The Sci-Fi channel has been re-running a bunch of shows that I used to watch before they were summarily executed by network executives who don’t recognize science fiction lovers as a real demographic they can sell to.
What’s interesting about these shows, and many sci-fi shows I’ve noticed, is that they were all cancelled without an ultimate resolution to their plotlines. I’ve always wondered what happened with these shows. There’s a big, over-arching mystery through the entire show’s run, and then… nothing?
FireFly
Ok, FireFly got a movie after it was abruptly dropped from the schedule. What irks me about the movie is that although it ties up some loose ends, it seems like it was just thrown together to cap off the series. That is, you can’t see the movie if you really expect the crew of Serenity to have more adventures.
I just wanted to know what the deal is with the guys with the blue hands. Was this adequately explained? If so, the series would likely have continued with more mysteries. I want to know the additional mysteries – all of the secret character background that they had planned to reveal in the future seasons of the show, but never got the chance.
John Doe
Ok, this is a great example. A guy wakes up in the woods. Can’t remember his name or how he got there, but knows pretty much everything else. Any kind of statistic, he knows it with instant recall. And he has powerful skills to observe and draw conclusions based on that knowledge. All the while, he is haunted by a past that he doesn’t remember. He sees only in black and white, except for certain things and people.
So for starters, who is he?
What does the scar on his chest mean? Who are the people that he sees in color and what significance do they have to him? The owner of the bar he worked at was revealed in the last episode as being involved with the people who made John Doe who he was. What was that all about? How did he keep it hidden for so long, and how did he manage to coincidentally own the place where John ended up?
The Pretender
A show similar in concept to John Doe, this guy travels around pretending to be a professional, wielding skills that you’d have to be trained in. He is chased by some mysterious people for mysterious reasons that are never revealed.
Why do these scientists keep on experimenting on people? Don’t they know no good can come of it?
Threshold
This series was killed before it really had a chance to take off. I really liked some of the ideas they used in this show, and reviewing the episodes as they are re-run, they really did a great job with current tech culture references.
In this show, an alien “something” visits Earth and “infects” a boat full of people using strange sound and lights. It changes their DNA, and makes them somewhat contagious. The alien virus attempts to spread itself via various means, from leaving messages on cell phones, to interacting with bank cards, to planting alien DNA vegetables. The members of the show’s project team attempt to implement the Threshold protocols, authored by their team leader, to contain the alien outbreak. It’s interesting that all the members of the team are conscripted for the task.
There are a ton of questions in this show. How does the alien DNA work? What is its intent? Is it simply a precursor to some other invasion?
Farscape
I really expected the two-hour ending episode to be better, but I didn’t really have many questions by the end of the series. On one hand, I was sad to see it go, but on the other, it didn’t seem like it needed much closure by the time Aeryn and John were vaporized.
What other shows am I missing? I’m sure that there are more than these recent examples. Network TV has a habit of killing sci-fi just like this without letting it wrap up. I wouldn’t be surprised if Lost, Heroes, Jericho, Daybreak, etc. were all killed off without as much of an explanation as, “It was all a dream.”
My working theory with Lost these days is that the lost people are somehow creating their island reality. I keep thinking that they can’t possibly have an ending for this show that will satisfy anyone. But for some reason, I keep watching it.
Heroes is one show that must end properly. I expect that by the end of the second season, we’ll know whether its producers know what they’re doing or not. I keep demanding a show that has a finite run, where the writers plan to be done with the show after a set amount of episodes. I hope that Heroes is it.
I’m not sure how Jericho will end. I expect that we’ll have a shot of Jake staring off into the distance with whatever bimbo they decide to hook him up with by the end of the show. Or maybe two bimbos is the standard in the post-apocalypse, since they can’t seem to make up their mind and just hook him up with that cute chick… hey! That’s Karen from John Doe! Well, that’s doom for this show.
Daybreak. Was that already cancelled? What the heck? Oh, they bothered to air the rest of the season of Daybreak online. There’s a catchy idea. Maybe we should just get all of our sci-fi online?
And finally… in a new horrifying revelation… I stopped watching Battlestar Galactica a few weeks ago. In a chance visit to the Sci-Fi Channel, I saw a commercial where someone said something like, “Now that Starbuck is gone…” And so I flipped through the PVR’s recordings that I still have (it still records them even though I haven’t watched in a while) and actually watched a few, and holy crap! They killed Starbuck! At least the whole love quadrangle soap opera can be over. I’m way tired of Apollo pining.
