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'."
88 and rough end is tough fate in TV biz... (Score:5, Interesting)
So, Andromida stopping at 88 is kinda an ugly number to get caught at. Sci-Fi might have an interest in funding a series-ending run of about 13 episodes to run as an exclusive event, and therefore give the show some life in daily reruns. 88 with an abrupt-stop ending just isn't that valuable for reruns in comparision.
Of course, that depends on Sci-Fi being able to see the value in rerun rights. If the library of Fireworks assets including the 88 existing episodes get sold to a party that's not interested in letting Sci-Fi have the show on a 5-a-week daytime basis at a reasonable price... then there's no point in doing the deal.
The Sci-Fi saves the show thread is a longshot, but it could happen so it can't be ignored. The show's not dead yet, but it's taken a usually-fatal blow.
Re:"Dismayed" is a bit strong. (Score:2, Interesting)
In anycase I've bought all the Andromeda dvd's.
The most recent one that came out was 3.4 though, so how do you get access to season 4 dvds??
Re:88? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:And yet... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:on the other hand... (Score:3, Interesting)
It's sad, but Enterprise just blows. Andromeda was way better I thought.
Re:Good riddance to bad crap (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Good riddance to bad crap (Score:5, Interesting)
Enterprise was sold on the principle of a "simpler, earlier Trek". Remember the exolinguist Hoshi? Remember the struggle to communicate? Wasn't that supposed to be a major theme of the series? It took precisely five episodes for the show to go from "omg omg omg the computer will take six hours to translate this so we know if this alien is hostile" to "I'm Captain Archer onboard an alien prison ship but apparently everyone speaks English or the Universal Translator is now small enough to fit invisibly in my ear". Enterprise has pretty much thrown out everything it was based on, giving us episodes involving time plots and DeathStars more complicated that anything from the other so-called advanced series.
Back to Andromeda...I gave it a try or two for the first half season or so then promptly forgot about it. A couple years later when I revisited it during a bout of insomnia, I remember thinking that absolutely nothing was the same. The angry fend for himself bounty hunter was somehoe like the chief ship security officer, the pacifist preacher was doing some kind of ninja kung fu, and the hologram of the ship was somehow walking around and trying to get laid. Or something like that. Anyway, I got the sense that the series had probably been through two or three shark jumps and flipped back to Cheers reruns for the 10000th time.
- JoeShmoe
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Re:"Dismayed" is a bit strong. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:88 and rough end is tough fate in TV biz... (Score:5, Interesting)
That said - the original Star Trek was a good series. I've seen some Andromeda, and while it looked okay and had the occasional interesting moment (not to mention some impressive visuals and sets - I remember seeing a giant observation deck with a diplomatic function going on), it never hooked me. Probably part of it was that I can't stand Kevin Sorbo - although DeepWater Black's Gordon Michael Wolvett was a welcome addition to the cast, and Lexa Doig is reasonably easy on the eye.
No offence to those who like Andromeda, but I think it's about time people stopped cashing in on Gene Roddenberry's name just to get ratings. (modern Trek's high point was DS9 - since then, it's just been flogging a dead franchise!)
DISCLAIMER: The above views of TV shows are just my opinion. Yours may vary. Remember, opinions are like assholes - kindly stop shoving yours in my face
Re:on the other hand... (Score:4, Interesting)
That's 67 episodes (I'm fining them an extra one...) too many as far as I'm concerned. Andromeda was just barely watchable and only because I of Keith Hamilton Cobb's (Tyr Anasazi) overacting while he was still there. I tuned in to see just how much he would ham it up this week.
Mutant X on the other hand was unexcusably horrible on all levels.
Sci-Fi Channel must be kicking themselves in the ass. The passed on Firefly to get a show whose studio goes belly-up before they even air an original episode.
