Dark Matter: No Season 4? (Updated)

[Annoyed]

Signed the petition.



Who says it failed?
As far as I'm concerned, if any show makes it into a 3rd season, it's demonstrated enough viability to be considered worth sustaining.
Given that the average now is 1 season before the cancellation order is issued.

And it's not just my opinion, this has happened many times before.
Enough for not one, but two articles to exist about it.
Check that second link, there's a whole section devoted to SyFy channel.

That's why I believe cancellation of any sci-fi show is engineered, that it was made to happen despite it's popularity.
Or to spite it's popularity, because they don't want it to be successful.

If the network wants to kill a show, they can create circumstances where it will fail. ABC did this in 1979 and 1980 with Battlestar Galactica. The show was doing well in the ratings, but the bean counters killed it due to its cost.
A Letter writing campaign from the fans got a reprieve in the form of Galactica 1980. Which ABC promptly moved to what was known as "Family Viewing Hour" at the time, an attempt to avoid govt. censorship of content. So, after the first episodes, it was all child-centric stories such as "The Super Scouts" where the kids were the heroes of the stories. Needless to say, it collapsed in ratings, and was cancelled for that reason.

[Gen. Chris]

Here's my biggest issue...Syfy has worked pretty hard to bring back the goodwill they lost from fans after the loss of both the Stargate and BSG franchises (and how Alphas, WH13, and Eureka were handled). They have done a really good job getting that back, even with the cancellation of Dominion and Defiance at the same time. But this one seems to have pissed off more fans than they expected and the reaction is pretty huge online compared to what I would have expected.

Maybe they will change their minds. Weirder things have happened. And at least they didn't string us along for months like what happened with Sanctuary.

[Tilarta]

Economics 101. If it was making enough money it wouldn't be cancelled.

From my perspective, it's not about the money, it's about the distaste executives have for sci-fi.
I've seen it time and again that a sci-fi franchise will be diminished for some other genre/entertainment format, the ones they want us to watch.
It's not an impartial decision.

If they truly wanted to save money, it would have been more cost effective not to create the franchise/property in the first place.
I think they're not confident enough that they can get away with making that choice, so they support a franchise for a short term investment and then cancel it when they think they can get away with it.

If lower ratings or whatever means they can do it sooner then planned, they immediately take action.
In some of the cases I read about, the cancellation order came without warning, when the production crew was getting ready to start work on finishing the franchise.

Neither of those are "articles" really.

Those webpages are how I became aware of the situation though, I wasn't aware of these policies until I found that information.
Somewhere on those pages, it mentions that a dedicated fanbase (specifically a sci-fi audience) can compensate for the FNDS rostering.

[TOIVA]

Well, that's a bummer. I was fearing cancelllation all the more because of how little closure the finale brought...
Kinda getting to the point where showrunners should try to at least partially complete thee storylines if renewal isn't guranteed.

Either way, seems like the reason for DM being cancelled and not Killjoys is that DM (afaik) is mostly paid for by Syfy themselves while Killjoys was more of a joint effort between Syfy and some Canadians (maybe even Brits). EDIT: On that note, I seem to remember Killjoys was bringing record numbers for Canadian "Space" channel last year.

[jelgate]

That's because you are looking at the Fan's passion perspective. So many times fans want to blame the networks which leads to conspiracy. It's not hard to see Dark Matter was making enough profit in the first two seasons and not enough now. Makes a lot more sense than networks wanting shows to fail

[Ian-S]

You'd think they'd learn why people aren't watching serialised TV anymore, and it has nothing to do with the content.

You'd think they'd also learn the days of 5million viewers for their shows are long gone.

My son is 13 and doesn't watch TV at all, as he says why should he get into something when it's going to be cancelled before the ending, it would be like buying a book and the shop ripping out the final chapter before givg it to you.

[Perelandra]

Well this is extremely disappointing. And I guess we'll never get to see closure now on so many fronts. DM was one of the three shows I enjoyed on SYFY, DM , the Expanse, and 12 Monkeys, which will see it's last season in 2018.
Honestly, it's getting to where I'm not going to get invested in a show again since they get cancelled just when they're getting good.

