Was Star Trek (2009) responsible for killing the Stargate franchise?

[Zontar]

This could just be a crazy coincidence, but the human mind looks for patterns even when none is there. As the title suggests I'm wondering if the Star Trek reboot may have let to the plug getting pulled on the Gate franchise. Here's how I can to this possible conclusion: Stargate had until that point been a profitable but very much second-tier science fiction series. Through a dedicated fanbase fifteen seasons and two made for TV movies had been made, and in 2008 it seemed that though the flagship series had already come to an end its spinoff was still going strong and a new series was on the horizon. But the odd thing is, Atlantis found itself canceled unexpectedly (so much so the writers had to rush the series finale due to thinking there would be a sixth season). There was hope that Universe would keep things alive, getting an underrated first season and a second which was actually on par with the previous series in the franchise. Of course due to the ratings of season 2 the show never got the promised third season, and the tv movie to tie up the cliffhanger it ended on has since been permanently shelved. So where does Trek 09 fall into this you may ask?

I think MGM may have killed the franchise intentionally due to the movie. Here's how I think things played out: they wanted to see if the Trek reboot made a large amount of money. Atlantis' cancellation is one which was unexpected, even by the writers and directors involved. My theory is a big wig at MGM wanted to close the franchise on TV to reboot it with a shitty movie a few years later. Atlantis could easily be returned to the air if the Trek reboot flopped, and if it didn't then it could stay off the air and be reran in syndication (which ironically includes Showtime, which cancelled SG1 before it moved to Sci Fi). The plan, as I see it, was to do the same with Trek a few years later with a Stargate reboot (which surprise surprise, we're getting despite no one asking and everyone being angry due to who is on the project). From a financial point of view it makes sense, having the IP dead for a few years only to suddenly take in blockbuster level money is something worth ending a marginally profitable small screen IP.

Now some of you are probably wonder "what about Universe?". Well for that my theory is simple: season one was already in production when this happened, and so it would have been an unjustifiable lose to not at least air it. Season one of SGU had its problem (as all Stargate series first seasons have, and really most science fiction in general) but it had enough viewership to make cancellation something that couldn't be justified with the shareholders. Season two, on the other hand, was moved by Sy Fy from 8pm on Friday to the death slot of Tuesday 10PM, on top of which they did not run ads for the second season and had the mid season gap be 6 whole months. I always wondered why MGM never sued for that, but if the theory that it was done to kill the small screen IP to allow for a later reboot then not only does it make sense, it may have been MGM's own idea.

Do I have too much free time on my hand that I'm now making these crazy connections, or is there something to this idea?

 

[FalloutJack]

I feel as though the channel that forgot how to spell was the cause of it. They're the right kind of dumbass.

 

[Gizmo1990]

No I think Star Trek 09 killed the Star Trek franchise and that Stargate Universe, creator ego/stupidity and network stupidity killed the Stargate franchise. Stargate Universe (for me) was trying very hard to be Battlestar Galactica but the problem I had with it was that A: we already had Battlestar Galactica and B: I liked Stargate because it was more lighthearted and fun and not as dark and serious as stuff like BattleStar so after half a season I stopped watching. From what I have read alot of Stargate fans felt the same as me and also stopped watching so I don't think that helped the raitings.

I also don't think that the show creators helped keep viewers either tbh. Whan Atlantis was cancelled, Stargate fans were told that they were too old and that the new show would be so amazing that we would not be needed because it would get so many new fans. Then when raitings for S2 of Universe began to tank Brad Wright said this:

?I don?t think if we for any reason go away, it is an issue necessarily of the quality of the product that we?ve been making,? said executive producer and co-creator Brad Wright. ?I think getting moved on the schedule has hurt us. And the fact that some of the fans that liked SG-1 and Atlantis were so angry that they have deliberately hurt us, which is unfortunate.?

After being told that I was too old and that it did not matter if I watched or not I still gave it half a season before I stopped watching. I was then told that it was my fault that the new show was struggling. Apparently myself and other old Stargate fans were ment to keep watching a show we found slow, uninteresting and (most importantly) in no way FUN simply because it had Stargate slapped on the front. Brad Wright's statement, to me, sound's like a 14 year old kid defending a song his band just wrote from criticism. 'Our music is so cool, you guys just don't get it'. 2 of my friends, who are big fans of SG1/Atlantis, who were still watching Universe despite not liking it all that much stopped watching the day he made that statement. Hopfuly if Brad is ever involved with another TV series and the raitings begin to dip he will remember that insulting a large amount of your fan base is not the best way to increase raitings.

