Hi all. My name is Ed Gross and I'm the author of the oral history Voices from Krypton and co-author of Superman: The Definitive History. My day job is as Senior Entertainment Editor at Woman's World, and this look at George Reeves is an excerpt from a profile piece I had done on him. I hope you enjoy and welcome your feedback. Thanks.
Something unusual is happening in sci-fi right now. Three of the genre’s biggest franchises — Star Trek, Doctor Who and Stargate — all find themselves in limbo at the same time.
Star Trek has slowed after years of rapid expansion across Paramount+. Doctor Who is being reassessed following its recent Disney+ era. And Stargate, after finally appearing poised for a comeback, has once again been put on hold. Different studios and circumstances, but the same strange reality.
Of course, this isn’t new territory for these franchises. Star Trek fans once waited 10 years to see Kirk and the Enterprise return after the original series ended in 1969, with that drought ending in 1979’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture; Doctor Who endured its “Wilderness Years” between 1989 and 2005 and Stargate has now been off the air for 15 years. So what’s going on?
Suggests Doctor Who historian Richard D. Carrier, “Things are more expensive now anyway and the standard of television that people demand since the streaming era has come in… that’s the expectation, especially for a science fantasy show.”
But bigger budgets don’t necessarily mean better storytelling. “Some of the best Doctor Who stories, even in the modern era, have been the cheapest ones,” Carrier notes. “Sometimes the necessity to do something under certain constraints actually forces you to be creative.”
That feels especially relevant to Star Trek. The original series became iconic despite limited budgets and often primitive effects. What mattered was the writing, the characters and the ideas, and the same may apply now across legacy franchises.
Darren Sumner of GateWorld believes studios may be drawing the wrong conclusions about what audiences want. “You look at what’s been happening with major franchises like Star Trek and Star Wars and Doctor Who,” he says. “The newer shows and films certainly have their audience. They’ve found viewers, but apparently it’s not enough for whatever studio is producing those projects.
“It feels like they’re deciding that the problem is the audience,” he adds, “when, in fact, my opinion is that the problem is, by and large, with the content.”
Carrier sees a similar issue with Doctor Who. “They relied a bit too much on that fan-service kind of approach,” he says. “It starts to eat its own tail a little bit when you get too self-referential. But in a way, I think the pause is probably a good thing.”
And he points to Star Trek as proof. “Star Trek had to go away and come back again and be successful.”
Concurring with that point is writer and fan Jacqueline Lichtenberg, one of the main players in the letter writing campaign that resulted in the original Star Trek being renewed by NBC for a third season. “The concession from NBC was grudging,” she notes, “and despite Roddenberry’s best efforts, the third season bombed But thanks to that letter-writing campaign, Star Trek went into syndication and then — only then — the audience exploded.”
Which may be the real takeaway. None of these franchises feel finished as they’ve survived long absences before and reinvented themselves. For now, the fans have to wait, but as Carrier jokingly puts it, “People aren’t very patient with these things, are they?”
If you’re interested in an expanded version of this article, just do a search for the headline “Why 3 of the Best Sci-Fi TV Shows Are Suddenly on Hold: ‘Star Trek,’ ‘Doctor Who’ and ‘Stargate’ along with womansworld .com.
Which sci fi and fantasy shows do you consider to be the worst of all time?
I would definitely lump Lost in Space and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea in there because both descended into absurdist camp fests. LiS at least verged on so-bad-its-good territory, Voyage not so much.
Another would be Space: 1999 because of its very questionable science and its poor second season that basically turned into monster-of-the week running loose on Moonbase Alpha as an excuse for Maya to morph into another monster to fight it.
Another would be Cleopatra 2525 which was certainly a so-bad-it-is-really-bad show as well as Andromeda which descended into that territory after a semi-promising first season.
Yet another is Galactica: 1980 which attempted to revive Battlestar: Galactica after ABC cancelled it to soon, but delivered basically a kids' show.
Which other sci and fantasy shows to you consider to be among the worst of all time?
We all know that most TV spinoff series are reparted in three categories: the ones which are set in the same spacetime as their mother series, the ones who serve as their sequels and the ones which are their prequels. But there's also a 4th category of TV spinoffs : the ones who found their origins in successful movies. Studios like Disney and Dreamworks did a lot of animated series based on their hit animated movies such as The 7D (spunoff from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs), TaleSpin, Jungle Cubs (both spunoff from The Jungle Book), The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, The Lion King's Timon and Pumbaa, The Lion Guard (both spunoff from The Lion King), Hercules, Lilo & Stitch, Dragons, The Penguins of Madagascar, Aliens VS. Monsters, Kung Fu Panda or The Croods. Some live-action movies also got TV spinoffs as animated or live-action productions, such as Godzilla, Lethal Weapon, The Karate Kid franchise, the Fast and Furious franchise, Beethoven, Turner & Hooch, Stuart Little or Training Day. Have you got some other examples of TV spinoffs from movies? Tell me in the comments.