Still Hope for Farscape

An anonymous reader wrote in to say that the "Save Farscape" campaign thinks there is still hope. If the next 11 episodes (starting Friday, January 10 on the SciFi Channel) pull the right numbers ). According to this interview with David Kemper:"If we were to do 2s, straight across the boards for these eleven eps, I would be expecting to have phone conversations with people immediately..." Of course that is pretty unlikely- but my household won't miss an episode. To bad the cats don't count in the nielsons ;)

Interesting show on cable (Trio)

[Microsift]

"Brilliant but Cancelled" described fan efforts to save cancelled shows, noting it is nearly impossible, once the final decision is made. They did cite one example of a show that was cancelled and brought back because of fan support, "Cagney and Lacy." The show was out of production and the actors and actresses had been released from their contracts, but they managed to get everyone back.

If Farscape is officially canceled, there's probably not much hope. One notable difference is that the shows featured on "Brilliant..." were all on one of the major networks, so Sci-Fi may play it differently.

Nielsons ratings

[Ragetech]

I'm so pissed... I got called to record my viewing habits for a week for the Nielson ratings, but my week I'm supposed to "diary" what I watch is from last Thursday until this coming Thursday. I was kind of hoping to be able to record the new Farscape episode -- at least I got to put a blip on for last Friday's repeats, but...

Farscape is the only show I've watched, in the past five years, that I've followed religiously. It's hard to explain it to anyone how much you can get into it, but it was sooo well done; it's cancellation by SciFi really made me loose interest in T.V. -- besides The Simpsons, what shows are out there that are long lasting?

My girlfriend's Japanese, and she was telling me of this soap she used to watch that her father watches, that was on for literally 20 years. Unfortunatly, the tv execs don't invest in shows that much here. They want quick, easy cash... and eventually it's going to hurt them.

Ok, I'm rabling... go Farscape!

The sets have been destroyed.

[fava]

Not taken down and put into storage but destroyed with chainsaws and taken to the dump. Rebuilding all the sets would be very expensive, the ratings would have to be very good to justify it.

Re:Why save it?

[entrylevel]

I wouldn't go so far as to say BEST.SCIFI.SHOW.EVER, although how people can compare it to SG-1 is beyond me. "Powering up 100 percent! Captain. sir. Ti'lk, are you OK?" WTF?! Apparently it translates badly from the original whatever-the-hell-language it was originally dubbed in. My loss I guess. (I also don't care much for Anime.)

I much prefer dialog like "You have knowledge of time and the ability unravel events. I should kill you just for that." Does anyone remember that episode? In one scene Crichton gets thrown back to the first day he set foot on Moya, everyone except him is acting exactly the same, with the same camera footage and everything, but he reacts to everything differently. Just when you've had enough of the scene, he turns around, points to the back of his neck, mutters "tongue.", and Dargo wallops him in the back of his neck with his tongue. Then it cuts back to him face down on the island in the void with the Ancient. I thought that was some creative shit. Anyway...

If Farscape goes off the air I think it will be a loss. I'm no Farscape zealot (I'm lots of things, not just Farscape!), but if the SciFi channel cancels it only to replace it with Braveheart (I like the movie and all, but how is it SciFi?) and the X-Files (hello, I saw every good episode 6 times!), they will have just confused away another dedicated viewer. I won't boycott SciFi just for cancelling a cool (IMHO) show, but I can't watch channels whose programming choices give me a headache just trying to comprehend them.

Anyway, I'll watch all the new episodes when they air, or I'll tape them if I'm out. I truly hope anyone who enjoys the show even a little will do the same.

(On a side note: does anyone think Neilsen boxes actually exist (anymore)? Wouldn't it be easier to just put some kind of chip in the TV. I dunno, maybe call it a "V-Chip"?)

I have a Nielsens Box in my home..

[Anonymous Coward]

Can anyone convince me that it is worth my time to watch this show?

Re:Yes, save Farscape!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes... definately save firefly which fox totally messed up by showing all the episodes out of order... Now that they've shown the pilot (episodes 11 and 12), the whole thing makes a lot more sense.

Sadly it got cancelled before they even showed the pilot.

Do these people have a clue?

Re: Amazing

[Black Parrot]

> Fox thinks it's a real network, and holds the bar a little bit higher than an offbeat cable network like SciFi. The WB would've killed for Firefly's ratings, but Fox needs a bigger pull...

Fox mismanaged Firefly so badly that it's hard not to believe some influential exec wanted it to die. They started by running ads that grossly misrepresented the nature of the program, then they decided not to bother showing the pilot, then, right about the time people's new-season watching habits were starting to solidify they bumped it two weeks in a row for some really crappy Thanksgiving specials, and finally, after announcing that they were going to do a media blitz to try to bump up the ratings when it started showing again, they hardly bothered advertising for it on their own station, let alone any kind of "media blitz".

The only surprise is that anyone bothered watching it regularly at all. More's the shame, because it really was a good show -- but you did have to tune it in regularly and learn a bit about the characters in order to appreciate it.

Re:Nielsen

[Miguelito]

I'll probably regret asking this, but how the hell does owning a Tivo put one in the elitist category? Sure, they're not dirt cheap, but not everyone that owns one is filthy rich or a computer geek.

Hell, I'd think even if it were nothing but elitists, it'd balance out ratings more as the current crop of ratings seems to only account for complete morons with no brains.

Re:tivo doesn't report stats?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tivo doesn't include demographics in their viewing data; so they can't say whether a 20-year old with a miminim wage job watched the show or a 30-something yuppie with $100K income. So advertisers aren't as interested in tivo data since it isn't as useful.

Re:Save Enterprise!

[spanky1]

Are you serious? Enterprise kicks ass! This is the first Star Trek series that I have gotten really into the first season. TNG and Voyager took me until the second season. DS9 I never really liked.

Re:Nielsen

[watchful.babbler]

However, the precision drops as the number of viewers of a given show decreases. So, small enough viewership == large variance in precision. Not to mention that the Nielsen ratings depend heavily on pollee honesty.

Re:What about

[RockyJSquirel]

Your kind of attitude is what makes the world a shitty place to live in.

You are worthless.

Hmm. This is an example of the sort of attitude that that makes the world wonderful?

I'm not sure if we need a:
"+1 Unintentionally Funny"
mod
or a
"-1 No Clue at all"
mod.

Though to tell the truth, I find your own narrow minded self rightious hostility more depressing than funny.

Rocky J. Squirrel