This really is a sad day for some sci-fi fans – Stargate Universe, the latest in the long-running franchise, will not be renewed for a third season and will end in Spring 2011. Having debuted on cinema screens with the movie Stargate, its first TV spin-off, SG-1, began in 1997 and later spawned the show Stargate Atlantis. The former ended and the latter was canceled in favour of SGU. Now in its second season, the show has suffered from declining ratings since it began, with episodes garnering under a million viewers on SyFy this year.
We’re obviously quite sad – though a slow-burner and populated by characters who are (intentionally) harder to like than their SG-1 and SGA forebears, SGU found it feet in the latter half of season one and has produced some cracking hours of TV in its second year. To anyone who enjoyed previous Stargate entries but not Universe, I’m sure it’s still sad news. After all, this is a franchise that has told almost every kind of story imaginable over 340+ episodes – to think it won’t be on the air in any form as of next season is a tad heartbreaking.
Still, at least SGU ran longer than Firefly.
