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'."
on the other hand... (Score:5, Insightful)
Science fiction fans may be dismayed to learn that "Mutant X" and "Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda" have been cancelled
Though fans of quality television will rejoice. Mutant X? It has to be one of the worst TV shows I've seen more than 5 minutes of in the last 10 years.
"Dismayed" is a bit strong. (Score:3, Insightful)
And yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't it obvious? GOOD SF doesn't sell. Cheap commercialized tripe does.
Not really (Score:4, Insightful)
Heh, more likely they won't. Save your pity for Firefly. [amazon.com]
Mutant X (Score:5, Insightful)
No Offense Intended (Score:3, Insightful)
Good riddance to bad crap (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no science. Please, someone find me the gene that lets a guy turn into some kind of Lava monster. That's a more amazing evolutionary feat than the bombadier beetle. It's like the worst parts of the worst episodes of X-Files all jammed into an solid 40 minutes, with an entire rip on the whole X-Men concept to boot.
And Andromeda...starts out with this gimmick of a holographic hot chick representing the ship (sort of a video version of Star Trek's talking female ship voice). Then they drop all pretense and somehow she becomes a walking talking hologram. And then later, I'm not sure, but did she end up turning into a real girl somehow? And those stupid names. God, who the hell green lights crap like "Rev Blem" or "Trance Gemini"...oooo! So alien! So spacey future sounding!
Forget it. Other shows, like Farscape or whatever, hey...I'm not a fan, but I can be appropriately sad to hear another Sci-Fi show bites the dust. But Mutant X? No. Andromeda? Quit beating the dead Roddenbery. These shows should die...every dollar not wasted on them is perhaps another dollar that can maybe somehow through a miracle end up going towards new Firefly episodes.
- JoeShmoe
.
Re:on the other hand... (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe CanWest is doing a good thing by putting FireWorks out of its misery rather than delivering sub-standard final seasons.
He's dead, Jim. (Score:5, Insightful)
Too bad (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Good riddance to bad crap (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously, names all mean something. So, if you were an alien, wouldn't your name be translated too? You'd have aliens with Indian sounding names like "Son of the stars".
It always bugged me on Star Trek (really any Scifi) show when they just sprinkle alien words (or even worse...subtitles) throughout the otherwise English dialog. How exactly does the translator know when to let a word slip through untranslated? The fact that the aliens would then explain the meaning of the alien word was another irritation. How does the alien even know the word isn't being translated? Aren't they supposed to be speaking their own language?
I don't mean to be unreasonable, I'm willing to put up with a little suspension of belief but it would be nice for script writers to pay attention once and a while and think about it. I mean, we all rag on any SciFi show that doesn't display perfect 100% physics rules ("you can't see lasers!" "there are no booms in space") so why don't we get equally uppity about things like obvious language paradoxes?
- JoeShmoe
.
Re:on the other hand... (Score:5, Insightful)
Holy cow! (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if I hated both of these shows, I would still be sad to see them go. The main reason is... With the trend of sci-fi shows being cancelled, eventually all we will be left with are the vapid teeny-bopper soap operas (Smallville anyone?) that seem to be so prevalent lately.
Re:And yet... (Score:2, Insightful)
There's a lot of TV hours out there per-week. One of Enterprise isn't a plague on humanity, and it beats the living crap out of yet another our of reality TV.
Pure science fiction will never sell. (Score:5, Insightful)
Throw a little soap opera in there, and you may have a winner.
Re:And yet... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Pure science fiction will never sell. (Score:3, Insightful)
A lot of people (myself included, for a long time) were put off by the perceived arrogance of its hardcore fans, and statements like that, i.e. if a guy like that watches that show, then I probably wouldn't be interested... it had nothing to do with not really understanding science. One of the reasons I can't stand Star Wars is because the rabid fans have just completely ruined any enjoyment I got out of the films by almost making a religion out of it (Matrix was another one.)
A lot of people perceive sci-fi as the domain of nerds and weirdos that dress up like characters from the movie/tv show/whatever, and in enough cases they're right. If it had the appearance of even being more accessible to the average viewer, I'm sure it would get higher ratings.
