Is anyone watching the Sarah Connor Chronicles on TV

@rosborne979,

It's been cancelled:

http://www.fmqinc.com/terminator-cancelled/

I phone a couple of friends in the industry and the cast has not been resigned. What do you suppose happened? Besides low ratings and moving it to Friday, the series became too expensive to produce. Could the Sci-Fi network pick it up? BTW, "Kings" is rebroadcast back-to-back on the Sci-Fi channel each week. Check your local listings. I'm not sure if that means it won't make it through the season, selling it off to syndication so soon.

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@rosborne979,

Okay, I voted for Terminator. Wink

It was interesting that Catherine finally revealed what her mission was. I hope she's being honest and not a ploy for something else.

Why was there no timeline for John Connor in the future in yesterday's show?

Why was his father alive in that timeline?

What has changed?

I agree, I think we'll see a romantic involvement between John and Allison.

What will happen now that Sarah is in the past and John is in the future? How will this affect the show, now that these two characters can't interact with each other?

What's Catherine going to be doing next?

Where and what is John Henry going to be doing? Now that Cameron has given her chip to John Henry, how will this help?

Will we ever see Cameron in the show anymore?

How will Ellison proceed in the new plot?

Lots of questions for sure!

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@Lightwizard,

Oh brother, that sucks! Mad

It figures! Get interested in something and they cancel it!!! Grrrrrrrrrrr!!

Should have guessed when they moved it to a Friday night!

Watch, they'll stick some other stupid reality show in it's place.

Now I'm really mad!

Other good shows cancelled in the past:
Strange Luck

1 Reply

@Lightwizard,

Lightwizard wrote:

Pulp sci-fi was not especially in comic books -- the magazines were Amazing Stories but especially Thrilling Wonder Stories and Startling Stories. Astounding Science Fiction, which was renamed in the late 50's as Analog, Galaxy and later, If, were digest size serious sci-fi periodicals. A story along the lines of "Back to the Future" would never appear in the serious sci-fi zines -- it was based on bits-and-pieces of the mad scientist, time travel pulp zines and dime novels. It didn't even take itself seriously, so as escapism entertainment, it's fun for the two hours it takes to watch it. Other than that, if one's life is so bad they need to only need to be coddled by teenage level entertainment and reject the rest, I'd tell them to get a life. Beauty is still in the eye of the beholder. A beautiful story, TV series or film can be gritty, true-to-life drama even if it has a sci-fi backdrop. "Atonement" had it's beautiful opening romance, then the darkness of an obsessive jealousy, then went through the grittiness of war ending with Dunkirk, and a tragic ending (with, fortunately, a spirit of redemption). Blade Runner, in the sci-fi league, was from one of sci-fi's best writers, Philip K. Dick, who has had more films made from his books than any other sci-fi author. It is even grittier than SCC, but in a mesmerizing film noir storyline, and, thanks to a determined director, was finally released without the tacked on happy ending which ruined the first release.

If someone expects everything to be happy, gilded, fluff in their movies and TV series, I'd say they have a Pollyanna complex.

I pay MY $$ for a HAPPY ending.
Ideally, it shoud be joyful in the middle
and exultant at the beginning; plenty of GOLD is good too,
but I am willing to sacrifice the grit.

Happiness = good; unhappiness = bad.

David

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@Lightwizard,

Lightwizard wrote:

It's been cancelled:

Well, ****. Nothing I like ever lasts on TV.

Oh well, maybe it's better to go out with a bang instead of the horrible mess that Battlestar Gallactica fizzled on.

I wonder if there will ever be an Internet broadcast/viewing mechanism for making shows like this cost effective for small groups of viewers who love them? It's the story writing that seems most valuable to me. Good acting is a must, but not necessarily highly paid stars. And special effects are also good, but if the story is good enough I think I would overlook average CGI. I pay $2.00/episode on iTunes to see this and I don't mind doing it. If there are 3million viewers who like the show and only half of them are willing to pay $2 each, then each show would net $3million. Would that cover production costs? I have no idea.

