I think partly all the ideas for this phase have been used up. It's been a lot female fighters lately, Buffy, Witchblade, Alias, Birds of Prey, Dark Angel. It's been done to death.

In the 70s there were loads of "cop" shows from Kojak to Starsky and Hutch to Banacek to Columbo it moves in cycles,

In the 80's it was general action shows, a lot had a real technological slant, Knight Rider, Street Hawk, Airwolf and Blue Thunder all spring to mind.

I think it's all been done, and only the best of the shows will survive, and even those not for too much longer, hopefully we'll get some great new shows to replace the "good" ones that are due to expire. I think that there's a definite market for it, but that TV execs have to realise that it's not going to get the HUGE viewing figures that other types of shows get, but that the fans are usually incredibly loyal and consistant in their viewing. Hopefully they'll consider us a "viewing investment plan" rather than going after another "get rich quick" idea

Unfortunatly when someone does try to do something different the executives tend to shoot it down in flames before its even had a chance.

There is some trully dire Scifi on at the moment thats getting huge rating figures and its basically rubbish, unfortunatly a lot of Tv usually appeals to audiences who just want to sit down a not have to think too hard.

(Edited by JtB 10/03/2003 22:19)

You think theres some dire stuff now, a LOT of those 30 shows were tat and best seen the back of

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by JtB
Unfortunatly when someone does try to do something different the executives tend to shoot it down in flames before its even had a chance.

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I agree with this, a lot of good shows like Good vs Evil and Nowhere Man were shot down in their first series a number of years back.

Now the same is happening to Odyssey5 and Birds of Prey (ok I know little about BoP but I heard good reviews about it)

In the same queue you have programmes that were hitting or suppassing their viewing power with Farscape being cancelled at series 4 and Dark Angel being hastily finished at the end of series 2 when it was reaching its strongest.

Or is the problem that good existing scifi is being pushed out for newer scifi (I'm thinking here of Firefly pushing out Dark Angel) And lets face it, when we *do* get scifi series over here in the UK half the time sky don't seem to know WHEN to show it, or start showing it and then moving the time slots.

There are so many runs of star trek doing the regular rounds - I mean will someone please explain to me why a primetime slot on skyone on Monday's at 9pm is still resorting to showing Voyager. When shows like Fastlane (not strictly scifi ok you have me there!) are now being dragged from a prime Friday night viewing to a stupid midnight slot on a Saturday night from next week?

And don't even get me started on the mystery disappearing last 2 episodes of Odyssey 5 that sky mislaid!