Re:"Dismayed" is a bit strong. (Score:3, Interesting)
One good (bad) thing I can say about Andromeda is that it excelled at shark jumping. Too many characters for one thing. While some shows can make that work (Firefly) Andromeda didn't seem to have the budget (or the writing talent) to have all the characvters in each episode. Also whats the point of having a ship staffed by thousands if 6 and an AI can do the job just as well. I could go on and on, but I'd rather go to bed...
Actually, we're fairly lucky (Score:1, Interesting)
When the shows are signed & the first few episodes are in the can, the executives have a pretty good sense (or so they say - and what's not to say they're predisposed to certain shows and establishing their own ratings?) regarding which shows will suck and be replaced by the first sweeps (November) and which will do okay, particularly if they've got a show runner. They do, however give the shows a chance.
One noticeable show to climb out of the predetermined pit of doom? CSI. The suits were totally baffled by this.
make that 3.5 (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, there is ReBoot
However, it is animated so it may not count in this list, anyway.
Its still running? (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, thats probably all the entertainment i got out of Andromida after the first episode. The quote "Did you see the size of him? He looks like some ancient Greek God or something!" did it for me...
Did any of you manage to see "John Doe"? Now that I was sad to see canseled. And canselation of Firefly should be considered an act of treason, any an all people involved in that decision should be procecuted to the full extent of the law in all countries Firefly was shown.
If all today's sci-fi is so bad (Score:1, Interesting)
I've started to watch Andromeda just now, I've heard that Lexx is a kick-ass show. Ofcurse I fell in love with Farscape.
SO... Farscape will have 4 more episodes, Andromeda in cancelled and I don't now about Lexx.
What is worth watching which still is in production?
To hell with em, Dr. Who is returning! (Score:3, Interesting)
Scifi? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Number of SF series completing their run? (Score:2, Interesting)
Even though there wasn't much of an overall arc I guess TNG went through it's natural lifespan, likewise DS9.
Buffy and to a degree Angel both got to live out their natural lives, but I agree, investing your time and commitment to an SF show these days seems to be doomed to failure these days. Even now I still have trouble getting my head around Farscape's cancellation, Firefly I could sort of understand from the studio's POV, though losing the Serenity crew was, surprisingly, a worse shock to the system.
Re:And yet... (Score:5, Interesting)
Isn't it obvious? GOOD SF doesn't sell. Cheap commercialized tripe does.
Did you just call Andromeda and Mutant X good sci-fi?
Andromeda has spaceships making race car noises, and Mutant X had its Xavier-wannabe use communication satellites to download the DNA needed to stop an epidemic in mutants!
Not that I'm defending Enterprise, I think Rick Berman should be stoned to death, but Andromeda? Mutant X? Good riddance!
Finally (Score:3, Interesting)
What about Jeremiah? (Score:2, Interesting)
I've never seen Firefly, as watching 2 minutes of Dark Angel had me convinced that the big four networks were incapable of putting out any good sci fi. If it's as good as everyone says, I may have to check it out.
B5 was pretty good, and I'm already sad over the impending end of SG-1 (especially if they screw up Atlantis, which I have a feeling they will), but I was rather suprised to see the end of Jeremiah.
Granted, they covered in one season what I thought should have been at least a 3 season arc, and then kind of lost their way, but it was a far superior show to either Mutant X or Andromeda. It was a rather dark show w/ interesting characters. I thought that Perry and Warner were very good, especially considering the cheezy crap that they've worked on previously. And almost every episode has at least one cool moment (Perry laying on the gas filling the semi trailer w/ exhaust to try to kill some punks, Astin talking a guy into grenading himself and his thugs, etc.). The only entertaining moment from Mutant X was from an early episode when Vicky Pratt was fighting w/ someone. They zoomed in on a kick she threw, but only showed a close up of her ass. I laughed about that for quite some time.
I wish they'd bring back shows like Jeremiah, Family Guy, Futurama, Farscape (though I didn't get into it until nearly the end) for starters. Shows like Andromeda or Mutant X should go the way of Odyssey 5, dead and stay that way.
Re:DS9...Huh? (Score:3, Interesting)
It's not the best TV scifi ever made, but it beats the pants off Voyager!
