Andromeda And Mutant X Cancelled 442
dmehus writes "Science fiction fans may be dismayed to learn that "Mutant X" and "Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda" have been cancelled, despite the fact "Andromeda" had been cleared for a final season beginning in the fall. That prospect seems highly unlikely as the show's producer, Fireworks Entertainment, is shutting its doors for good and owner CanWest Global Communications (which also owns canada.com, the National Post, Global Television, and a bunch of other media assets) announced it will take a $159 million writedown on Fireworks. The news means "Mutant X" has a series total of three seasons and 66 episodes, while "Andromeda" will have a series total of 88 episodes in four seasons. Slashdot has previously covered 'Andromeda'."
Re:One could say ... (Score:5, Informative)
Futurama lasted only 72 episodes, yet is still doing perfectly well in 5-a-week infinite reruns on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim. It is possible to survive with less than 100 episodes... but the show has to be detail-filed and good in general.
Re:88 and rough end is tough fate in TV biz... (Score:2, Informative)
rank the babes (Score:1, Informative)
Let's do something constructive, and rank da babes.
My rankings:
- Laura Bertram, Trance Gemini
- Lexa Doig, Andromeda (the ship)
- Lauren Lee Smith, Emma, (the sometimes brunette) psychic chick on Mutant X
- Victoria Pratt, Shalimar Fox, the blonde energy bolt chick on Mutant X
- Lisa Ryder, Beka Valentine
- Karen Cliche, Lexa Pierce (Mutant X newbie character) (hot but I never saw much of her)
They are all hot, and the rankings are all very close.Re:Fireworks did put out some decent genre TV (Score:4, Informative)
As close to the horses mouth as I can find: (Score:5, Informative)
Re:If all today's sci-fi is so bad (Score:2, Informative)
Stargate has some dodgy moments these days (especially those involving a heavy 'Sam Carter' or 'Jonas Quinn' presence) but generally holds together due to the strength of the other characters - I'm hoping that the Stargate Atlantis spin-off will pick up the baton and start with an early sprint.
ST - Enterprise has some good times and bad times, some good characters and plotlines let down by a lousy captain and a 'soft porn' happy scriptwriter or two, and what is the 'god squad' theme song all about then ?
There are a couple of things I'm really looking forward to
The Firefly Movie - the series was by far the best sci-fi in recent years, if there is any justice then the movie should result in the commissioning of a new series.
Battlestar Galactica Series - Sci-Fi comissioned a full series of this after the pilot was successful, theres a lot of scope boh in the case and with the writers to do some great stuff with this, certainly theres an opportunity for something that grows on the 'dark' elements of the original without re-creating the 'ham & cheese' that accompanied it first time around.
Farscape mini-series - Announced earlier this month by sci-fi channel, a four hour mini-series that I believe is to be titled 'Peacekeeper War'
but so much good sci-fi has been canned in recent years, the aforementioned Firefly, Lexx and Farscape chief amongst the unjust victims, also gone but not forgotten are Now and Again, Dark Skies, G Vs E, Brimstone and a whole host of other shows that were far more deserving of funding than Andromedaft and Mutant Wrecks!
Re:Too bad (Score:1, Informative)
I almost gave up reading replies, I was getting sick of wading through the endless "OMG Andromeda was teh sux! Firefly ru1ez!" posts, sprinkled with liberal doses of "Enterprise is crap, but gawsh DS9 sure was kewl."
Re:on the other hand... (Score:2, Informative)
My understanding is that some company involved in the first X-Man movie got a contract to do a tv series based on the x-man 'concept', and thinking they were going to get to do X-Men the tv series they got another company to buy in and help out. Well aparently the first contract (with Marvel) was such that that the first company got told by marvel they couldn't actually use the x-men or any specific marvel characters, just the basic concept and to use x and mutant in the title. well the third company was a bit disapointed to find out they weren't getting into what they thought and it only got worse till they decided to drop out and sue the company in the middle for misleading them, afaik thier suing Marvel as well. Fireworks is one of the companies, but I can't recall wich.