[Perelandra]

I see the plan was for 5 seasons originally. It would have been nice if they had gotten even one more season, or even a shortened one, to wrap up some of the storylines left hanging.

[Infinite-Possibilities]

Damn, the show wasn't perfect but it really deserved a better ending than that.

I thought that was probably their best cliffhanger.

[Annoyed]

From my perspective, it's not about the money, it's about the distaste executives have for sci-fi.
I've seen it time and again that a sci-fi franchise will be diminished for some other genre/entertainment format, the ones they want us to watch.
It's not an impartial decision.

Business types have no compass aside from what makes the most money, usually in the short term. They will greenlight a proposed show on the chance it develops into a Battlestar, Star Trek or a Stargate level franchise. These are very rare. Even the best shows, such as Galactica, Haven or Eureka get 5 or 6 seasons. (In Haven's case, technically it's 6, 5A & 5B).

Sci Fi is expensive to produce, and unless a show pulls incredibly high numbers, such as Galactica did, they break even at best. After 5-6 years, they see it's not going to be a mega franchise and place their bets elsewhere. As far as I can tell, their best performer was Galactica, and even that was killed after 6 years.

That's why we see so much reality crap. It's dirt cheap to produce, and draws an audience large enough so that the overall profit on the show is higher than that on most sci fi shows.

The only way this will change is if more people start watching sci fi, and that's unlikely because many sci fi type shows such as time travel stories for example require a greater level of concentration or awareness of what has gone before and the mass audience isn't willing to make a study of TV shows.

[Perelandra]

The only shows I watch on Syfy are Dark Matter, 12 Monkeys, and the Expanse.
12 Monkeys will be gone after this last season but at least we will get a proper ending.
They could have done the same for Dark Matter, even if it was a shortened season with 5 episodes or so, couldn't they? I mean, we got left with a lot of cliffhangers that we are never gonna know the answers too. I think another poster on this forum mentioned they bit off an awful lot at the end of episode 3/13.
Five's sister, Sarah, Two's daughter, the aliens, the androids, we need closure at least.
I work most nights so I usually never get the chance to watch it when first aired.
And unlike other shows, it didn't have a second airing the same night in a later timeslot.
If I wasn't invested in the Expanse, I would quit watching SYFY once 12 Monkeys is done.
I'm not going to pick up any more new shows if we can't be guaranteed of a proper ending.

[Ian-S]

According to his blog, JM pitched a short 6 season arc to wrap the story up, by SYFY said no, the story is not the problem, basically SYFY did not own this series so did not make any money from international distribution, merchandising or streaming, so they essentially cut in in favour of their own 'original content' stuff like Killjoys, even though DM was one of their highest rated shows during 2017.

Seems a bit spiteful to me.

[DigiFluid]

Protecting your own bottom line has nothing to do with spite, it's protecting your own bottom line. Seefee is a business first and foremost; if there's money in the bank, it only makes sense to invest in what will give them the greatest ROI. It's unfortunate for us as viewers, but nobody with the slightest amount of financial sense is going to invest in something that'll give you a 150% ROI if you can put that money into something that'll earn you 500%.

[Annoyed]

That's not entirely bad thing, as one of the places they save $ is actors; most of these shows use lesser known actors who don't command high salaries. But you get to see some amazing new talent that will eventually show up again elsewhere. Roger Cross (Continuum & Dark Matter) and Emily Rose (Haven) come to mind immediately but there are many others.

[Gen. Chris]

According to his blog, JM pitched a short 6 season arc to wrap the story up, by SYFY said no, the story is not the problem, basically SYFY did not own this series so did not make any money from international distribution, merchandising or streaming, so they essentially cut in in favour of their own 'original content' stuff like Killjoys, even though DM was one of their highest rated shows during 2017.

Seems a bit spiteful to me.

It isn't spiteful...It makes sense. But what doesn't make sense is why this issue didn't cause it to be a "problem" sooner.

In a way, one could see this as more like Syfy is choosing to just not show it any more.

But at the same time, that COULD make it easier for them to find a new home, like Netflix. I won't count it out until we know for sure.