The stupidity of Syfy is what finished it off, always moving the timeslot and putting it up against programming that SG1 and Atlantis would never have won never mind Universe.

As for the Stargate Atlantis finale. I could be,and probably are, wrong about this but I remember reading that the show runners were offered season 6 of Atlantis and 1 season of Universe or no S6 Atlantis and 2 Universe and they picked the latter hence the rushed finale.

 

[Zontar]

As for the Stargate Atlantis finale. I could be,and probably are, wrong about this but I remember reading that the show runners were offered season 6 of Atlantis and 1 season of Universe or no S6 Atlantis and 2 Universe and they picked the latter hence the rushed finale.

I don't think this was the case, I remember that there where assurances from both MGM and Sci Fi that Universe would get at least 3 seasons (which probably are the reason season 2 ended on a cliffhanger). Season one of U did have a slew of problems though, not the least of which being that it was done in the Netflix format before Netflix was big enough for that to work (that being season one almost feels like it was made to be marathoned). Season 2 was a massive improvement though (which seems to be a trend with sci fi series), with much better writing, less drama, more sci fi concepts and better pacing. In my mind season 2 redeemed the series and I'm still upset we never learned what happened after the cliff hanger it ended on.

I feel as though the channel that forgot how to spell was the cause of it. They're the right kind of dumbass.

That begs the question why MGM never sued them for their shenanigans.

 

[Thaluikhain]

I always guessed they got killed off because it was rubbish and should have been killed ages ago. Might just be me, but after about Season 5 of SG1, the whole thing fell apart.

 

[Johnny Impact]

Stargate killed itself. It was never as good as Trek to begin with. There are only so many seasons of "through the gate, fight Goa'Uld, return" you can do. When they ran out of that, they couldn't find anything compelling to replace it with. Imagine Star Trek: Voyager lasting ten freakin' seasons and you have the idea. People just got sick of it. Atlantis and Universe did not help.

 

[Zontar]

Stargate killed itself. It was never as good as Trek to begin with. There are only so many seasons of "through the gate, fight Goa'Uld, return" you can do. When they ran out of that, they couldn't find anything compelling to replace it with. Imagine Star Trek: Voyager lasting ten freakin' seasons and you have the idea. People just got sick of it. Atlantis and Universe did not help.

We'll have to agree to disagree on it never being as good as Trek (DS9 and Next Gen maybe, but definitely not Voyager or Enterprise), but I wasn't talking about SG1 specifically (which did manage two seasons without the Goa'uld) but the franchise in general. I also have no idea what you mean by Atlantis and Universe didn't help? Help what? Keep the franchise alive? Sure gave it a few more years before the plug was pulled, and gave some good and memorable stories and characters.

Given how a lot of fans are upset that Atlantis got cancelled, Extinction got shelved, and that Universe was either not what they wanted or got screwed over, seems more like you got sick of it more then 'people'.

 

[small]

Universe was the straw that killed the franchise, it does have its fans but its such a departure from the tone of the previous shows that people basically switched off. Someone commented that it was trying to be battlestar, and it was definitely trying to capture that feel and that audience

 

[Armadox]

Focus group shift, and slot arrangement killed sci-fi in general, Stargate was just one that took the hit hardest and first. The problem was this, and I wholeheartedly believe this, the scifi channel chose, rather wrongly, to see the other channels in their competition as being entertainment in a whole. So, they did test groups with teens and young adults of a late 90s crowd, and jumped right from trying to be a science fiction channel to being a spectacle and shock channel. Gone was the hard science fiction and in comes reality television, ridiculous and cheap to make movies where they can deliver a science-light fantasy of giant monsters or ghosts. This was because they watched channels like MTV and got jealous, instead of seeing their own audience age, and start producing shows to match their niche set of skills.

The name change was probably because MGM was starting to cause a fuss about their line-ups and instead of shifting their goals back, they chose to abandon their post with a name change (thought JUST enough to believe they could keep their cred while spitting in it's face), and this mentality is what broke television. Food network, history channel.. everyone threw the baby out with the bath water when they lost focus of their central premise and tried to appeal to what was in at the time.

