GateWorld Podcast: SGU Cancellation Shout-Back!

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• SGA's premiere got 4.2 million viewers. :-)

  http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117907989?refCatId=14

• Enjoyed the podcast again. I did notice that the more critical of the comments came from the female viewers, which was, perhaps, part of the problem with SGU and its ratings.

  Re saying that SG1 and SGA had more time for people to become invested in the characters, I think it is folly to have a show take 30 episodes and people are still waiting for this. They needed to hook viewers quick so they don't bleed away like they did. There was MUCH more fanfic and posting on the character/relationship threads in the first 2 seasons of Atlantis (wasn't around for SG1 but suspect it would have been similar) than SGU has inspired. This tells me that, sadly, the characters just weren't as engaging to many people.

• It ain't over until they destroy the sets.

• I think the difference between seeing a resolutions of the Goa'uld and Wraith is with the Goa'uld you could see significant victories. You can see movement, where big Goa'ulds were taken out. Like Cronus, Apophis, Hathor, etc... You could see that the odds of wining was insurmountable, but there was movement. In contrast to the Wraith, there was no real big baddy. It was an amalgam of random Wraith villain, and the war with them was essentially a war of attrition. Had the Wraith been given names, had they been organized in a different way, it would feel that there would be some progress.

  SyFy as a whole, handled all of this poorly. They alienated fans with the cancellation of SGA, when they could have at least ordered a half season or done a better job transitioning to SGU. SyFy's approach with moving things to Tuesdays was also a poor choice. They should have done what other cable networks like AMC is doing, and stagger their shows. Air Sanctuary now, then replace Sanctuary's time slot with SGU, followed by Caprica. They can reair the episodes on Tuesdays. If that didn't work, they could have moved Ghost Hunters to Tuesdays, and have SGU and Caprica on Wednesdays. The network just handled things poorly from a strategic and PR perspective.

  In terms of Smackdown, it doesn't make sense to have it on SyFy, because the audience just don't match. However, it can bring in new male audience, so they should at least require Smackdown to have a resident Klingon on the show.

• @Sylvia, I emphasize. In fact I think that *the* reason for SGU's failure to keep viewers is that the characters were almost impossible to relate to.

  They were just *too* flawed, almost unrealistically flawed.

  This was, unfortunately, by design (i.e., the writers created it this way on purpose).

  I honestly fail to see how someone can relate to / identify with / admire and tune in to characters who whine, bicker, lie pathologically or are otherwise negative and annoying on a regular basis.

  To top this, SGU was a show that actually wanted to *focus* on characters, be a character driven show and so on.

  So when you actually focus on characters but create such unrelatable characters, good things don't happen I guess.

• @wingsabre, if I understand the way things happened, Syfy would have aired SGA and SGU together in that first season of SGU but MGM/TBTB did not offer that to them. They offered Syfy the promise of an SGA Movie instead. And Syfy agreed. They all thought this would work out and the movie would be a good continuation for SGA, but it just didn't happen.

• @general grevious, like one of the podcast callers said, they'd follow Jack or Sheppard or Ronon or Teal'c into battle but would be afraid if they were with any of the SGU characters in a similar situation.

• People keep bringing up the fact what happened to SyFy, and it seems that ever since Disney bought SciFi, it became SyFy....things changed.....hmmm... :)

• @Hallnavy- Dude, get your facts straight. Disney never bought SyFy, its always been the property of NBC/Universal. You want a corporate baddie to blame, then blame them. Next time, try and do proper research before posting unfounded comments.

• I cannot understand (as a non-US viewer of SGU), why a so called science fiction based channel would want to cancelled a show that has won a screenwriting award, been nominated for many awards including best scifi show of 2009 in the constellation awards and outstanding special effects for a series in the emmys. Also, a show that won numerous LEO awards as well. I know that SyFy changed it's name to try and accomodate other shows, but wrestling? Come on! Is the population so unintelligent that all we are allowed to watch is someone throwing someone else through a cage. Give us a break please!!