# Cut Down in Their Prime and Gone Too Soon: Series That Were Axed Before Their Time?



## Trollheart (Jun 15, 2020)

The realities of television as a business of course mean that some series that could have been great don't get the ratings and so get cut off at the knees, while others which (imo) don't deserve to breathe the same air get multiple renewals. Which series do you remember that you would have wished got picked up but didn't, and what are the ones on now, or which have been on, that you feel were unfairly promoted?

Dark Skies: should have been renewed
Dark Matter: Loved this and was just getting good when it got cancelled
Threshold: I will never forgive them, never...
Brimstone: Smart, sassy, funny, so of course it was cancelled quicker than you can say "Get back to Hell!"
V: Loved the reboot, but they left it at a cliffhanger. Boo.
Colony: Had real potential but I guess not the numbers.
Charlie Jade: Different and clever. Never had a chance, did it?

As for the unworthy...
Warehouse 13: I just thought this was a miserable pastiche of ideas and I hated it. I think it's on season four now?
Haven: Come on, really? This is taken as original? By Stephen King, so maybe that's why it got picked up
Continuum: Started well but then just seemed to become another cop show. Again, in something like season four at this point.

What about ye?


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## tegeus-Cromis (Jun 15, 2020)

*The Magicians *on SYFY needed one more season. 

Not SFF (though not without its magical realist moments), but *Mozart in the Jungle *on Amazon Prime definitely needed one more season to wrap things up.


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## Overread (Jun 15, 2020)

Firefly which was horrifically abused by an executive who was able to ensure that the series never even completed its first season. They showed its initial episodes out of order, at different times and at time slots which often competed with major other shows/programs (eg sports). Basically did everything to ensure that it would never live.

That it went on to fan-fund a full film shows how much energy and enthusiasm there was for it. Sadly with many years past and with many of the cast having moved on in life (and sadly the actor who played Shepherd Book has now passed on); its now an impossible dream.


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## Vince W (Jun 15, 2020)

I can think of several series that were killed too early for me:

Millennium
Almost Human
Blake's 7
Dark Angel
Stargate: Universe
Space: Above and Beyond


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## tegeus-Cromis (Jun 15, 2020)

Vince W said:


> I can think of several series that were killed too early for me:
> 
> Millennium
> Almost Human
> ...


Which Almost Human?


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## Vince W (Jun 15, 2020)

tegeus-Cromis said:


> Which Almost Human?


The one with Karl Urban. It came out shortly after Dredd and it was quite good and had a number of nods to the Dredd film.


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## Astro Pen (Jun 15, 2020)

I'm sure I remember one called "Wild Palms" late 80s or Early 90s  Billed as the new Twin Peaks it was gone before I caught an episode


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## tegeus-Cromis (Jun 15, 2020)

Vince W said:


> The one with Karl Urban. It came out shortly after Dredd and it was quite good and had a number of nods to the Dredd film.


Oh, OK. I was spacing out. I was thinking  of *Being Human. *


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## BAYLOR (Jun 15, 2020)

Vince W said:


> I can think of several series that were killed too early for me:
> 
> Millennium
> Almost Human
> ...



*Space Above and  Beyond* would have served  is some network genius had not put it on football night where it could get preempted . It should have been on the same night as XFiles.
*Stargate Universe* did get enough of a chance at the very least they could have given the show closure. 
*Blake 7 *was victim  of the idiocy of the people running  the BBC at that time 

*Millennium *at least closure but as an epside of the XFiles what might have helped Millennium is if they had done a few crossover episodes with X files and overlapped the two series storylines 

*Almost  Human* and *Dark Angel* has the misfortune of being on Fox had they been WB series the would have far longer runs .