*shrugs* You'll start seeing more Star treks, Lexxs, Farscapes, and yes even Stargates soon (even new versions of Sliders, Outer Limits, and the Twilight Zone) with the destabilization of cable channels and super focused direct content options. Those groups that are old enough to get into scifi around the farscape/voyager era will be coming into their money soon, and that'll do a lot to drive things back to hard science fiction... though flashier then ever I'd expect.

 

[Signa]

If anything killed Stargate, it was Battlestar Galactica. BSG got the ratings everyone coveted, so Stargate tried to be BSG.

Really though, I think they were at it for too long, and produced too much in too little time. The shows were solid, but by the time Season 5 of Atlantis came around, things were starting to fall apart. They couldn't keep anyone signed on as their leader (I do not know the actor's/writers' motivations behind this) and the whole season was just boring. Only at the end were they able to just suddenly find enough of the coveted ZPMs to set up a movie that never happened. Such a shame.

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

No, Stargate just went for far too long. and all the spinoffs were unnecessary.

 

[Laughing Man]

No I think Star Trek 09 killed the Star Trek franchise and that Stargate Universe, creator ego/stupidity and network stupidity killed the Stargate franchise.

I would agree with that statement to the degree the the entire purpose of Universe was that it was to be a refocused Stargate that by being kind of like BSG would some how attract a new audience, the reason why Atlantis got canned was because they wanted to shift focus to Universe and the project goal was that Universe would pull in higher audience figures while being cheaper to produce (less SFX and space battles etc.) They failed not only did SGU not manage to pull in the numbers, it actually ended up with fewer viewers than SGA did, it some how ended up also costing more to produce per episode.

From what I have read alot of Stargate fans felt the same as me and also stopped watching so I don't think that helped the raitings.

As a huge SG fan I gave up watching it after the third or fourth episode, by this stage in SG1 and SGA the main protagonists had found the big bad, done some rescue missions and managed to piss them off and paint a huge target on their heads, SGU on the other hand had a group of whiny pussies still wondering where the toilets on the alien ship where.

I have however rewatched SGU and watching back to back over a week or two does improve things a lot and the show does get fairly interesting around the latter half of the first season and manages to stay fairly interesting right up until it ends.

 

[sombrero_joe]

Stargate Universe made me feel like I was watching a shitty soap opera. Like they were trying to make it more akin to Battlestar Galactica but failed miserably. That's kind of what killed Stargate for me, doesn't mean I wouldn't love to see a reboot in the next decade.

 

[beastro]

No need for some conspiracy, Atlantis was a big misstep and was more more of the same instead of taking the show in a new direction while Universe overdid that while to the point where they didn't know what to do with the show - how it ended neatly sums that up after building the premise of the show mid-season being a huge, existential question, then a whimper.

In one of those exceptions, or maybe the exception that shows that abrupt unresolved endings to shows are actually better for leaving us questioning, it would have been better had the show just ended trailing off instead of being resolved.

Actually I think the taint goes back to the Ori and wrapping up the Goa'uld. SG1 went from having a large sense of adventure and exploring the unknown with mankind taking it's first steps into a massive galaxy network of worlds to travel to to all of it being fixed around the Goa'uld, Asgard and making the whole universe in known and then suddenly saved by mankind. SG1 should have been the first step in the fight against them, one that was decades or even centuries long, but then I've never been satisfied with the TV Goa'uld and the producers were aware of it too being too comicbook villiany and shallow.

They should have stuck more to the movie in that regard having the mysterious and other worldly while being maybe more varied, less each individual for each deity and more single overarching deities which represented each archetype deity in each religious group (Say, the archetypical sky god, Zeus/Jupiter/et al had ruled gods that had sway over the Indo-Europeans as there were other groups which ruled different groups like the Semites, etc) which eventually fragmented into varying names and qualities in people's minds after the end of their rule over Earth.

 

[FinalDream]

I don't think so, I'm a huge fan of SG1 & Atlantis, but I feel the franchise wore itself out at the end (although this somewhat more applies to SG1 than Atlantis). Stargate carries on in the official novels, picking up after the Atlantis final episode too, so I never really felt the franchise all out and died on the fans. I think there must be about 30 plus books now and more keep coming.

