Starlost has great potential built into its plot line.

And the other is from a book I read many years ago which I forget the title (I’m sure it is a Sci-Fi classic) about a young man who finds himself the captain of a small generational space freight liner operating on the fringe of economical disaster (Firefly like). The young man become captain by virtue of the fact all other members of his family have died which make his continued operation of the freighter illegal due to safety regulations (he hides the fact that he is operating the ship alone from the authorities). The story line takes off when he makes a deal with a very much larger and economically successful freighter to take on some of their younger crew (who jump at the opportunity because of their restricted futures on their own family owned generational ship due to the large number of family members who are holding back their road to advancement).
I know individual tastes in Sci-Fi are very subjective but in what possible world can Eureka be renewed and the Sci-Fi version of the 60ties show (Kyle XY) get dropped, oh right, this world!

To the many critics of ENT I say the next possible follow-up should be a Star Trek Temporal Police version because ENT laid the frame work for just such a series.

As for the many other prematurely canceled shows in the last few years (Carnival, Charlie Jade, Day Break Firefly, Grand Star, Harsh Realm, New Amsterdam, …) I’m sure there is some crime associated with their cancelation and we need the Temporal Police to go back and investigate this matter.

CHUCK is NOT a mid-season replacement. It is a series that will air after the Winter Olympics, when HEROES ends its 13 episode run in the fall.

This is no different than USA Network airing 13 episodes of PSYCH per year, or Sci-Fi airing only 13 episodes of EUREKA per year. Its a new programming thing that most of the networks are glomming onto for some unghodly reason.

Renewed series ARE NOT replacements. Remember that.

Battlestar Galactica on Sci-Fi. Was not cancelled. Its ended its story and concluded. Hardly a cancellation.

Trouble is, I think a lot of fans of these kind of shows (thinking of BSG here as well) tend not to watch them on broadcast and buy them on DVD to watch in a big gulp.

I’ve never once watched Alias, Lost, Buffy, Angel, 30 Rock or Californication on broadcast television. And, for that matter, I only watched the final season of BSG on TV because there were spoilers going out everywhere!

Not sorry to see Tennant and Davies leaving Doctor Who. While I respect that they got good ratings, I really didn’t like their approach. I’m intrigued to see what Moffat will do with the show as his single episode stories have pretty much been the best the new show has done!

Regarding Enterprise, no matter what the qualities of the fourth season, the fact that they got away with three seasons of mediocre TV prior to that is part of what cemented the audience’s perception of Trek as dull in recent years. But for the Star Trek connection, DS9, Voyager and Enterprise would probably all have been cancelled before their seven years were up.

For the Star Trek franchise, the lack of cancellations was actually a bad thing, because people began to perceive Trek as mediocre entertainment and it meant the same production team was allowed to become utterly entrenched, churning out the same old stuff on TV and in the cinema. That the new film is doing well is testament to what a new team with a new approach could have done for the TV show years ago.

I don’t see any need for any new TV Trek anytime soon, with a good film franchise running (although a more grown up show overseen by Abrams and his team and starring Bruce Greenwood on HBO or Showtime for 12 eps a year might be ok!) as I think mediocre Trek, which will be used as mediocre schedule filler for years to come, has pretty much buried it on TV for now.

Thanks for the article.