Bet you didn't see that one coming. Great to hear 'Lie to Me' has been renewed as well - the same goes for Chuck. Seems like I'm only going to lose one show this season (Life).
Well, you know, if they had had a decent show to replace Moonlight I might have been able to tolerate it's demise - though I find it hard to believe it had such a bad rating since it was sandwiched between Ghost Whisperer and Numb3rs. However what they replaced it with ... I think that CBS could have at least gotten another 13 eps and maybe tied up a few threads as well.
I, like many, was skeptical of Dollhouse's premise at first. I should have just trusted Joss. It really is a quite good show. It's a bit closer to true sci-fi than his previous shows, which takes some adjustment to get used to. Dollhouse is as much about taking the premise of the show and running with it as it's about the characters, while his previous work was really all about the characters with the premises of the shows just providing setting. Even so, Whedon and the show's other writers still manage to give better character development to characters who get their memories wiped every week than most shows give to their main characters.
Wow. Hard to imagine a show airing at 9 PM on Friday (Pacific) getting poor ratings. I for one was enjoying the Eliza Dushku goodness on Hulu.
Terminator is a much more difficult show to produce cheaply. The premise is much more demanding of stunt action and special effects than is Dollhouse's. I still say it would be crazy not to at least do something along the lines of a 4 hour miniseries or even just a T.V. or direct to DVD movie if Terminator isn't renewed--without some degree of resolution of the major outstanding cliffhangers and main story line, DVD sales will suffer--but I wouldn't hold my breath hoping for renewal.
I wonder how much of this decision has to do with the actress Eliza Dushku. During last year's Calgary Comic Con, Tricia Helfer mentioned she had been signed to a 'holding contract' with one of the networks (Fox I think). Basically, they hold her rights to star in a TV series, and pay her a certain amount even if they end up with nothing for her to star in. In return, she can't accept an offer to be on another show. This might be one of those cases where even if Dollhouse isn't doing as well as they'd like, maybe it would make sense for the show to keep going than paying certain stars a holding contract and having them sit there doing nothing, especially if the network plans to retain them for something different.
Joss said also, that if Fox kills this show, he's done with network TV and will go straight to working on the intarwebs like he did with Doctor Horrible. Seems that he found it to be such a better experience than working with the networks, that he'd rather do that. Given that the networks are scared shitless someone will figure out the perfect model to use the internet to make them completely obsolete, they probably want to keep Joss busy, since he's got enough of a fan base to actually pull off an "intarweb revolution."
I like Dollhouse. Don't watch either 'Lie to Me' or 'Chuck' but did love 'Blood Ties' and quite mourned its loss - although my husband swears to me that it was really an old show in reruns.....Life though I watch religiously *sigh*
I really can't see why this wouldn't work. They could make a TV show and put the commercials right into the video. The video can then be offered as a download or a bittorrent on a Thursday night or whatever. People can still take out the commercials and re-rip the video, but it would take longer, so the people that want to see it right away would have to live with the commercials.
"Lie to Me" was surprisingly refreshing different in its way of delivering a story. "Chuck" is quirky. A better show for quirkiness was "Pushing Daisies." "Blood Ties" was a vampire show from about 2-5 years ago. "Life" I just never could get around. Had too many strange bends to it.
You know Enterprise was killed not so much because of low ratings, but because of the production costs. Other shows on the CW/UPN/WB/Whatever the damn thing was called, weren't cancelled even though their ratings were just as shitty as Enterpoop's, because they had lower production costs. I don't know what the SCC production costs are, but since one tends to expect a lot of gun play in those things, I can't imagine that its cheap. Dollhouse can do lots of episodes without gun play. They could really save money by setting entire episodes within the main set (you know, the one where every one's kept "on ice" until they're needed). As Trek viewers had to suffer through at least one, or more, holodeck episodes a season, I can imagine that if Dollhouse continues, there'll be at least one ep a season which takes place entirely within the main set. Can't wait to hear the comments about that.
Well, unlike the holodeck episodes, the in-house episodes could possibly tell a story that continues the development of the series/characters. Look at what the last episode showed us about the doctor!!!!!