1 Reply

@Reyn,

They already have been placing commercials placing Prison Break in that time slot, so likely no re-runs except in syndication and on HULA. Quite frankly, I did sense it's losing it's pace, becoming too episodic and I wonder if FOX wasn't influenced by the producers of "Terminator Salvation." I should check what studio connections there might be on IMDb Pro.

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I miss a lot by not subscribing to pay TV.

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@Lightwizard,

Lightwizard wrote:

It's been cancelled:

http://www.fmqinc.com/terminator-cancelled/

I phone a couple of friends in the industry and the cast has not been resigned. What do you suppose happened? Besides low ratings and moving it to Friday, the series became too expensive to produce. Could the Sci-Fi network pick it up? BTW, "Kings" is rebroadcast back-to-back on the Sci-Fi channel each week. Check your local listings. I'm not sure if that means it won't make it through the season, selling it off to syndication so soon.

Do thay do NEW episodes ?

1 Reply

@rosborne979,

rosborne979 wrote:

Lightwizard wrote:
It's been cancelled:

Well, ****. Nothing I like ever lasts on TV.

Oh well, maybe it's better to go out with a bang instead of the horrible mess that Battlestar Gallactica fizzled on.

I wonder if there will ever be an Internet broadcast/viewing mechanism for making shows like this cost effective for small groups of viewers who love them? It's the story writing that seems most valuable to me. Good acting is a must, but not necessarily highly paid stars. And special effects are also good, but if the story is good enough I think I would overlook average CGI. I pay $2.00/episode on iTunes to see this and I don't mind doing it. If there are 3million viewers who like the show and only half of them are willing to pay $2 each, then each show would net $3million. Would that cover production costs? I have no idea.

My condolences.

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@Reyn,

Reyn wrote:

Okay, I voted for Terminator.

Thanks. But I guess it doesn't matter. Bummer.

Reyn wrote:

Why was there no timeline for John Connor in the future in yesterday's show?

Because when John jumped forward into the future he erased his own timeline.

Reyn wrote:

I agree, I think we'll see a romantic involvement between John and Allison.

What will happen now that Sarah is in the past and John is in the future? How will this affect the show, now that these two characters can't interact with each other?

We'll never know now. But I would have expected to see Sarah and Ellison team up to battle skynet, and John and Catherine team up to track John Henry in the future and reveal the mystery of why he went there. And all the while I would expect the Allison and John romance to evolve. At the end of the third season I would have expected to have the John Henry mystery revealed and young John and Allison have to say farewell as John would need to return to the past to recreate his timeline. Once back in 2007, the cross-time romance between John and Allison would explain why future John eventually reprogrammed Cameron and sent her back in time.

It would have been good, but I guess it's not meant to be.

1 Reply

@OmSigDAVID,

OmSigDAVID wrote:

Lightwizard wrote:

It's been cancelled:

http://www.fmqinc.com/terminator-cancelled/

I phone a couple of friends in the industry and the cast has not been resigned. What do you suppose happened? Besides low ratings and moving it to Friday, the series became too expensive to produce. Could the Sci-Fi network pick it up? BTW, "Kings" is rebroadcast back-to-back on the Sci-Fi channel each week. Check your local listings. I'm not sure if that means it won't make it through the season, selling it off to syndication so soon.

Do thay do NEW episodes ?

Good question. I was going to ask the same thing?

Does Sci-Fi network just pick up old series and replay them, or do they actually produce any new episodes?

Although, I suspect that without the original writing staff, any new stories wouldn't necessarily be as good. And it seems unlikely they could steal the writers away from FoxTv.

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I don t remember which,
but I believe that some TV series have migrated
among networks; writers intact.

David

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@rosborne979,

rosborne979 wrote:

It would have been good, but I guess it's not meant to be.

Why is it that networks keep shooting themselves in the foot?

Sometimes when a new series comes by, one wonders why bother investing time into watching when it won't be around for 5 minutes?

How long before a series like Fringe or 11th Hour go by the wayside? They probably don't capture the favoured demographic - just like The Agency of a few years back. Mad

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@Reyn,

Reyn wrote:

Why is it that networks keep shooting themselves in the foot?