Add to that list *Firefly *which Fox alos screwed up


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## Danny McG (Jun 15, 2020)

Vince W said:


> Space: Above and Beyond


Ditto


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## Trollheart (Jun 16, 2020)

Vince W said:


> I can think of several series that were killed too early for me:
> 
> Millennium


I have to say, that was the most unremittingly dark and depressing series I ever watched. It made me miserable just sitting through it. Not even the barest shaft of light to balance out the darkness. I don't think you can ever get away with that on television; even now, certainly not then. Got to admit, I don't miss it.



> Blake's 7


Blake's 7 got like five seasons, didn't it? It may have ended abruptly, but I don't think really you could say it was cut down before its time. I mean, where was it going to go in another season? I'd love to see a reboot, though then again....

Thank Christ for The Peacekeeper Wars: that was a rotten way to end Farscape, after having invested so much in it. Oh, and there's a special place in Hell for the person who dropped the axe on season three of Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles.


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## Elckerlyc (Jun 16, 2020)

Definitely Farscape. Still my all-time favorite series and regularly re-watched by me. It did eventually get closure, but I had much preferred an entire season (with good-old-days 22 episodes per season) as decent closure, if it had to close at all.
I have mixed feelings about Stargate Universe. IMHO a series totally screwed up. And, after the axing, a never fulfilled promise.
Firefly. Cut in its infancy, after being mutilated first.


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## Vladd67 (Jun 16, 2020)

Astro Pen said:


> I'm sure I remember one called "Wild Palms" late 80s or Early 90s  Billed as the new Twin Peaks it was gone before I caught an episode


From what I can remember you didn’t miss much. It was released with a big build up which it failed to match. I think I was quite disappointed at the time.


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## Foxbat (Jun 16, 2020)

A couple I really enjoyed were Hannibal, which lasted 3 seasons and Carnivale, which lasted only two. I thought both were excellent.


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## Rodders (Jun 17, 2020)

Firefly and Farscape both were able to get a conclusion to their story, so I don’t count them. (Although I would’ve loved to have gone the long way round and seen the conclusions by way of a series.)

Dark Matter was pulled after three series as the Sy-Fi channel couldn‘t afford to run it in conjunction with Killjoys. I liked it. 
Space: Above and Beyond.
Wonderfalls. (A nice, quirky series with a lot of fantasy elements included. It was created by Pushing Daisies Brian Fuller.) 
Outsourced. (Not Sci-fi, but it was a very nice, sweet comedy.)
Crusade. I thought this had legs and would’ve liked to have seen it drawn to it’s conclusion.

That’s it off the top of my head. There will be others.


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## Astro Pen (Jun 17, 2020)

Maybe Re 'Wild Palms'  But having checked out the trailer I'm going to track it down and persevere. I suspect it was premature and it's time has now come...


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## Narkalui (Jun 18, 2020)

Community





#andamovie


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## CriticalCarrot (Jun 26, 2020)

This seems like a generic answer but I'd definitely say Firefly, I would have loved at least a few more seasons.


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## Mouse (Jun 26, 2020)

Yes, Firefly and Farscape even though they got their endings.

Also
*Alphas
The Fades
Emerald City
Dollhouse*


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## Rodders (Jun 28, 2020)

The Covid lockdown has had me binge watching all kinds of TV. There were a couple that I got into that only had one series. 

JPOD - a quirky program that I rather enjoyed. There are no consequences from what I can see, but all of the characters were rather enjoyable and I would've really liked to have seen a conclusion. Good fun.

Daybreak - On the face of it, a teenage apocalypse dramedy, but it had a lot more going for it. Again, likeable characters, great music and excellent use of flashbacks. It actually dealt with many teenage issues in quite a mature fashion. As is always the case, it ended on a cliff-hanger.


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## paranoid marvin (Jul 4, 2020)

I couldn't go back and watch a box set of a show that didn't have (some kind of) an ending.

Blakes 7 ran it's course. It got 4 series and 5 episodes, so much longer than many story-based shows, and it not only got an ending but the _right _ending; the only one they ever really could have had. 

As for shows cut before their time - Logan's Run, Planet of the Apes. And I wish the 1970s The Survivors had had at least one more season; great show, that.


