'Stargate: SG-1' Cancelled

Ant writes "The Sci-Fi channel has announced that it will not be renewing its (very popular) original series Stargate SG-1 for another season.The spinoff series Stargate: Atlantis will get the nod, though, airing for a fourth year. SG-1 aired its 200th episode on August 18th, and the SF series is the longest-running SF show on American television." Gateworld has further details: "New episodes of both Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis continue Fridays this summer starting at 9 p.m. Eastern/Pacific, leading up to the mid-season finale on September 22. The second half of the season will begin in March, leading to SG-1's final bow on SCI FI in June."

Holy Hell

[RawGutts]

Holy Crap, now what am I going to do? Go outside and enjoy the sunshine?

Re:Sci-Fi Does Dumb Again

[Cheerio Boy]

I guess Sci-Fi needs more space for shitty B monster movies, fantasty crap and "wrasslin'"...

Explain that one to me please? They cancel things like Farscape and SG-1 but put the ECW on there??

We should probably start calling it the B-Channel. B for Bad.

Oh well. If they keep canceling shows I'll be able to lower my DirecTV bill by going to the basic package that doesn't have them on it. If one of their shows turns out to be good enough to escape their massive suckage it'll show up on some other channel or DVDs.

Re:Contract costs or ???

[Anonymous Coward]

It could also be there simply isn't much more story to tell. A lot of fans will agree that there wasn't much point to the last two seasons. The main story threads were cleaned up at the end of season 8 (in an episode entitled "Threads" no less). Introducing the new Ori really took away from the series, as there wasn't much originality in how they were used. I am looking forward to seeing Morena Baccarin on Friday, but in my mind that has been the only highlight of the last two seasons (and the few good laughs I got from 200).

In general, all good things should come to an end (especially with an episode entitled "All Good Things...") and it actually isn't that uncommon to end a series at its height.

Killing the Goose that lays the golden egg

[Travoltus]

Sci Fi Channel is doing a 7th Heaven and they, as far as I can see, don't have a good show to replace it with.

All they have left to hold dedicated viewers is Battlestar Galactica.

What else is there to watch on that network now?

Re:Contract costs or ???

[the unbeliever]

Or it could be that it pretty much jumped the shark after richard dean anderson left (although I do like ben browder, stargate is not his show) and the Ori are the stupidest villain they've come up with yet?

SG1 = TNG; SGA = Voyager

[dwayner79]

Too many similarities to name, but they will suffer the same fate. Voyager was disconnected from the normal species fans wanted to know about. Atlantis is the same. Fans want to follow what is happening here on earth and the surrounding systems not what is happening to some far off land. Some fans will come around just like Voyager fans did, but a major part of the Star Gate culture will die just like it did when TNG ended.

Too Many Secrets

[Clock Nova]

Maybe they'll finally let the people of earth in on the whole Stargate thing. How the cat hasn't gotten out of the bag by this point is completely beyond my willingingness to suspend my disbelief.

Re:it was inevitable

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, that's the perfect cover story...

Re:So Long and Thanks

[FrYGuY101]

Personally, I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, I don't like where the show's been heading. The Ori aren't good villains. I don't like the concept, and the execution has been even worse. They're fighting gods, for all intents and purposes. It's the same problem as Superman: you're constantly getting stronger because instead of writing within the same levels of powers, writers take the easy out and make a challenge that is overcome by making the protagonist(s) stronger, instead of writing for the same strengths, but dealing with choices they make and the consequences they face. On the other hand, the characters are well fleshed out, well written, and the show is still good in SPITE of these crappy villains. The relationships are among the best written on TV right now, in my mind only second to Battlestar Galactica, maybe tying with House. I only hope that they can end the series as well as it would have ended had it not been renewed after Season 7 like they thought.

Scifi being Scifi

[Rob T Firefly]

I'm no Stargate fan, but as a fan of the original "Sliders," classic "Doctor Who," "Mystery Science Theater 3000," and other things Scifi "rescued" with great fanfare before unceremoniously killing off, I feel your pain.

Re:Sci-Fi Does Dumb Again

[Cheerio Boy]

ECW is the highest-rated show on Sci-fi. It's also the highest rated show on ad-supported cable that airs on tuesday primetime. ECW is making money for sci-fi. Hopefully, they will use that money to bankroll more good science fiction shows.

Then in my opinion:

1) They've attracted the wrong audience.

2) They've decided that they can't attract the right audience - or they don't know how.

