Top Ten SF & F Television Series That Were Axed Prematurely
Pulling the Plug
Top Ten SF & F Television Series That Were Axed Prematurely
Unless you’re into soap operas and bad sitcoms, the sad truth of television is that nothing lasts forever. The entertainment that burns twice as bright burns half as long. Speculative fiction has a difficult time in general, but even across the landscape of crashed spaceships and withered beanstalks, there lie scattered the remnants of programmes that were especially hard done by: shows that rated far below their worth; shows that were canned with their potential unrealised; shows that were loved seemingly by everyone except the executives who commissioned them. Here below lies a list of those taken from us far too early. If you haven’t seen them already, track them down and enjoy; but prepare yourself then to join in the great lament…
By mid-2007 Steven Moffat had written four outstanding episodes of New Series Doctor Who. In 2010 he would not only take over as that programme’s executive producer and head writer, but also co-create, produce and write for Sherlock. In the shadow of these successes, one of his endeavours that flowered only once — if no less spectacularly — was slick modern day gothic thriller Jekyll
Jekyll is the story of Dr Tom Jackman, a family man and genetic throwback to the Dr Jekyll made famous by Robert Louis Stevenson’s novella
Jekyll’s six episodes had everything: high production values; quality actors; a riveting, no-holds-barred storyline; outstanding ratings and reviews. What it didn’t have was BBC approval to carry on into a second series, notwithstanding that Moffat had planned for and written one.
Potential: wrested and forgotten.
An anthology series that could have done for SF what The Twilight Zone
Each episode of Masters of Science Fiction was self-contained and adapted from a short story, by authors of such renown as Robert Heinlein, Harlan Ellison and Robert Sheckley. Each had a different cast — actors the calibre of Judy Davis; Sam Waterston; Brian Dennehy; John Hurt; Clifton Collins Jr. — and each was presented by Professor Stephen Hawking; or rather, given a voiceover by way of Hawking’s distinctive but dated speech synthesiser.
This moralistic ‘hosting’, offering familiarity and continuity but lacking (by way of comparison) the Buddhist mystique more poignantly laid down in Monkey (1978-1980), comes across as token at best, patronising at worst. Indeed, Masters of Science Fiction could be seen as taking itself too seriously, with preachy themes and — notwithstanding the absurdist satire of Heinlein’s ‘Jerry was a Man’ — downbeat stories almost entirely lacking in humour.
But with the entire corpus of science fiction literature to draw upon, surely these were just teething troubles. The Twilight Zone also had a shaky start. Masters of Science Fiction could have been given longer to hit the spot.
Potential: repudiated, by order of the great unknown.
Having already proven a phenomenon in audio and written form, the next step for Douglas Adams’ inimitable comedy was television. So keen were the BBC to make the programme (and such was the cost of Hitchhiker’s), they dropped long-running favourites The Goodies from their production schedule.
Work on Hitchhiker’s
The underlying problem was that Adams was adapting his own work too faithfully. On radio or in a book, Zaphod Beeblebrox could have three arms and two heads. Why not? But in truth these embellishments amounted to one throwaway joke, which artistically (and certainly in terms of cost) there was no need to retain. Visually, Hitchhiker’s had its moments — the hand-drawn faux computer animation won awards and is still to be marvelled at — but for the most part the programme spent big only to look little; a minor let-down constrained by its own history.
Would this have continued to be the case had the BBC gone ahead as planned with a second series (which in an ideal world would have been produced by John Lloyd, script-edited by Geoffrey Perkins, and written by Douglas Adams to be more mindful of television’s constraints)? Unfortunately, we’ll never know. Nothing eventuated. In 2005 America did finally consent to pick up a Hitchhiker’s feature film
Hitchhiker’s could have improved much like Blackadder
Potential: inopportunely demolished.