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## Joshua Jones (Jul 4, 2020)

Elckerlyc said:


> Definitely Farscape. Still my all-time favorite series and regularly re-watched by me. It did eventually get closure, but I had much preferred an entire season (with good-old-days 22 episodes per season) as decent closure, if it had to close at all.
> I have mixed feelings about Stargate Universe. IMHO a series totally screwed up. And, after the axing, a never fulfilled promise.
> Firefly. Cut in its infancy, after being mutilated first.


Yeah, I'm split on Stargate Universe too. I thought the opening of the series was brilliant in its depiction of desperation and character dynamics. However, as the conflicts became less intrinsic (as in, trying not to asphyxiate or starve on this ancient ship) and more extrinsic (alien attacks), my interest waned. I think the last episode I made it through was when Chloe started becoming an alien and was scrawling maths on the walls... apparently alien DNA is MARY-SUE (they have different letters than we do apparently ).


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## Elckerlyc (Jul 4, 2020)

Joshua Jones said:


> Yeah, I'm split on Stargate Universe too. I thought the opening of the series was brilliant in its depiction of desperation and character dynamics. However, as the conflicts became less intrinsic (as in, trying not to asphyxiate or starve on this ancient ship) and more extrinsic (alien attacks), my interest waned. I think the last episode I made it through was when Chloe started becoming an alien and was scrawling maths on the walls... apparently alien DNA is MARY-SUE (they have different letters than we do apparently ).


Agreed.
But what most annoyed was that the writers came up with a plot that IMHO seemed totally at oods with the situation they had set up in the first episode.
Here we have an ancient, huge spaceship of the Ancients in an universe far, far away. And we have an intriguing mix of characters who, thanks to a planet-worth amount of energy that's unlikely to be accumulated again any time soon, travel through the Stargate and get stranded on that above mentioned alien (as in unfamiliar) spaceship. SYS, Save Your Selves.
Good. Excellent. So much to explore!
And then it all comes tumbling down. Apparently the writers couldn't face this daunting new challenge and came up with some magical (yes, magic, not hard SF) stones that someone thought to bring with him by which people could swap awareness with people back home on Earth. I kid you not. Next, old issues stick their head back up. Some episodes were mainly set on Earth. It hurt watching.
They could and should have done way, way more with the spaceship itself. The challenges that they would have to face regarding the ship and their surroundings ought to have offered enough occasions for writing human conflict into the script. And not mainly about (Earth-based) power struggles as was the case now.


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## Vladd67 (Jul 4, 2020)

In their defence those stones were first used in SG1 during the struggle with the Ori so you can’t blame SG Universe’s writers with creating them.


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## Trollheart (Jul 4, 2020)

And now we must add to the sad pile _Vagrant Queen._ That show had such potential. Sigh.


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## Glaysher (Jul 4, 2020)

Vladd67 said:


> In their defence those stones were first used in SG1 during the struggle with the Ori so you can’t blame SG Universe’s writers with creating them.



I thought the episode where it turns out that Jack has been sharing memories with a barber for years because they were both in proximity to stones was brilliant.


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## Elckerlyc (Jul 4, 2020)

Vladd67 said:


> In their defence those stones were first used in SG1 during the struggle with the Ori so you can’t blame SG Universe’s writers with creating them.


I stand corrected. 
But I do blame them for unnecessarily using them for SG Universe. Why else create a plot that is situated millions of light-years away than to be totally disconnected from the world they left behind?


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## Laura R Hepworth (Jul 29, 2020)

*Deadly Games
Dark Angel
Threshold 
Alphas
Star Trek: Enterprise *- Yes, I know, they made a huge amount of mistakes early on, but it was just starting to get pretty good when it got pulled and the ending was just awful! They should at least have given it a good ending.
*Reboot: Guardian Code *- I thought they'd done a decent job on this one, but it looks like Netflix has canceled it . Isn't that always the way it is? The shows you like get canceled too soon, and the ones you don't seem to never end.