I think the fact that my TV gets about six different Discovery channels, two History channels and a Biography channel proves that there is a large portion of the population that is, in fact, interested in science. (Again, myself included, though I'm less interested in speculative science... a.k.a. sci-fi, because of the "fi" part.)
I really don't like the attitude I see more and more towards the "average joe" on this site, as if to imply some kind of moral superiority. Everyone has different interests and just because something doesn't appeal to the majority of the population, doesn't mean it's stupid or they're afraid of it or don't understand it. It just means they don't like it. Same as art, same as music, same as everything else.
Re:88 and rough end is tough fate in TV biz... (Score:5, Insightful)
Finally, I would note that the idea of Sci-Fi funding enough episodes just to round out to 100 is just silly. After all, they're the only network that's likely to be interested in rerunning Andromeda ANYWAY, so why would they want to make the property more valuable (and thus more costly) unless they truly think that making new episodes is a profitable proposition (as they did with SG-1)?
Of course science does not sell... (Score:5, Insightful)
Consider the oldest stories, like the Indian epic the Mahabharata or the Greek's Iliad. It's not about the wars or conflicts. It's about the interplay between people. It's always been about the context of the people. We as people want to see other people experiencing things.
Now, look at the lastest successful sci-fi, IMHO Babylon 5. Sure, they made space fighting a lot more realistic. But it was the story of the Shadows vs. the Vorlons, Sheridan's heroic sacrifice on Z'ha'dum, and the betrayal of Garibaldi. Really, look at this summary [midwinter.com] about the conflict:
Little here talks about science, the reality of evolution, or the underlying science. It's about philosophy, life, and the questions we all encounter along our own life. That's the story, and that's what made it more interesting than any show about cool tools. It's never been about the tools. They just get us to start watching. It's always been about the relationships, whether we want to admit it or not.Re:Good riddance to bad crap (Score:3, Insightful)
The rest of what you say is perfectly valid, but the above would actually be a usefull function to add to a translator. It would be much more usefull for it to know to leave "Joe Smith" alone. That way when the aliens say "Joe Smith," he'll know they're talking about him. And given the odd results you can get by translating a phrase back and forth between langauges, it could also save some of the confusion that might result when they said his "name" and it came back as "The Lord Added a Man Who Hammers Metal."
Re:on the other hand... Mutant eXcruciating. (Score:2, Insightful)
Mutant X was so bad it made my teeth hurt.
Re:Too bad (Score:3, Insightful)
I disagree
Unlike all the other Star Trek series, DS9 had the interesting "Advantage" of being situated in a space station. Which essentially was a non-moving set/location. So while all the other Star Treks were about mindless exploration (and meeting new species in each episode), DS9 was all about building what was there because it was all what they had.
The story/plot of DS9 got quite involved, you had the Federation, Cardassians, Bajorans, the Dominion, and even the Klingons all in a developing plot. On one side you had the Federation and their shaky alliance with the Klingons, on the other you had the Cardassians and the Dominion. WIth the poor, defenseless Bajorans and their worm-hole in the center of it all.
Seems like quite a setup if you ask me
Sunny Dubey
Re:No Offense Intended (Score:5, Insightful)
How do people whatch that dren?
Simple, the majority of people are idiots, and TV networks look to attract as many viewers as possible. If its a well written show with many plot twists and great dialogue, its bound to confuse a significant portion of TV viewers, who find it uncomfortable. The key is to find an acceptable level of mediocrity. If people weren't getting dumber and less literate, there would be no motivation to reduce the reading level of news magazines.
Re:One could say ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Then, then next season, the credits started with a line like "The universe can be a dangerous place." I almost shut it off right there, but wanted to give it a chance. I thought that season opener (where they rescue Becca and Tyr) was weak, but John DeLancie was on the next one, so I watched it. They took a character (DeLancie's), who had been defined as definitely evil and suddenly tried to make him only unpredictable. I've never watched another episode since.