(The best recent scifi are the three Fs - Farscape, Firefly and Futurama!)
Re:88 and rough end is tough fate in TV biz... (Score:4, Interesting)
All I'm saying is, Gene's been dead for over a decade. Isn't it about time TV stopped making shows from his thirty year-old rough drafts? Strikes me as a combination of authorised plagarism (his widow and son are involved in it) and grave robbery...
Re:Bah! (Score:2, Interesting)
Ripoff... yes... (Score:4, Interesting)
As I recall, the reasoning behind Mutant X was that Marvel has some agreement with Fox regarding any X-Men TV series, but they weren't getting anywhere, so they scrambled to get *some* mutant-related show on the air with any other network.
Mutant X is basically just X-Men tweaked to the point where isn't legally X-Men, and can therefore be aired on UPN. Of course it's crap, but I doubt it can be called a ripoff when it's done by the same people. Unoriginal, sure. Derivative, certainly. Ripoff? Not so much.
Re:Good riddance to bad crap (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes. The show was never great television, but really, the first season had more promise than I think people like to give it credit for. The show's head writer (and the real creator, despite the Roddenberry name), Robert Hewitt Wolfe, was floundering toward a long story arc with a dark, complex background. The first season had perhaps too much of a penchant for visiting old Trek tropes, but it frequently found rather clever, interesting takes on them -- no tractor beams, but Buckytube tow cables; no transporter technology, and an episode with the engineer trying to invent it, blowing up watermelons as he tried to send them from one side of the room to the other. The writing was uneven but when it was good, it was, well, good. The universe got more complex the more we saw of it, and it was clear Wolfe had a direction he wanted to go in, an epic story he wanted to tell over several seasons.
Then, halfway through the second season, the producers -- notably Sorbo himself -- decided that Wolfe was asking viewers to think too much. Really. IIRC, I'm not paraphrasing by very much. Wolfe got the boot and the show just veered right off into the twilight zone. I watched about ten minutes of a new episode a month ago, and it clearly wasn't even a related show to the first season.
It may have always been cheese, but in the beginning it had aspirations to be Blue Stilton. It ended up as day-old nacho sauce.
Re:And yet... Earth: Final Conflict (Score:3, Interesting)
The other thing I hate about network TV is their consistent unbelievable science in sci-fi and characters that are basically untouchable. Dark Angel jumping through a pane of inch-thick glass, falling 4 stories and running away uninjured, for instance. Genetically engineered or not, she's gonna get sliced up and probably break her legs in that fall. Then there's dodging pretty much every bullet... *groan*
Execs should watch Alias to know how to create this kind of character right. She's not invincible, but is superhuman in some ways (and this is explained in a realistic way - a cold war CIA project designed to create superspies), has flaws, shows fear, and yet still succeeds in most (but not all) missions. Missions that fail? That's so refreshing to see in any show. I was also happy to see a Cold Case show that didn't produce enough evidence to pin the murderer as well. Maybe networks are waking up to reality - we don't always win every battle.
My biggest peeve with sci-fi, though is the 20th century medicine in shows like Star Trek and even the new Battlestar Galactica, though. If you can build a spaceship that big, you probably have the med-tech to cure cancer and revive the dead for several minutes - heck, they probably could convert entire body structures. Hmm... today, I think I'll be a Trellian...
To be honest, I actually didn't think the Tick worked well in either live action or cartoon form, probably because it didn't fit the genre. Both had funny moments, but not the laugh-until-you-wet-your-pants moments from the comic book. The live action shows biggest fault was that it was paced too slow. The cartoon had to make sacrifices for its audience and took away too much of the adult humor.
I thought TMNT (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) worked much better in both comic and live action, and I'm not really a fan of that series (aside from the first couple of gore-fest comic books). It's probably because it meets people's expectations (superhero=action heavy) and was already dumbed down in the comic book when the writers found they were getting more pre-teen fans/interest than adult spoof audience fans/interest.