Stargate Universe Canceled

12/20/2010

Of course, I'm four days late to the party since I'm not always scavenging the Internet for dirt on all my favorite shows. There's just no time. But that's what they should have given to SGU. No, I did not really like the show in the beginning, but I kept watching because it was tense, the acting was there, and I liked Eli. Since then it has definitely grown on me and now the characters whose personalities I hated in the beginning I now look forward to, because I know their motivations and back stories. Most of them are well-written, not cardboard cutouts. It shows how people would actually act in a survival situation: yes, at times selfishly.

I can't stand the Syfy brand. They should have renamed it years ago if it was so important to them. I really think they're trying to alienate every last one of their remaining viewers. New shows are given no support and are expected to soar, and when they don't they get axed. There never seems to be any bother to try to fix the problem, either with some actual advertising or maybe budget cuts or a new direction if a storyline is what's turning viewers away. They just seem to be making way for "reality" and wrestling. That's why they renamed the channel, so they could drop the pretense of being about science fiction. For years I've been waiting to see reruns of old scifi shows and movies, but those are very few and far between. Mostly we get Ice Spiders, Harpies (which actually made my jaw drop), and a myriad of other spectacularly terrible original movies.

I'm sick of this. I'm just about done with the channel. All that's left now, with the cancellation of Caprica, too (another show with great promise that was struggling to find its legs) are Haven; Sanctuary; and Eureka and Warehouse 13, which only have 10 to 12 episodes a year. I love all those shows, but I know they'll all be canceled before their time and usually on a cliffhanger.

How do you run a TV channel like that? All they do is slash programming. I don't see how they can survive with only a couple new episodes of original must-see programming on per week during any given half season. If they come up with more new concepts people won't flock to them in the droves Syfy's hoping for either, because their marketing division obviously has no idea what they're doing, and everyone knows they'll just be gone in a year or two.