3) They have become even more suit infested and this is the beginning of the vampyric draining of the SciFi network.


If it's the first then they need to do more research. They should be researching Science Fiction/Fantasy conventions and Renaissance Faires not just Nielsen ratings. They may be doing that - I don't know. But if this first point is true then they are not doing it right.

The second point goes right along with the first. From what I've seen of the programming on SciFi I suspect there are only a few at that channel that truly understand what Science Fiction/Fantasy is all about. (And before you flame me for including Fantasy at least that's within the realm of possibility for this channel unlike ECW or WWTBAS.)

My greatest fear though is it's the last one. SciFi Channel has made enough money to attract the hungry vampires from other corporate cultures and is going to go down the drain very shortly leaving only a husk of its former self.

Lastly - you mentioned budget and that ECW was making money for them that they could use to fund other good SciFi shows. Look back at some of the truly popular SciFi stuff from the past. Look at what kinds of budgets they had. I'm sure you can think of at least a half-dozen good shows that had little or no budget but were fantastic! That tells me that good SciFi doesn't need a lot of money but rather someone to care about the genre and to have good writers and good actors. Often some of the best of those don't cost a lot. If SciFi Channel can afford ECW it can afford to make new series.

I for one, am glad

[Phleg]

I really like the show. I'd watched it sporadically whenever I saw it was on for several years, but just before season 7, I started torrenting the previous episodes, and watched them all in sequence. The first two seasons were alright, and it started picking up new and interesting story arcs in seasons 3 through 5. Six felt a little rehashed, and seven picked up with Anubis. Eight is where it legitimately should have ended, with the destruction of Anubis and the ending of virtually every side plot.

With that said, season 9 actually surprised me with how well they managed to do, even with Richard Dean Anderson leaving, Don Davis being gone, and Amanda Tapping out of commission for a few months. Ben, Beau, and Claudia didn't feel right at first, but I gradually came to like the direction the show took; and at least there's always still Daniel and Teal'c. Plus, the Ori have been a pretty damned interesting new enemy. However, I'm glad they're cancelling the show. I'd rather them finish the Ori story reasonably quickly and end the show on a moderately high note (probably not as high as season 8, but high nonetheless) rather than dragging it on and on. While it's commendable how they've handled the transition to the new cast, it's not something that can be kept up indefinitely.

Firefly comment is spot on

[maximthemagnificent]

The seeds of crappiness were already showing in Firefly: Heart of Gold, anyone?
If Serenity is any guide, I'm thrilled Firefly ended abruptly.

That's always been a strength of a lot of anime and a fair amount of BBC programming:
it has a beginning, a middle, and an end. They don't try and string it out for as long as
possible. The ones that do suffer the same fate as US shows.

I read an interview with the producer of Star Trek: The Next Generation season six,
and she said that they had the ep they were shooting, one they had pretty much written,
and some basic ideas for the next one and that was how they went through the whole
season. I don't like Start Trek anyways, but any show would have trouble being of high
quality under those circumstances.

Always leave 'em wanting more, right?

Maxim

Re:Killing the Goose that lays the golden egg

[ericspinder]

My question is, why on earth did a 2nd rate, Voyager'esque spinoff show actually get renewed? Dr. Weir = Captain Janeway,...

And my question is "Does a strong female lead scare you?" Other than the 'general scifi crew and captain motif' I can't see the similarities, a better fit star trek wise for Atlantis would be "Deep Space Nine" as they are both at least generally stationary bases of operations.

Re:So Long and Thanks

[toad3k]

You nailed it. This is my biggest problem with science fiction today. They give too much power to the good guys, and then they have to scale up the bad guys to compensate. Eventually the battle reaches a point where you can't even relate to it anymore. The matrix committed this error along with nearly every anime I've ever seen.

My other problem is that eventually you end up at a point where some genius with access to the script decides to, for example, destroy a sun in an easily repeatable way, and then for the rest of the series, blowing up a sun is a solution for every problem but has to be ignored. It is short sighted and every writer should read their script and look for these obvious and completely avoidable future plot holes.

Re:Sci-Fi Does Dumb Again

[zippthorne]

Then you never understood what stargate was. It was always stupid rehashes, but done with enough intelligence and wit that it made fun of the stupid rehashes. You can't run a sci-fi series for 200 episodes without doing stupid rehashes, so you'd better not take yourself too seriously and paint yourself into a corner you can't get out of. One of my favorite lines was when Sam says, "You know what their weakness turned out to be? Water. I mean, if that's true, why go to all the trouble to invade a planet that's two-thirds water?" C'mon, we were all thinking it...

