It’s official. Syfy announced on Twitter that it has cancelled Stargate: Universe. (PopCultureZoo has the full statement.) With MGM unable to pull together the financing for the SG1 and Atlantis movies, this effectively brings the Stargate franchise to an end.
The Stargate franchise has had a show on-air since 1997. SG1 had a 10-year run that still does very well in reruns. Stargate Atlantis had a solid 5-year run, as well. However, Syfy’s lovely habit of running awesome events for each series and then announcing that series’ cancellation steadily eroded the fan base.
With the darker tone of SGU, the show struggled even more to win over fans of the earlier shows. However, the second season has shown dramatic improvements and was starting to gain some people back. Still, it never was able to gain the critical Neilsen live numbers that the advertisers like to see.
Statements coming in from Twitter-land:
DavidBlue Crap. Just heard the news as well. Apparently, nobody decided to tell us ahead of time. My rep heard it online. Seems they cancelled #SGU…Look out for the back half. Really proud of it. Shame, b/c where they leave Eli is frakkin’ cool. REALLY wanted to see where it went…
JewelStaite The end of an era! So sorry to hear about the canceling of Stargate Universe. And to the cast: You are all FABULOUS. I wish you many jobs!
martingero What a bummer. I thought the second season of SG:U was some of the best Stargate ever. Sad for that amazing team. #Stargate
PeterKelamis What can I say other than Thank You from the bottom of my Heart to all those who supported #SGU Much Love Klam
scalzi To the folks who were concerned: I’ll be fine — I do have that other job writing books, you know. And that’s going well.
I’m sure it will leave Syfy with more budget for “Yet another show where we run around in the dark with night-vision and thermal imaging”.
I enjoyed Stargate Universe and am glad that they will at least let it finish out the season.
Apparently instead of airing the last 5 Caprica episodes in the spring, they will just marathon them all on January 4.
http://brusimm.com/2010/12/02/caprica-to-finish-its-season-on-syfy-in-janauary-2011-no-more-eric-stoltz/
What? No more wrestling shows?
The most annoying part is that this season is ending on a cliffhanger. Nice.
What a wretched turn of events. And the show was really starting to hit it’s stride, I thought.
Big no! D:
The season was getting really good, too.
Shazbot!
Well, crap. I enjoyed the show from the start and was really beginning to embrace it and now…arg. Glad we get to see the remaining episodes, but not looking forward to ending on a cliffhanger.
This blows harder than the north wind! I loved that show, couldn’t get into the other ones but this one was ace. Damn you TV corporations!
Way to ruin a Monday morning!!!