Universe was the mistake, a rushed attempt to ape the gritty sic-fi of Battlestar Galactica and it didn't really add too much to the franchise. As far as TV is concerned I'm glad it's on hiatus and hoping that someday soon a reboot will happen in the style of Dr Who. The classic example of a franchise driving itself into the ground only to come back stronger after a break.

 

[Albino Boo]

I enjoyed SG1 and Atlantis and I just think it had come to its natural end. After 200 and something episodes they had exhausted the permiss. They did all those stories in 14 years and it just ran out of steam. Stargate universe was the final nail in the coffin, it alienated existing fans and did not pick up fans from BSG.

 

[SOCIALCONSTRUCT]

No I think Star Trek 09 killed the Star Trek franchise and that Stargate Universe, creator ego/stupidity and network stupidity killed the Stargate franchise. Stargate Universe (for me) was trying very hard to be Battlestar Galactica but the problem I had with it was that A: we already had Battlestar Galactica and B: I liked Stargate because it was more lighthearted and fun and not as dark and serious as stuff like BattleStar so after half a season I stopped watching. From what I have read alot of Stargate fans felt the same as me and also stopped watching so I don't think that helped the raitings.

I suppose that I'm in the minority in that I liked the idea of Stargate-but-not-Stargate and in thinking SGU was an excellent serial drama. I think serials are a great format in that it allows the creators to tell a much more complex story. The problem with serials is that they have a much harder path to success since each episode has to be watched sequentially like chapters in a book. It is somewhat unfair for scifi serials to always have to stand in the shadow of BSG as the epitome of a scifi serial. SGU was it's own show and it was unfortunate that it never got to run it's course.

I watched all of season 1 on Netflix so I never really felt the sting of "there is nothing going on". I also think that criticism was somewhat overblown, there were a number of important things that happened in season 1 though I see their point with the heavy coverage of relationships back on earth. In any case, season 2 provided the remedy to that with a lot more action and an incredibly well done cross over episode bringing in characters from Atlantis and SG-1.

While I appreciate that he wanted to break with the past and do something new with Stargate, obviously Brad Wright should have been a lot more diplomatic. All Wright really had to say was that there was a lot more action coming in the subsequent seasons. The prior Stargate series were good campy fun, with fond memories of Teal'c and O'Neill shooting golfballs into a stargate in the groundhog day episode. However, I had already lost interest in Stargate well before the end of their run. It felt that everything about the show had long since run it's course. Even though I had been a fan of the prior series, through no fault of their own, I had zero interest in watching another iteration of SG-1. I didn't expect much from SGU but was pleasantly surprised when it breathed new life into the old story universe. While I don't share Wright's snobbery towards SG-1 and it's fans, I admire his underlying thinking and efforts to create something greater than Wormhole X-Treme.

As for Syfy, they're just incredibly dumb. By failing to back their show with proper marketing and scheduling, they trashed a big franchise and never realized their considerable investment to produce SGU. That they have fallen back into their original niche, producing and playing re-runs of no budget B-movies, is unsurprising.

 

[Zontar]

Snip

Personally I think one of the problems Universe suffered was that it wasn't just different, but also alone. While Atlantis had people who disliked it have the ability to simply go watch SG1 instead, Universe didn't have such luck due to the untimely cancellation of Atlantis (which still had a good season or two left in her). It probably would have been more forgiven if it had that benefit.

I know they say people shouldn't attribute to malice what can easily be attributed to incompetence, but there's just no way someone in a position to kill the show due to stupidity couldn't get into that position in the first place.

 

[Foehunter82]

Actually, I believe MGM pulled the plug on the Stargate series simply because they were planning on releasing more films. Apparently, the original creators (Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich) wanted to revisit where the Stargate film left off, in accordance with a plan they had dating back to the early 90s when the original film had been released. Personally, I think that whole thing played right into the decision to do away with Stargate: Atlantis and, eventually, Stargate: Universe. Based on a couple of the things that I've seen Brad Wright say, at this point, seem to suggest that he's an egotistical douchebag that probably made some missteps.

In short:

MGM was having financial trouble and had to pull the plug (and/or adopt a motion picture approach to continuing Stargate); Syfy has mishandled things in the past; Brad Wright apparently got arrogant; Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich wanted to finish their trilogy of Stargate films (which are now going to be rebooted, apparently).