At any rate, they've faired far better than the Simpsons, which didn't even have the good sense to step aside when it spawned a truely great comedy.

This is over due

[slagell]

I am an SG-1 fan, but the last 2 seasons have been poor. It isn't just that Richard Dean Anderson has left, but the show tied up nicely at the end of season 8 and should have ended there. Actors that wanted to stay, could have migrated to Atlantis, like Worf to DS-9.

My biggest beef, if there always has to be this epic war, and each time they win, they have to come up with a more powerful enemy. This has happened to the ridiculous extreme till they are literally fighting "gods". This is a bad sign, a sign that they are running out of ideas. This is the sort of thing DS-9, a very sub-par substitute for TNG, did to boost its ratings. They had a 3 year war between the federation and dominion.

A good sci-fi show should be able to sustain interesting plots without the constant backdrop of annihilation. And when you keep replacing old enemies with more powerful ones, it degrades the battle with the old and the new enemies become ridiculously powerful after a while.

I hope they wrap up this Ori crap soon and never return to the ascending being junk. However that seems unlikely, because they have just introduced a new antagonist into Atlantis. I guess the Wraith aren't enough to deal with.

Thank God!

[eno2001]

Sorry, but I never got into the show. It's too much action and not enough intellect for me. Give me the first two seasons of Sliders any day. At least there, the intellect was worshipped far more than fire power. Fire power is of little use when you're trapped inside a puzzle. And we are all trapped in that life IS a puzzle.

Argh!....Stupid Stupid Stupid....SCIFI Channel!

[haplo21112]

Everyonce in a great great while I have some small hope of seeing good TV and justifying that stupid cable bill. Then the Scifi channel pulls this idiocy. So when is the BattleStar Galactica cancellation notice coming? Perhaps they will find somemore washed up or also ran wrestling leaugues to show. Well at least maybe they will find another channel for the show.

So now that it's dead...

[kyjl]

Let's have some more Firefly.

I have no idea who owns the rights to the series (Does Fox still have them?), but Sci-Fi should gobble up Firefly and stick it in the gaping hole where SG-1 used to be. There'd be yet more fans, yet more of a convincing audience to make a sequel series, and if you're too damn cheap to buy the DVDs actually give people a chance to watch the series.

It's obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

AFIAK, the Asgard don't have any genders anymore since they reproduce through cloning. So they don't need to "cover up their shame". Also, the Asgard live in a temperature controlled environment (and don't seem to get out much), so there's little need to cover for warmth. They don't seem to do any hard labour themselves (e.g. mining) so they don't need much protective gear or clothing to prevent them from getting dirty. Finally, they don't have the need for "us versus them" military uniforms since they have one government.

Re:Cancel Atlantis, too

[zeronitro]

i half agree with you.
i don't think the show should be canceled, because there is far too few true sci-fi shows on anymore. (there's a lot of wannabes popping up on network tv, but they all want to incorporate crime or medical crap).

i generally like atlantis, other then the first season by far had the best episodes and everything out now does seem like a bad copy off an old sg-1 ep. that and i like the lt. ford better then i like ronin (he's just not a good actor, what more do i have to say?)

who knows... maybe daniel jackson will transfer to atlantis and next season may have some potential.

Re:Sci-Fi Does Dumb Again

[DocSavage64109]

The Sci-Fi channel lost my respect when they were airing the "Crossing Over" fake psychic show. From this link, http://www.scifi.com/johnedward/aboutjohn/ [scifi.com] it looks like they are still airing it.

Re:nudity

[kalirion]

Plus, why the hell should you waste time making clothing when you live in an advanced, totally climate controlled city or spacecraft?

Pockets.

Re:It's just like...

[Johnboi Waltune]

He only does one character: the flippant hero asskicker guy -- the alpha male that every Stargate/Farscape nerd wants to be, but is not. Stargate and Farscape have more or less the same plots, characters, etc, so that's why he works on both shows.

The only way to make it seem like he's a different character is to "hold him back".

Re:It's just like...

[Wolfkin]

In the documentary shown with the 200th ep last Friday, it was mentioned that when Shanks auditioned for the role, he took care to copy Spader's mannerisms and acting as closely as possible, and that this is what got him the role.