Obviously they are responding to the economics of it. But I wonder if they just aren't thinking in a long-enough timeframe. Just like any other product that you have to market, it takes time for people to find it and to get used to it.

Look how well Star Trek has done over the years, despite it's relatively short run originally.

Or how 'bout The Guiding Light, or Days of Our Lives, once they were hooked, people followed that crap for generations. Many of the sci-fi based series have long running character based plot lines. They are basically similar to soap operas, just with different genre's.

LightWizard might know more about this. He seems to have a closer connection to the industry (than I do).

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@Reyn,

The problem is, the show was good up to a point, but would I watch the re-runs? Not as likely as a re-run of "Eleventh Hour" or "Fringe." I think they were having the problem of trying to string together a coherent story that wouldn't seem like a two or three hour movie stretched over months and years. They were just getting around to defining the characters and making me care what happened to them. Will the movie take up with John Conner having leaped forward and began his fight against Skynet as the much younger or, more likely, it won't be mentioned. It probably won't matter -- do we really know the time he travels to from the final episode of SSC? I think they were having trouble writing each episode with something of a storyline that has at least some resolution at the end, then picking it up in the next episode. Ergo, even some of the serious sci-fi fans were dropping off -- I know I lost interest at the end of the last season and had a difficult time giving it a second chance, still feeling in some episodes I was wasting time. The movie is now going to make any storyline beyond that final episode redundant.

1 Reply

@Lightwizard,

So you don't think it was cancelled because of money. You think it was cancelled because the story was petering out. I disagree. The story seemed healthy to me.

In any case, I don't expect Terminator Salvation to make any reference or connection to the TV series. But we'll see.

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@rosborne979,

"rosborne979" wrote:

Reyn wrote:

Why is it that networks keep shooting themselves in the foot?

Quote:

Obviously they are responding to the economics of it.

NOT necessarily.
I remember in the 1960s and early 70s,
The Beverly Hillbillies had very hi ratings; it was beloved on CBS.
Accordingly, to maximize the benefit n get more of a good thing,
CBS put on several more similar shows, to the point that
it was being called "the hillbilly network" among elitistic critics.

This offended CBS' ego,
in consequence whereof it wiped out ALL of its shows
with rural American characters, including the original, and I lost Donna Douglas.

I always thought thay shoud have called it The Donna Douglas Show.

David

1 Reply

@rosborne979,

rosborne979 wrote:

So you don't think it was cancelled because of money. You think it was cancelled because the story was petering out. I disagree. The story seemed healthy to me.

In any case, I don't expect Terminator Salvation to make any reference or connection to the TV series. But we'll see.

As long as it has NO GRIT, I can live with it.

David

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@OmSigDAVID,

OmSigDAVID wrote:

and I lost Donna Douglas.

I always thought thay shoud have called it The Donna Douglas Show.

I detect a trend here. I think you should be watching Dollhouse.

1 Reply

@rosborne979,

Any show, especially one in it's first three seasons, is trying to sell advertising to finance itself by getting sponsors. If the Nielsen ratings drop, they end up with charging less for a 30 sec. or more commercial, there's not enough money to continue with production. FOX makes so much on American Idol, their scripted shows are almost an afterthought.

I've now noticed that almost all the NBC scripted shows are current episode re-runs sold to USA and Universal, including, of course, their HD channels.

This economy is hard pressed to support expensive scripted shows which can't stay in the top twenty-five. So NBC was likely smart with their glamoured-up "1984" sci-fi show "Kings." Besides it gives "Deadwood's" Ian McShane another good excuse to chew up the scenery (which he does very well without hamming it up, I might add, even without the plethora of four letter epithets).

After everyone surmised it had run out of steam and killed of nearly all the original characters (except nobody believes Lex got blown up in that truck), "Smallville" is going into its ninth season, well, after Tom Welling has some liposuction (he can afford it after what they upped his contract for another season).

I think SSC painted themselves into a corner and couldn't wait out for the paint to dry.

1 Reply

Is anyone watching the Sarah Connor Chronicles on TV

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