With the news that the ‘Constantine’ TV show has officially been deemed dead by its producer, we may have the first cancellation of the post-Avengers small-screen superhero wave. (At least, the first one *I* can remember, but feel free to correct me if I missed one?) It’s something of a shame, in that the adaptation was relatively faithful to the founding father of Vertigo that it brought to life, and could easily have been even more so away from the boundaries and vagaries of network broadcasting. Still, as a long-term comics fan, cancellation is a common tale (remember, even the X-Men were cancelled due to sales in the 1970s) and there are any number of heart-breaking cancellations to recall, leading us to today’s Hellblazing query…
The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) still keenly feels the loss of the “Legion of Super-Heroes” cartoon, as flawed as parts of it were, asking: Which series-cut-short represents the saddest cancellation of all to you?
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When I was in high school, I was a pretty big fan of a show called Space: Above and Beyond.
It was cut short on a huge cliffhanger, which stung more than a bit.
There’s always Firefly, but I think that’s too easy of an answer.
I ALMOST listed Firefly, but since it did get a movie revival, I didn’t really think it counted when there are many series like Space: Above and Beyond that never got that chance.
So many that I can’t list them all, but I’ll try to list a few.
“Green Lantern: The Animated Series” and “Young Justice” definitely left me sad. Sadly, I didn’t really get into YJ until it was about midway through the second seasons, but once I did I realized it was amazing. It easily could have been the birth of a new generation of DCAU if it hadn’t been cut short. And while GL:TAS wrapped up fairly nicely (fewer loose ends than most cancelled series), it still felt like a punch in the gut. It was GL the way GL should be, as a sort of sci-fi space adventure rather than yet another superhero story.
While I’ve enjoyed “Star Wars Rebels”, I’m still fairly sad that Clone Wars was cancelled. While they have released several unfinished episodes in one form or another (storyboards, a novel and a comic series), I’m really sad that we will never see some of the other stories that were in the works. I can only hope that Rebels will eventually follow suit and produce some stand-alone episodes that don’t feature the main cast and focus on other characters, like the Clone Wars episodes that focused on individual Clone Troopers or the Nightsisters.
In non-TV series, I’m still very, very disappointed that the “Star Wars Imperial Commando 2” novel never saw the light of day. I can understand the reasoning behind it from the writer’s side and the changes to Mandalorian lore from what had been established, but I’m still feeling a sense of not having closure on what happened to Clan Skirata. There is a brief outline on the author’s site about what she had planned, but it isn’t quite the same as getting the full story wrapped up.
In a different way, I’m quite sad that the “Stargate SG-1” franchise was shelved. They were in pre-production of a couple of direct-to-video/made for TV SG-1/Atlantis movies that would have also wrapped up a few loose ends, such as the cliffhanger of Stargate Universe.
And there are far too many other sci-fi, fantasy or other TV series that were cut short to list. For every series like GL:TAS or “Forever Knight” that at least tried to wrap things up, we have many more like “Terra Nova” that left off with so many unresolved issues or storylines that we never saw through.
In no particular order:
Mission Hill-A great animated show cut down before it’s time. The DVD commentaries are so sad to listen to all of the planning they had for the characters’ futures.
Undergrads- Similarly could have gone on another season or three.
Clone High-I need at least a direct-to-dvd finale for closure.
Duckman-The fact there is no resolution to that cliffhanger still makes me sad to this day. I still say this is Jason Alexander at his best.
Mission Hill *is* a tragedy, especially given how good that series was in its short run…
I third that!
Kyle XY, for me. What was worse is that they ended the series, the entire series, on a cliffhanger, a lot of really big things just left up in the air, and that just felt really hurtful to me. Like, “Oh, you won’t let us have another season? WELL NOBODY GETS AN ENDING THEN.”
Spectacular (spectacular) Spider-Man.
That series was one of the best animated versions of the web-head I’ve ever seen. The writing was clever, the animation was fluid, and Josh Keaton was the perfect voice for Peter Parker/Spider-Man. But despite all that, it was cancelled after only two seasons so Disney could cash in with the so-called “Ultimate Spider-Man…a cartoon that pales in comparison.
I still want to know what was up with Norman Osborn’s wife (why was she always sitting silently by, with that blank stare?), and how they might have handled Hobgoblin or Carnage…Sadly, we’ll never know.
Pretty much any good series on the channel formerly known as Sci-Fi: Farscape, Stargate Atlantis, Eureka, Dresden Files and Warehouse 13. I didn’t list SG1 because it had 10 years and it limped along its last season.
This is similar to my upset that they shelved the SG-1 franchise. The actual SG-1 series got pretty much wrapped up. Not as clean as I’d have liked, but the movies that came after did a nice job of wrapping up some of the loose ends. But I really wanted to see the SG-1/Atlantis movie that was in the works, as well as getting some closure on what happened after the cliffhanger of SGU.
I’ll always want more Farscape. Even though I thought “The Peacekeeper Wars” was a good ending to that particular story, and they have made some comic series that continued the story, I think that setting still has a lot of untapped potential.
I do think Eureka and Warehouse 13 both wrapped up nicely, but I was really, really hoping that Syfy would make a few spin-off movies like they did with Stargate SG-1. I also hoped to see some closure on “Alphas” since it was part of that shared universe.