Board Thread:News and Announcements/@comment-262546-20140530032607/@comment-1298029-20141220123757

Well, abstracting from the fan viewpoint for a while: This may be stating the obvious, but TV and films do not get made without money (a lot of money, sums that you really can't raise on Kickstarter -- SG-1 was $1M/episode, I think). The people who provide that money generally care most about getting a return on their investment; art takes second place, if that (depends on the investor, I guess). That means that a TV show is pretty much down for the count once it stops providing that return (ratings indicating how many people watch, which interests the owners for the sole reason of those people also watching their channel's ads, which are the sole thing ultimately generating any revenue for TV -- kinda sad, but that's the way it currently is). Either you're in the black, or in the red.

Any sci-fi show has it hard in the black (black = in profit; red = in loss), as in the grand scheme of things it is niche entertainment (things like HIMYM, Days of Our Lives, NCIS, or House, MD are the mainstream), viewed by a segment of fans which may be dedicated and loving (guess how much the bankrollers care about that -- you've got three tries and 'very' is not the answer), but is ultimately small. Show creators may love the fans right back (often they do), but they do not crap money, either, and fan mail to the studio is worth approximately its weight in recycled paper in the eyes of the people who do have the money (because the money is usually their business, so it's not because of demonic possession or somesuch that they are 'heartless').

I don't really blame the bankrollers; if anything I blame the system which subordinates art to profit. But the problem, as always, is finding a better system -- it's easy to criticize, but actually finding a way to have your cake and eat it too may be difficult. At least the current system occasionally produces something good, and most of the produce is entertaining, if in some cases only mildly. And suggesting we all join the Communist International out of protest is obviously a bad idea. Truth is, if we want to have the quality level in entertainment we enjoy now, a lot of money is needed, and it has to come from somewhere. So unless Americans want to finance better entertainment for everybody from public money (i.e., their taxes), this is what we got.

Now, the people making the reboot are not looking to serve existing fans. Rather, they are looking to kick some more money from what from their POV is an asset that no longer generates enough revenue (let's face it, SG ratings had been dropping since Season 8 of SG-1, and throughout the last three seasons of ATL, and the low-budget, low-profile, direct-to-oblivion movies didn't really help, either). They don't really care that most reboots only succeed in burying the franchise even more than it was (usually by alienating the few faithful fans who remain -- cf. Abrams Trek) -- all they want is a one-time profitable venture that extracts the remaining earnings potential from the idea (even if that's at the cost of destroying any carrying value that may still be left in the fictional universe). There are few reboots that would match, not to mention surpass, the artistic quality of the source material (a nice exception is e.g. the recent Man of Steel (Superman reboot), which I think most people liked better than the original Superman movies -- then again, the bar was set pretty low there, as those movies were hardly the brigtest star on the walk of fame, so to speak).

The watchword of reboots is appeal to a wider audience, which is usually ExecuSpeak for dumbing down (based on the die-hard trope of Viewers are Morons) or for Younger and Edgier, or, God forbid, both. An uncharitable way of interpreting the intentions behind this approach is screw you, hardcore fans. It is important to keep in mind that nobody among the people willing to finance a reboot is interested in answering your -- the old fans' -- questions about and pandering to your hopes for the continuation of existing stories. Why? Because those stories, in the money-holders' eyes, had their shot at making money for their owners, and they are no longer doing that. Equally, y'all as SG fans are no longer providing enough revenue for anyone to be interested in making SG TV that you want to see. It's somewhat depressing, but that's the way the dice falls, I'm afraid.

As I said, sci-fi fans have it hard because there are inherently few people in any population interested enough to keep a sci-fi franchise going (with regard to that, I think SG's 13-year run is very impressive). The TV market is commonly viewed as shows competing for time on TV (of which there's 24 hours in any given day, no less, no more -- a perfectly limited resource (plus all the timeslot attractiveness divisions, of course)). But, since shows generate revenue by having people watch them (and buy TotalGym machines from Chuck (not Campbell) and whatnot as a result, the owners hope), you can just as well view the TV market as competition between the shows' audiences for having their particular entertainment desires made into TV. And in that competition, the dedicated but small niches of sci-fi fans compete against the teeming millions who want more HIMYM, more House, more DOOL, more Esmeralda, more edgy HBO originals, etc. When you consider that, it's hardly surprising that you never quite get satisfied as a sci-fi fan. :-/

Now, I'm not saying I detest the very idea of an SG reboot (especially since I made an extensive case above for why we'll never see more of the current Stargate), but I'm not holding my breath. On the other hand, I'm very positive about the novel activity in the SG universe. Novels are much less expensive, and FU's (Fictional Universes :-) ) that went belly-up on-screen (such as Trek, which lasted 40 years but then, after years of declining ratings on Voyager and the subsequent Enterprise not providing the revitalization that was hoped for, was pretty much declared crashed and had to be Abramsed... sorry, rebooted) have done well in novels in the past (there are about 550 Trek novels now and about two dozen more are published each year). I especially liked the SGA Legacy series -- I think it's surprisingly intelligent writing in an FU that, IMO, badly needs some solid material if it is to have a foundation to continue from, even be it only in the form of novels.