SyFy pulls the plug on Stargate: Universe

The SyFy channel has shown that it has no commitment to science fiction television shows. It pulled the plug on Caprica earlier this year just as the show started to look appealing and now it’s cancelled Stargate: Universe.

I have to agree with fans of the show that Stargate: Universe has actually been the best of the three series, and I don’t mean to take anything away from the first two shows but Stargate: Universe was actually investing heavily in real science fiction themes and leaving the traditional villain of the week format alone.

We finally had a well-populated backstory for a television show such that its world not only feels complete but is extremely complete with a robust history of cultures and conflicts. The Leutian Alliance was a real entity that audiences had become familiar with from watching Stargate SG-1. The Ancients were a well-documented race whose mysterious priorities were still…mysterious. Even when they were biological beings the Ancients seem to have been far in advance of Earth’s human race in terms of curiosity and meaningful quests for life and so-called meaning.

So now we had a space castaway story in Stargate: Atlantis that didn’t have to invent every detail of its world. It was free to explore new mysteries without all the preamble and setup that is typical of new science fiction shows. We didn’t have to slumber through five or six episodes explaining the basic premise of the “universe” in which Stargate: Universe is set.

So, those were some of the strengths that supported the show. One has to ask why it failed to capture the audience’s attention. I would have to say that SyFy’s gradual transformation into the Wrestling Channel is probably not helping its endless quest to connect with science fiction fandom. They seem to be struggling with the lesson that the now-defunct Fandom, Inc. had to learn the hard way: that science fiction and fantasy are not easily commercialized.

The masses do respond to certain big budget storylines. We got a pretty good run out of Star Wars and Star Trek. Fans of Harry Potter and the Various Dark Plots have grown to love a magical alter ego for our own world. But most science fiction and fantasy themes fail to enjoy long television lifespans. The “classic” SciFi TV shows rarely made it past 3 seasons.

Maybe part of the problem is that science fiction loses its edge when it reveals too many clues to the underlying mystery. Maybe the problem is that audiences get tired of rehashed concepts. One comparison that could be made between Stargate: Universe and Battlestar Galactica is that both shows threw a small group of people into an interstellar flight from foes. Well, if we lived through that with BSG, why did we have to live through it with SGU?

I can’t answer that question. I liked the show and didn’t stop to fuss over how much it looked like something else. Heck, I loved Space: 1999 and I didn’t see too many people complaining about how much BSG looked like that show (the similarities were amazing, right down to the disaster that made “going back” impossible).

Well, having thrown my heart into trying to Save The Seeker already this year, I don’t have any energy (or time) to try to salvage the wreck that is SyFy — er, I mean, Stargate: Universe. I’ll still watch Warehouse 13 but SyFy is fast running out of shows that might capture my attention (and their advertisers will have to live without my dollars).

Truth be told, I’ve probably watched Hulu more this year than I have watched SyFy. Maybe that’s really SyFy’s problem: the REAL science fiction channel is on the Internet.