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## tonymuhs (Jul 29, 2020)

Overread said:


> Firefly which was horrifically abused by an executive who was able to ensure that the series never even completed its first season. They showed its initial episodes out of order, at different times and at time slots which often competed with major other shows/programs (eg sports). Basically did everything to ensure that it would never live.
> 
> That it went on to fan-fund a full film shows how much energy and enthusiasm there was for it. Sadly with many years past and with many of the cast having moved on in life (and sadly the actor who played Shepherd Book has now passed on); its now an impossible dream.



 
I love Firefly so much.


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## Laura R Hepworth (Jul 29, 2020)

Trollheart said:


> As for the unworthy...
> Warehouse 13: I just thought this was a miserable pastiche of ideas and I hated it. I think it's on season four now?



I liked the show when it started, but they lost me early in season 4. Must have lost a lot of others too as it ended in season 5 and that was only a half season long.


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## Matteo (Jul 29, 2020)

Most of the shows @Laura R Hepworth mentions I've never heard of but would definitely agree with *Dark Skies* - a clever premise that deserved to run for much longer.  *Millennium* was a very dark and depressing show, but it was good because of that and should have been allowed to finish. *Dark Angel* I only dipped into now and again and in fact missed the fact that it was cancelled. Agree *Space: Above and Beyond* was a shame, but, like other posters, think *Blake's 7* was right to end when, and how, it did.

*Firefly* passed me by - only saw it about a year ago - but the fact that there were not more episodes is a real shame.


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## Droflet (Jul 29, 2020)

Stargate Atlantis, cancelled at its peak to fit in the vastly inferior Stargate Universe. Why?


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## Lumens (Jul 29, 2020)

Utopia. Cancelled after two seasons, but they could pick it up again after any amount of years if they wanted.









						Utopia (British TV series) - Wikipedia
					






					en.m.wikipedia.org
				




Amazing series, although brutal and violent in places. The music was amazing, as was the plot and the characters. It also happens to deal with important and controversial issues, especially for this year. One of the best series there is, in my opinion.


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## Vladd67 (Jul 29, 2020)

Threshold and Prey were two series that deserved longer.


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## AE35Unit (Jul 29, 2020)

*Zoo* was kind of OK. It got silly but had its moments. Was a bit annoyed when it just ended half way through a series.

A very good show that we both enjoyed was *Helix*. Two seasons only. The first was set in a Antarctic research centre and was about a weird virus outbreak. The second series had a rural setting and was based around poisonous honey. Sadly no more shows after 2015 I think. It had great potential.


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## Laura R Hepworth (Jul 29, 2020)

I've been enjoying *Space Precinc*t on Tubi. Haven't finished it yet, but I'm already disappointed that it only had one season   .


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## AE35Unit (Jul 29, 2020)

Lumens said:


> Utopia. Cancelled after two seasons, but they could pick it up again after any amount of years if they wanted.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I'm not familiar with this series but according to the link its coming back

"Amazon has since gained the rights to the series as of April 2018, and an American version of the show was in production throughout 2019, and is set to be released in the autumn of 2020."


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## CupofJoe (Jul 29, 2020)

I tend to think that shows get dragged on for a season or two too long but I think there were more tales to tell in the *Buffyverse*. Maybe *not* *Buffy* or *Angel* directly [the ending of Angel was awesome!!!] but there were hints of a *Watcher's Tales* or *The Tales of Ripper*. 
Aside from that... *Firefly* [of course]. But I loved that it burned so bright that we still remember it's light.
then there is *Space: Above and Beyond*. It was never given a budget that it needed but they made those limitations work for them. It was almost like watching Classic Dr Who but in space with aliens!
I have a sneaking liking for *Surface*. I think it was more of a mini series but the end of it set up a season 2 perfectly and that never appeared.


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## JimC (Jul 30, 2020)

TSCC
Firefly
Dark Angel


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