodrama from BSG without using any of what made the stargate franchise a 10+ year success. So Chuckit, you were incorrect. No one remaied excited about this show in the end and by the time they made changes to make it better it was too late.

Just as bad is that Scifi put it on a stupid time slot.

[bstone]

The most recent episode, S2E17, was a heck of an episode. The ending made me sad. Anyone else?

[Waragainstsleep]

Only just read this thread. I've been watching SGU from the start and while it was a bit slow to get going its just getting better and better as it comes to its premature end.
I'm getting really sick of SyFy cancelling shows I really like. I am still massively pissed off they canned Caprica. Yes, I know nobody watched it, but that just tells me there are a lot of people too stupid to appreciate it. I also think that it was too intellectual to survive the ludicrous gaps that plagued the first season. TV execs really are the lowest form of life. I normally hate prequels whether they are TV shows or movies but Caprica was the first one where knowing where it was going actually made it better.

The whole system needs to be changed. Networks like SyFy should not have the power to cancel shows like that. Caprica was getting about 750k viewers a week when it got axed. I don't know what the viewing figures were in the UK but I imagine they would be at least the same again. Caprica and SGU were/are shown on a much higher profile network in the UK. There is no way those shows wouldn't have been profitable if international sales, DVDs and merchandise were taken into account from the start.

I liked SG1 and SGA but recently I have been lamenting the lack of SF shows with any kind of realism, particularly when it comes to the science parts. The tech in both those series was mostly nonsense, Eureka and Warehouse 13 the same (I do watch them anyway). Sadly this seems to be the trend for now at least. I miss the lets-be-as-scientifically-accurate-as-we-can approach of Star Trek.

[Eug]

Caprica sucked IMO.

Stargate Universe started out very slow, so I'm not surprised they cancelled it, but at least it was better than Caprica. I'm disappointed there won't be a movie to wrap things up.

[bstone]

Caprica sucked. We expected something like BSG, not a soap opera drama.

SGU started slow and dumb but I've really been enjoying it recently. Time travel, worm holes, robotic enemies all rock my world.

[Lateralus]

^Why would anybody have expected Caprica to be like BSG? They were very upfront with the type of story that it was going to be long before it premiered.

[Athens]

I hate it when shows dont get to finish. Personally I would like a series to have a start to finish contract. If the show sucks and does not do well in its time slot move it to 3am then so the people who do like it still can see it to finish. At least in such a system they will be a lot more careful about the shows they start. No way to ever force such a thing so oh well. I like to add Enterprise into the mix of shows cancelled before its time.

[Lateralus]

Eh... Enterprise wasted three entire seasons sucking - there comes a point when a chance at reprieve is no longer deserved.

[Waragainstsleep]

Caprica was outstanding. So much more original than BSG.

[Ice33]

So in the end they made it into a show about a group of isolated survivors who found themselves pursued throughout the galaxy by robot drones bent on their destruction..... no nothing at all like BSG.

SGU did however have a more satisfying ending than SGA so I will give them that. The last part of the second season was the best string of episodes they made of the series. It had interesting tangents I would have liked to have seen continued which is something that I could not say of the first season of the show.

 

e.g. - the consciousness of the two dead girls in Destiny had promise and so long as it was ultimately resolved in one season they should have kept it going and the group of descendants from the alternate timeline could have been stretched at least one more episode to let it develop better. The thing I wanted resolved from SGU was the story behind the apparently omnipotent entity that sent back the new shuttle full of the crew left on Eden and to know what happened to the dead baby. Looks like that is never happening

If the producers had introduced the alien antagonists they did this year to the show they'd have kept a large enough audience coming into season 2 to have been granted a third. All the time they spent exploring the feelings and baggage of the crew turned off people who wanted to see a scifi show. Alas they didn't pick up on how shitty of an idea it was to depress viewers with that stuff until it was too late and the persistent emoting from the first year killed this part of the SG franchise. I hope Syfy learned its lesson.

Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep 

I am still massively pissed off they canned Caprica. Yes, I know nobody watched it, but that just tells me there are a lot of people too stupid to appreciate it.

BBC canned Outcasts in 8 episodes, and that was way better than Caprica, so I wouldn't get too snobby about the stupidity of Syfy's audience.
Caprica was cheesy. Its no wonder it was killed off.

[bstone]

Great. Another show where the last episode leaves every question open and unanswered. UGGG.

[Cold Warrior]

They apparently had a movie planned to tie it up but it's now scrapped.

[Athens]

movies can become unscrapped though

[bstone]

and if we complain loudly enough they will bring it back for a third season

[Athens]

i can only think of one show that has happened and it was futurama. Any others?

[Lateralus]

Family Guy

[Athens]

I thought the reason Family Guy was pulled was a regulatory thing not a network / producer thing. Seth had to fight them to return it to TV

Nevermind, looked it up. So thats 2 cartoons that have revived lol

[Eug]

That last episode was excellent. Best ending for a Stargate series IMO.

I almost hope they don't do a movie. If they're going to revive it, revive the series. Otherwise just leave it as is.

[Mac Write]

The second half of Season 2 was filmed prior to the cancellation notice. and this is from someone who is very close to not watching TV/movies at all in any shape or form.

[Eug]

Originally Posted by Mac Write 

The second half of Season 2 was filmed prior to the cancellation notice.

Yeah but they already knew they were potentially on the chopping block.

Speaking of which…

An Open Letter to Stargate Fans From Syfy

[Waragainstsleep]

Originally Posted by Ice33 

Caprica was cheesy. Its no wonder it was killed off.

Cheesy? Did you even watch it?

SG-1, Atlantis, Warehouse 13 and Eureka are all cheesy. The latter two are still very successful.
If anything Caprica was killed off because it wasn't cheesy and simplistic enough.

On the other hand BSG proved that SF could be thoughtful and successful at the same time. I guess you just have to have enough excitement and explosions to go with the intellectual bits, just to keep the idiots grinning and the ratings up.

I still find it odd that TV relies on a business model where half the income has to be ignored by the people who have the power to kill the product.
Do you think they ever tell the producers/rights holders "we'll keep showing it in a lower profile slot but we'll only pay 50% as much for the next season"? ( or whatever the percentage needs to be) Then its up to the people actually making it to decide whether the carry on or not.

[Ice33]

Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep 

Cheesy? Did you even watch it?

If anything Caprica was killed off because it wasn't cheesy and simplistic enough.

yes, cheesy
YouTube - Caprica Intro

You are confusing tongue and cheek with cheesy, Caprica took itself far too seriously and it expected viewers to do the same. It was a horrible joke of a show.

[Waragainstsleep]

The expression is 'tongue in cheek'. I wonder which of us is therefore more likely to understand the meaning of it.

I'll give you the opening titles were a bit on the cheesy side, but Caprica was a serious SF drama. The storyline and characters didn't leave a lot of room for humour unlike BSG which had Starbuck's drinking/gambling/fighting antics to raise the odd chuckle. SGU wasn't exactly packed with laughs either. I don't see why a show has to have humour when the storyline almost dictates that it shouldn't.

There isn't enough serious SF because apparently it now has to cater to the LCD by throwing in car chases and explosions for the sake of it in order to last more than a season or two.

As for comic relief, three words: Jar Jar Binks.

[Thorzdad]

I had high hopes for both Caprica and SGU.
But, they both made the fatal mistake of zooming straight into the realm of soap opera, with needlessly convoluted and complex sub-arcs. Caprica was especially guilty of this. It was just too much, too soon. They should have used the entire first season to solidly establish the basic "birth of the Cylons" storyline, and left all the sub-plots out, perhaps introducing them in succeeding seasons.

And SGU needed to simply keep all that political in-fighting bs out of the show completely. That's the junk that really killed-off SG-TOS. Oh, and turn-up the lights a bit.

[Eug]

I think what did in SGU was the boring repetitiveness of the first half of the first season.