Stargate to die a slow, painful death

GateWorld – SCI FI confirms Atlantis cancellation, TV movie

Stargate: Atlantis has been cancelled. The show will run through its 100th episode in January 2009 and end on a cliffhanger, which will be resolved by a 2-hour movie.

So basically, this is the new way the studios want to handle their successful franchises – run the series for a while, then make a few DVDs. I suppose I can’t blame them. The formula worked for SG-1. Those two movies were pretty good, really, and I hear they’re selling decently.

The press release is all rosy and positive about how great it will be to tell stories in this universe on a larger canvas. I’ve no doubt that the movies will be good, and feel larger than any individual episodes. The franchise, however, is gonna die.

Yeah, I know there’s another spin-off series under consideration. If it gets green-lit, it might last a couple seasons. But let’s be honest… SG-1 is still the base of the franchise in most fans’ minds. And they’ve wrapped up their story lines. There’s some vague talk about doing another SG-1 movie, but I don’t think it will happen – at least not any time soon. And that’s the problem: the longer you go between “episodes,” the smaller your fan base gets. The public isn’t really known for it’s large attention-span. By the time the next movie comes out, even the true fans will be saying “now, where were we in this story again?”

So they’re going to wrap up the Atlantis story in a 2-hour movie. Great! I’m glad we get the end of the story. I even think they’ll be successful in doing maybe 2 more after that, assuming they do them within 1 year. But they’ll be progressively less ‘large’ feeling, because they can’t build on each other – they have to be self-contained units. That doesn’t mean they won’t be good, they just won’t be as good as they could be.

If the new spin-off gets picked up, it will already be over before it starts. It’ll have growing pains as everyone gets used to it and we figure out if we like this copy of a copy. Then it’ll be cancelled just as it’s starting to get good, because it didn’t do gang-buster numbers out of the gate. Then they’ll make a DVD to tie it up… maybe.

So my prediction is that 2009 will have two Stargate DVDs/TV Movies, 2010 might see a poorly received spin-off, and then Stargate will be dead.

Overall, that’ll be, what… 13 years? Not bad, I guess.

I think I’d prefer to have a really thick, heavy-hitting back half to a season with an explosive conclusion than a set of “let’s milk this thing dry” DVDs, though.

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