Twilight Zone Gets the Axe

After only one season, the latest incarnation for Twilight Zone has been sunk. Guess that stellar lead-in from Enterprise just wasn’t enough. It’s likely replacement? Jake 2.0, a show centering around an NSA agent implanted with microchips.

Anyone else as desperate as I am for some hard Science Fiction?

15 replies on “Twilight Zone Gets the Axe”

    • Re: Meh

      I’d sure go for some Firefly. But apparently, that’s too much to ask.

      I think, at this stage, it’s safe to assume that Firefly is never, ever coming back.

      • Re: Meh

        I’d sure go for some Firefly. But apparently, that’s too much to ask.

        I think, at this stage, it’s safe to assume that Firefly is never, ever coming back.

        Gods, Reading That Just Depressed Me.

      • Re: Meh

        I think, at this stage, it’s safe to assume
        that Firefly
        is never, ever coming back.

        Well, seeing a certain someone practising her mandarin on Angel and
        another certain someone practising his southern accent on Buffy gave
        me a bit of hope. But yeah, its safe to assume its gone.

      • Re: Meh

        I think, at this stage, it’s safe to assume that Firefly is never, ever coming back.

        AURGH! Dude, don’t even SAY that! You know that the unexplored regions of quantum mechanics says that somehow our consciousness influences reality, and that somewhere there IS a timeline where FF DOES come back. I wanna be in THAT timeline! So… buy plenty of the Christmas FF DVDs, go to the FF movie next summer lots of times, and Fox will beg Joss if they can shoot Season Two in Fall 2004.

        (Yeah, I was kinda disappointed by the Matrix movie, too, and I’m SO desparate for some good character-driven sci-fi…)

      • Re: Meh

        I think, at this stage, it’s safe to assume that Firefly is never, ever coming back.

        Consider:

        The New York Times had a Q&A with Joss Whedon recently. Here is what Joss had to say about the cancellation and what may be in store for the series in the future.

        Q8. “Firefly” was the first time in a while when your ideas did not get to make it through to fruition. First of all, is there anything you would like to share with people following the show on the edge of their seats? And secondly, having seen how you turned a previous disappointment, “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” the movie, into an artistic success on your own terms, can we hope for something similar with “Firefly”?

        A. “Firefly.” I’ll answer the second question first. I have every hope in the world of bringing “Firefly” back to people in another format. I haven’t got anything definite yet but I’ve been fighting to do that since the day we were cancelled. I therefore don’t have any particular plot things I want to share with people because I’m hoping I’ll get the chance to do that in the near future, whether it be on TV, film or a t-shirt.

        It was a bizarre blow to have a story in your head and suddenly not get to tell it. I don’t know why, I’ve written movies long enough to know that that’s usually the case, but after “Buffy” and “Angel” sort of took off I got lulled into overconfidence and was so excited to tell the stories of these people, and then suddenly had it truncated. However, knowing that what we shot will be coming out on DVD in its full form is a big vindication, because I got to say a lot of things that I wanted to say right, up in the first episodes. So, as I said, watch and wait.

  1. Good riddence
    I watched the first episode, the stupid one where they bad kids got made into trees or fertilizer for trees or something. Good god. Good riddence.

    • Re: Good riddence

      I watched the first episode, the stupid one where they bad kids got made into trees or fertilizer for trees or something. Good god. Good riddence.

      Yes, because pilots of shows are traditionally the best episodes of the entire run of the series.

      I watched a couple of them, and, though some were obvious in where they were going (“How Much Do You Love Your Kid?”), some weren’t bad (“It’s Still a Good Life”, the follow up to the classic “It’s a Good Life”). I think if they’d been given another season, they probably could have produced a fairly interesting show.

  2. Episodic television
    Since an anthology series where each episode stands completely on its own has failed, could we use this as proof that people like story arcs?

    • Re: Episodic television

      Since an anthology series where each episode stands completely on its own has failed, could we use this as proof that people like story arcs?

      Nope. Anthology Standalone. Anthology is a set of stories, with no real tie to each other. At best, it’s the narrator. People like seeing the same characters.

      The best cross between Anthology and Standalone is probably Quantum Leap – knowing the premise, you could watch any episode. And you didn’t need to watch previous ones to understand what was going on, the rare episode excluded.

      Story arcs are nice. Characters growing over time is fine. Just don’t let it overwhelm the viewer. Alias has done a good job of this, mainly because of the “previously on”, which does a great job of showing things that you’ve missed that matter for that episode. That way you can miss an episode here or there and not be screwed.

  3. What did we expect…
    It had to happen.. there were very few decent episodes… ah well

  4. Not surprised
    Even remaking classic episodes wasn’t enough to make it good. No one can reproduce the magic that Rod Serling had.

    • Re: Not surprised

      Even remaking classic episodes wasn’t enough to make it good. No one can reproduce the magic that Rod Serling had.

      Not even Rod Serling (re: night gallery).

      In all honesty, Twilight Zone should have been given another season to TRY — maybe learn from this season. However, Im 34 years old. I fully expect at least 3 more incarnations of “The Twilight Zone” to hit commercial TV before I die.

  5. Outer Limits
    What ever happened to the new Outer Limits? That was a pretty good show. Oh, bet someone canceled it as well… How about American Gladiators? IS that still on, always reminded me of the Running Man… which was SF :)

    Personally I think the networks have their expectations set too high. Although I haven’t watched the new TZ, I might have if it had stayed on long enough. I tend not to watch any show its first two or three seasons since they usually end up getting canceled.

    • Re: Outer Limits

      Personally I think the networks have their expectations set too high. Although I haven’t watched the new TZ, I might have if it had stayed on long enough. I tend not to watch any show its first two or three seasons since they usually end up getting canceled.

      However, shows we all wish were good but are probably better off dead can take “6 or 7 seasons to get warmed up”. Ugh.

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