That one jumped the shark long ago.
Re:on the other hand... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Too bad (Score:2, Insightful)
"Welcome to Babylon 5. The last, best hope for a quick buck. Oh, this is demeaning! We're not some deep space franchise. This station is about something!"
Re:Scifi? (Score:2, Insightful)
Try the entire TV industry. Unless it's cheap to make and extremely sucessful (Ie: Friends) they are "gambling".
In the old 13 channel universe, they could get with having so-so shows that developed into great shows over 1-2 season period. viewers had no choice to watch filler sometimes. The rating system was primitive so that bad shows may not show as such for months.
In a our 500 channel universe, however, filler shows do not last more than 4 shows, never mind even 1/2 a season! The rating system delivers real-time numbers. The only thing they are willing to "Gamble" on is BS-reality shows because they know that viewers do not have attachments to these types of shows.
If you ask me, Andromeda was already cancelled... (Score:1, Insightful)
I loved the first season of Andromeda. The scripts were intelligent, the science was intelligent, the crew was interesting, and their ongoing mission (to restore the Commonwealth) was huge, and seemingly impossible -- just right for good sci-fi.
But then came the second season. They fired the original head writer (he must have been too difficult, asking for authenticity, and crap like that), they dumbed down the scripts (the dialogue became truly painful), and they dumbed down the mission (now it was just to do good in the universe -- I guess an ongoing storyline was also too difficult).
So I stopped watching after the first season.
This is now the second, intelligent, high quality science fiction I've seen started by Majel Barrett (the other was Earth: Final Conflict), just to see it ruined by the studio in the second season.
This suggests to me that Majel is a very intelligent woman. Now, if she could just find a way to keep creative control...
Sci-Fi fans will also be painfully aware of how the studios pulled the rug out from under Firefly, and of the fact that Straczynski is no longer in charge of Jeremiah.
I'd love to see a new studio formed to challenge those bureaucratic monoliths in Hollywood. Instead of trying to compete with the regular networks for the 80% greatest common denominator (i.e. dumb) audience, who watches crap like Fear Factor, and Big Brother, this studio would cater to the niche market -- the 10% who want esoteric programming, that doesn't appeal to the majority.
Such a studio could invest in creative people like Joss Whedon, J. Michael Straczynski, and, yes, Majel Barrett, and trust them to create what appeals to the niche market. And that studio could bypass the current limited-bandwidth broadcast channels (where competition for the majority audience is key), and explore other options, such as Internet broadcasting, or direct-to-DVD sales.
I am dying for some intelligent programming. And, as much as I like the Gilmore Girls, I need some science fiction!!! I WILL PAY MONEY!!! PLEASE, SOMEONE, FILL THIS MARKET NICHE, AND TAKE MY MONEY!!!
Re:And yet... Earth: Final Conflict (Score:2, Insightful)
I still don't like the cheesy plots or bad costumes, but I like the underlying struggle and Sci-Fi technology. I love a mystery.
I say good riddance to Andromeda and Mutant X. Who needs to be addicted to more TV? Let's bring some live action ROBOTECH!!
Re:And yet... Earth: Final Conflict (Score:2, Insightful)
God No!
Can you imagine how horrible it would be if they tried? Imagine Starship Troopers on a TV budget! Cheap cockpit views made of poorly-constructed plywood, and cheap CGI animations of robots. They'd just spoil the whole damn series in the memory of the fans, or worse, make it into another power rangers clone.No matter what they did, though, they'd have to make it similar to what they recently did to the Transformers: Ruin it to appeal to the Short-Attention-Span, "reality-tv" watching Pokemon generation. I'm coming to the conclusion that's the only way to get something new onto television these days, and make it so that the TV Executives will buy off on it. Look at what happened to the live-action version of The Tick. That series was brilliant, and the acting superb, but it was too cerebral and off-beat for the TV execs to give it time to catch the attention of the consumer.
All for the love of Profit!
-113 grams, 10 milliliters... He's lead, Jim.
Worst work yet? (Score:2, Insightful)