So in short it may be pathetic, but it's Official pathetic and not a rip off per se. (though I'm shure many viewers feel riped off)
The sad thing is this is likely to kill Andromeda off. I've only seen about 15 or so episodes, but thier at least average for tv. Frankly the only other decent s.f. type series on broadcast tv is SG1 which, while well done, has only minimal continuity and character developement from episode to episode. Whereas Andromeda seems to have a story arc to it.
Mycroft
Two things we should think about. (Score:5, Informative)
2. Andromeda WAS good with good story arcs till Sorbo decided that his "fans" couldn't handle anything more than 1 story long and became "episode adventures" after he fired a true writing guru...
"Robert Hewitt Wolfe has parted company with the last bastion of scifi for people with half a brain - Andromeda. Wolfe said: "Basically, they want the show to be more action driven, more Dylan-centric, and more episodic. They also want more aliens, more space battles, and less internal conflict among the principal characters. Also, they want a lot less continuity so as not to confuse the casual or new viewer with too much backstory."
Well congrats Sorbo, your simple plan worked perfectly. Maybe they'll invite you back on a Young Hercules episode. Wait...that was cancelled too you say? HA!
Yo Grark
That's sad... (Score:2, Informative)
I stopped watching it, though, because it pissed me off constantly. I never saw a show fall so far short of its potential.
Interesting note - some writer said the Nietzscheans were going to be called the Dawkinites (or something similar) initially, because they strongly echoed parts of Dawkins' thought, but that was abandoned because it didn't have enough of a ring to it. But I loved the Nietzschean attitudes, they seemed like one of the all-time best misreadings of Nietzsche...and once again, it makes me sad to think what the show could have been if the writing staff worked a little harder...
Re: "Dismayed" is a bit strong. (Score:4, Informative)
> WTF is "jumping the shark"?
Originally it meant a show doing something outrageous and irrelevant in order to boost sagging ratings, e.g. Fonzie jumping over sharks on waterskis.
Now the term seems to be generalized to a couple of broader meanings by a lot of people, such as (a) making changes that take it away from its original conception, or even (b) simply going down the tubes.
Re:88 and rough end is tough fate in TV biz... (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, Andromeda did have a basis in Roddenberry's work -- at least more so than Earth:Final Conflict did (unless I missed something). The original idea was a show called "Genesis II" about a man named Dylan Hunt who was put in some kind of suspension for an experiment, and found by a group called Pax something like 150 years later, after Earth had been through bad events and balkanized. He and the Pax teams would use subshuttles to get to all the different city-states that had grown up after a technological and civil collapse. The intent was to give the characters access to many different cultures, like the Enterprise had in Trek, and let us watch as Pax and Dylan rebuilt society. There was another pilot, very similar, called "Earth II" (I think), that, again, had Dylan Hunt sleep for a long time (this time on a space station), before returning to a balkanized Earth to help rebuild civilization.
Re:88 and rough end is tough fate in TV biz... (Score:2, Informative)
They need to change the "unaired" as the Pilot was aired about ten - fifteen years ago on live TV during one of the anniversaries.
technically - parts of the pilot were used in a rare two part episode of star trek where the pilot profided background for Spocks defence trial - Also - Captain Pike - the pilot commander was given a homage in Futurama as well.
Re:88 and rough end is tough fate in TV biz... (Score:3, Informative)
For the uninitiated (and there probably aren't many on
OK, I just earned myself 2D10+5 geek points for that little FYI...
Re:One could say ... (Score:3, Informative)
The exact episode was Ouroborus. They fired the head writer, dropped the character "Rev Bem", (actor Brent Stait chose to leave), threw out the character bible for Trance Gemini and didn't both to replace it with anything. Every episode after that one was pretty bad, it was often glaringly obvious that episodes that had originally been written to star another cast member had been rewritten to expand Sorbo's role.
Gordon Michael Woolvett and Laura Bertram were the highlights of the show and with what seems to be a dramatically reduced role in the series after Ouroborus and all touches of intelligence rooted out so Sorbo wouldn't feel dumb, there was no reason to continue watching the show.