An abandoned highway motel contains a room that no longer exists but can be accessed from anywhere in the world using the Key: one of hundreds of magical objects created back in 1961 when the Room (capitalised) and everything inside was subject to some kind of supernatural Event. Peter Krause stars as a homicide detective whose eight year old daughter is lost to the Room’s mysterious properties. To bring her back he must first stay ahead of several ruthless and obsessive cabals trying to collect the Objects, and ultimately solve the mystery of the Event. Peter Jacobson (amongst others) co-starred in this foreboding and labyrinthine action drama.
The Lost Room
To rub salt into the wound, the final episode is some fifteen minutes shorter than the others. For all that the Room is situated outside of time and space, the helter-skelter finish smacks bitterly of the budget fading from existence.
Potential: lost in the ruins of 2006.
San Francisco news journalist Dan Vasser (Kevin McKidd) finds one day that he can time travel; in fact, he can’t help it, being shunted from present to past and back again, seemingly with a view to righting injustices and straightening out wrinkles in what should have been. The concept calls to mind Quantum Leap
Unlike Dr Sam Beckett, whose time wanderings were the result of a misfiring science experiment, Vasser is transported by supernatural means, or perhaps divine will; the exact cause is undetermined and given plenty of scope for development. As per Quantum Leap, Vasser needs to identify and solve problems in the past, but unlike Beckett he does not become someone else and his interventions aren’t limited to one particular date. Instead, he appears as himself, jumping often to several key points in the life of the person he is following.
The biggest difference between Journeyman
Journeyman was well-acted and struck a nice balance between personal drama and science fiction mystery. Its scripting potential was near enough unlimited; but whereas Quantum Leap ran for ninety-seven episodes, Journeyman made it to only thirteen and wasn’t renewed for the backend of its first season.
Potential: consigned by paradox to a redundant timeline.
Is it facetious to talk of a programme that ran for 26 years being cancelled too early? By periodically regenerating its lead actor, Doctor Who hit upon television’s elixir of life, renewing itself and moving with the times while retaining and building its audience. Granted, the 1980s had seen a decline from the glory days of the 1970s; nevertheless the show’s axing elicited both shock and outrage, and rightly so.
In addition to new cast members, Doctor Who regularly changed its writers, directors, script-editors and (most importantly) producers. This unwritten policy died in 1980 with the appointment of John Nathan-Turner to the top job. Many would argue that Nathan-Turner not only outstayed his welcome but indeed brought the show to ruins during his nine-year tenure as producer. Colin Baker (the Sixth Doctor) was unceremoniously sacked at the end of Season 23, then Doctor Who
In fairness, JNT was hampered by Doctor Who’s being afforded a smaller and smaller budget throughout the 1980s. The programme actually netted the BBC a significant profit by way of merchandising; but this fell to a different department and so doesn’t seem to have induced anyone — at least until the relaunch in 2005 — to bolster rather than bring down the show’s production values.
America threw some money at Doctor Who in 1996, resulting in the sumptuously visual but poorly received telemovie/pilot starring Paul McGann. In this instance what was lacking was patience: discarding McGann’s Doctor after one story was the sort of stillbirth that might have occurred in 1963 had Doctor Who’s first serial — the analogously lukewarm An Unearthly Child
Sylvester McCoy’s third and final season showed promise. Paul McGann could have soared if given the chance. Instead, Doctor Who was dumped, on both sides of the Atlantic.
Potential: exterminated.
In a future somewhat reminiscent of Blade Runner
As seems to be its want, Fox screened Almost Human
Almost Human succeeded visually in portraying the SF-rich future of 2048, and backed this up intellectually with stories centred around technological developments and concomitant social and ethical questions. The support cast boasted real talent (Mackenzie Crook a kooky standout) while principals Karl Urban and Michael Ealy struck up what should have been a winning dynamic as the loner detective and his previous-generation android partner. All told, Almost Human was so obviously good, the only explanation for its demise is that the television industry has turned bad.
Potential: superseded by soulless disposables.