[planet_tv]

I found a link to this on Alex Mallari Jr. twitter. It's another Dark Matter petition and it's up to 17,131 supporters.

https://www.change.org/p/syfy-renew-...r-for-season-4

Edit: After I posted this 17,143 supporters.

This is a post Alex Mallari Jr. made about the petition: https://twitter.com/AlexMallariJr/st...51285080006656
My favorite reply to his post: https://twitter.com/CathyL_66/status/904453591443890177

[Tilarta]

Dark Matter is also a Canadian produced show, so that can't be a factor.

Signed the second petition as well.
The more public support we demonstrate, the better.

So it was all about greed then?
They weren't getting residuals or whatever from Dark Matter, but they did from Killjoys.
So they cancelled the one that wasn't earning them the most money?
I'm not usually an advocate of fanbase rivalries/feuds, but if this is true, I'm going to endorse this one......

I am wondering if there is a third factor overlooked here, subsidiary television stations.
I don't know about America/other countries, but in Australia, Free2Air television channels are where I first saw my major sci-fi series.

And this is what happened for TNG, DS9, Voyager, Stargate and Farscape:
All of the above show initially had prime time slots.
But as time went on, they were all pushed back to 11:00pm at night.
Sometimes a show that preceded them (a political talkback show and a football panel show) was allowed to exceed it's broadcast time by 1 hour, which resulted in the episode either being pushed back to midnight or removed from the schedule to recover the lost hour.
Eventually there was something like 3 weeks between episodes and the series were dropped from the channels completely before the final seasons even aired.
This is the point I started getting Dvds of the episodes instead of watching television.


Now for an economic based perspective, NCSoft lost a fair bit of money burying Tabula Rasa and Blackstar.
With purchasing the distribution rights, legal fees, court ordered settlement payments, loss of paid subs to Tabula Rasa, indulging in their personal vendetta against sci-fi cost them money.
So given that all the money it cost them to pursue a personal grudge, I don't believe decisions of this kind are completely unbiased.

[Ian-S]

Protecting your own bottom line has nothing to do with spite, it's protecting your own bottom line. Seefee is a business first and foremost; if there's money in the bank, it only makes sense to invest in what will give them the greatest ROI. It's unfortunate for us as viewers, but nobody with the slightest amount of financial sense is going to invest in something that'll give you a 150% ROI if you can put that money into something that'll earn you 500%.

That's not how you run a business, you don't drop a bread and butter product to back something unknown, after all that 500% ROI you quote, could just as easily be a 500% loss if you've misread the market.

[DigiFluid]

That's not how you run a business, you don't drop a bread and butter product to back something unknown, after all that 500% ROI you quote, could just as easily be a 500% loss if you've misread the market.

Killjoys is not "unknown," they've been airing it for as long as they have Dark Matter. They have three years of empirical financial data showing it's a better income stream than DM.

Both shows were likely to end within two years at most anyway (Seefee has never run a scripted drama series for more than 5 years/seasons), and there was a choice to make--fund the weak financial performer or fund the one that makes you more money. The shows may have been close in viewership numbers, but Killjoys makes Seefee more money.

We as viewers don't have to be happy about it, but it has nothing to do with Seefee being emotional or 'spiteful' or 'greedy.' It's basic financial sense and responsible investment of their resources. Simple as that.

[Annoyed]

Killjoys is not "unknown," they've been airing it for as long as they have Dark Matter. They have three years of empirical financial data showing it's a better income stream than DM.

Both shows were likely to end within two years at most anyway (Seefee has never run a scripted drama series for more than 5 years/seasons), and there was a choice to make--fund the weak financial performer or fund the one that makes you more money. The shows may have been close in viewership numbers, but Killjoys makes Seefee more money.

We as viewers don't have to be happy about it, but it has nothing to do with Seefee being emotional or 'spiteful' or 'greedy.' It's basic financial sense and responsible investment of their resources. Simple as that.

Haven ran 6 seasons, they just ran the final season as 5A & 5B, each 13 eps and a year apart.

On the other hand, maybe they were doing that as their way of saying the standard would be 5 seasons. Haven was one of their best/strongest shows.