TVSquad

Hope for Threshold!?

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I haven't watched this show, but from everything I heard, it wasn't much to see. What puzzles me is how shows that are very well received like Firefly and John Doe, do not get picked up after cancellation. I can only guess that money and/or whoever holds the rights to these shows is what prevents similar deals from being made.

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So which perfectly good show will be cancelled to make way for this?

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LC, I am not exactly sure what you mean by shows that are well received. Firefly was one of the most poorly received shows ever. Most of its popularity came about well after it was cancelled. That was in large part due to the downloading of episodes on P2P networks and the later DVD release. It debuted at #66 overall, went to #78 in week 2, and was never better than #88 after that. Among shows on FOX it was the last or next to last place show in all but two weeks. Here are the overnights for the entire run, beginning to end, (4.9, 4.3, 3.9, 3.4, 3.2, 3.3, 3.1, 3.0, 3.1, 2.8, 2.9). Notice a trend? Looking only at those numbers, I think it would have been hard for any network to approve spending the money to keep it on air. That said, I have no idea what Sci-Fi is doing with Night Stalker. Maybe the success of Battlestar means that they have some extra coin to play with. That, or the success has gone to their heads and they think they can will it to success. Personally, I think they would be better off leaving Night Stalker cancelled and using that money to get the rights to show the new Doctor Who stateside.

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Maybe they're hoping Charlize Theron will guest on the show ;) I don't know. To be perfectly honest I don't like Stuart Townsend and that's mainly the reason I never checked out the show. Something about him just squicks me out.

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I think you guys are just jumping the gun on this. If I understand the Cynopsis blurb correctly, SciFi will not be producing any new episodes. They just bought the rights to air the nine existing episodes. 6 that were shown on TV and 3 that were in the can but never aired.

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SciFi is only repeating all 9 episodes so far. It makes sense since NBC Universal owns the rights to the *Kolchak the Night Stalker* television series while ABC retained the rights to the original *The Night Stalker* and *The Night Strangler* tv movies that spawned the spin-off television series. Perhaps this means that SciFi might actually show the telefilms as well. Either way, I suggested this ages ago on SciFi's message boards about coming to an agreement to repeat *Night Stalker* a few weeks after ABC debuted a new episode, much as SciFi is doing with sister company NBC's *Surface*. Only problem is they obviously took the suggestion far too late.

In truth, this only means the viewers will be treated to two extra episodes that have not been seen since the iTunes Store has the 7th (and cliffhanger ending) episode that never aired on ABC.

Here's the SciFi announcement:

http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire2005/index.php?category=0&id=33642

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