When Douglas Adams created Dirk Gently he gave us an exquisite blend of science fiction, mystery, comedy and the supernatural. All these elements appear in the television series, and while Dirk Gently
Dirk Gently the character is part conman, part detective who investigates by way of the alleged fundamental interconnectedness of everything; in essence, acting out of self-interest and relying on what seem to be coincidences to solve his cases. His so-called holistic methods form one of Adams’ great contributions to comedy, and are cleverly explored across the show’s four episodes: from time travelling cats and murderous artificial intelligence to unerringly prescient horoscopes and killings where Dirk himself is the only link between victims.
Actor Stephen Mangan gives fair embodiment to Gently’s manic furtiveness, while Darren Boyd is stoically downtrodden and brilliantly British as straight man Richard MacDuff. The two in fact form a combination not dissimilar to Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman in Sherlock
If Dirk Gently had one obvious failing, it was the show’s incidental music, which rather than taking its job seriously set out almost bombastically to convey quirkiness. Douglas Adams would not have approved. Still, it wasn’t an inappropriately jaunty score that led to Dirk Gently’s cancellation; that decision was all about money and the BBC’s new policy of outsourcing for all but the most high-profile of its showpieces.
In the fundamental interconnectedness of everything televisual, Dirk Gently mysteriously failed to register.
Potential: consigned to an old sofa and irreversibly stuck in the production stairwell.
Although boasting a quality cast and a killer premise, moody supernatural drama Brimstone
Brimstone follows the exploits of deceased police detective Ezekiel Stone (Peter Horton), who having been damned for murdering his wife’s rapist, is returned to Earth by the Devil (John Glover) and tasked with tracking down 113 escapees from hell: the worst of the worst. The bounty for carrying back the Devil’s lost flock — a feat that requires Stone to first identify then shoot each soul between the eyes — is a second chance at life.
Horton brought considerable nuance to his character, playing Ezekiel Stone with tones of vulnerability, determination, rage and irony. His interactions with Glover (a gloriously shabby, used car salesman type of Devil) were particularly memorable, adding not just a measure of light relief but also a Socratic dialogue through which to explore the show’s moral quandaries. Brimstone from the outset proved intelligent, atmospheric and darkly compelling. It kept to a small cast and was all the better for it.
Perhaps the show just wasn’t facile enough to be countenanced by television bigwigs who stand so assuredly behind one-dimensional programming. Or maybe there is some other reason why Fox false-started Brimstone’s premier, bodged its scheduling through various timeslots, screened the episodes out of order and ultimately cut the series with six instalments still unmade. Incompetence springs to mind.
Of the 113 evil spirits who broke from hell (some of them presumably Fox executives), 100 were left unreclaimed.
Potential: shot in the head at close range.
In the history of television, few shows have burnt as shortly or brightly as this sweeping-but-gritty drama-focussed space opera by Joss Whedon. Firefly
Whedon was hot property at the time, having created hit programmes Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, which ran for seven and five seasons respectively and were still airing new episodes when Firefly came out. Whedon thought Firefly would match Buffy in running for seven years. Fox thought very differently.
Fox didn’t appreciate that Firefly spurned the powerbrokers of its universe and instead was about people living on society’s fringes. Fox didn’t approve of Firefly’s pilot episode, its pacing, its filming style, or the moral ambiguity of its less-than-traditional heroes. In fact, Fox was so untrusting of Whedon’s vision, it’s hard not to think of the network as having deliberately scuppered this would-be classic.
Firefly was screened out of order and with several gaps to accommodate baseball telecasts. Viewers trying to come to grips with nuanced character dynamics and a developing storyline were therefore served the following hodgepodge: episodes 2, 3 & 6; one week off; episodes 7, 8, 4, 5 & 9; two weeks off; episodes 10, 14 and finally (in every sense of the word), episode 1. Whereupon poor ratings led to Firefly’s cancellation. Episodes 11-13 were screened half a year later.
Firefly developed a cult following from the moment it aired. This fan base couldn’t dissuade Fox from readying the noose, but did in great measure pave the way for Whedon’s $39 million feature film Serenity
Firefly itself scores 9.1 on IMDB (and no doubt 1.9 on whatever distorted scale Fox uses to measure success).
Potential: strung up without trial.
*****
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