Every
year in roughly the first two weeks of May, broadcast and cable networks
announce their yearly cancellations like clockwork. Many TV series pass unlamented and are
quickly forgotten, victims of low ratings, attrition, old age, or simply
apathy. However, some cancelled series
still have a devoted, angry fanbase ready to yell once the announcement comes,
and The Expanse was one of them. When SyFy announced its cancellation a few
weeks ago, its viewers were so upset that many of them threatened to abandon
the channel altogether. Although it can
be tempting for some commentators to dismiss such emotional responses as
“overreaction”, this cancellation fits a pattern of negative behavior in terms
of how linear networks treat their speculative fiction series that makes such
disgust by science fiction fans completely understandable.
Sci fi
series on broadcast networks often have short and unpredictable lives. The Fox network has had a long-lived reputation
for giving its series a quick cancellation, from Space: Above and Beyond in the 90s to Firefly in the early 2000s to Almost
Human in the 2010s. Even series that
manage to survive their first season have no guarantee of longevity on Fox;
witness Lucifer’s abrupt third season
cancellation, even though the writers were so certain of a renewal that they
ended the season on a cliffhanger! Most
other broadcast networks don’t even bother with sci fi, except the CW, which
typically only approves properties owned by DC Comics.
With
their emphasis on niche audiences and lower production costs, cable channels
would seem to offer a better potential for sci fi series to succeed than on
broadcast TV. Yet cable channels are
just as prone to cancelling their sci fi series as broadcast networks in favor
of “reaching out to a wider audience”.
SyFy is particularly bad about frustrating its viewership by cancelling
its series in the third season, as they had cancelled Dark Matter roughly a year before The Expanse. BBC America has
also been proven likely to cancel any sci fi series that isn’t Doctor Who, doing in Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency
at the end of its first season.
Streaming
platforms have proven to offer a strong audience platform for science fiction
series, in contrast to the linear cable and broadcast stations of today. Amazon began its streaming platform with an
adaptation of The Man in the High Castle
by Phillip K. Dick, and quickly “uncancelled” The Expanse after SyFy abandoned it, ensuring that a fourth season
would exist on Amazon Prime. Netflix has
greenlit and showcased numerous sci fi series already, ranging from the
family-friendly Lost in Space to the
dark and gritty Altered Carbon. Also encouraging is the fact that the streaming
platforms seem much less likely to do a surprise cancellation with no
resolution than the broadcast and cable networks; Netflix even went through the
trouble of funding a 2 hour ending movie for the cancelled series Sense8, an action unthinkable for
broadcast networks. This suggests that
the future of sci fi “TV” may not be in linear TV at all, but in the more
fertile grounds of streaming. Could a
better future for audiences of speculative fiction be had away from the world
of overnight ratings and early summer cancellations?
