Brilliant But (Almost Certainly) Cancelled: Dollhouse & Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

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I've already produced several posts, and spent many a pixel gushing about two of my favorite shows, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Dollhouse. Both are on FOX TV, both were on Friday nights, and both--it would seem--have a very good chance of getting cancelled, just as they are getting really freaking good.

Science fiction shows have a notoriously bad history at FOX, with only The X-Files and Sliders getting a lengthy run. Alien Nation, VR-5, Firefly, The Lone Gunmen, Millenium, The Adventures of Briscoe County Jr., Strange Luck. . .all on FOX, all cancelled before a decent stretch of episodes could be compiled. And that is not by any stretch a complete list. It would seem that whoever green lights series for FOX loves sci-fi, and whoever red lights shows has no affinity for the genre.

T:TSCC ought to have worked, having the immensely popular Terminator fan base built in. Apparently, I underestimated the number of Terminator fans that just want junk to blow up, and don't care about story or characters. Dollhouse has the built in uber-fandom of creator Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly) to draw upon. But FOX should consider that those shows grow on you, and take time to develop (something that was not afforded to Firefly).

Maybe I'll get lucky, and the awesome recent episodes of both series will build a little buzz, get more people onto FOX.com and Hulu, to check out these excellent programs. Both series deserve to grow beyond their current low-rated Friday night death slot. I can see T:TSCC doing well as a one or two-shot special movie on The Sci-Fi Channel SyFy, as a ratings tester for more episodes. They would certainly be better than the usual SyFy-produced movie of the week. And Dollhouse? It needs another season (and significantly more buzz from Whedon fans--hey, I'm doing my part!) to grow. Being owned by FOX, maybe it has the best shot. Crossing all crossable parts here. . .

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The Friday Night Death Slot: Sarah Connor Chronicles & Dollhouse

After its season (series?) finale, The Sarah Connor Chronicles seems to be in a gray area. The ratings for the April 10th finale brought in only 3.6 million viewers. That’s a far cry from its premiere episode that attracted almost 19 million sets of eyeballs. After a lot of conjecture, mostly from watching the ratings drop over the last two years, most feel that the show is looking at its demise.

For reasons that are beyond our own logic, even though TSCC was bringing in an average of over 11 million viewers on Mondays, Fox pretty much set the fate of the show when they moved it to Friday nights. There, in its 2nd season it received an average of 4.7 million viewers. . .

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