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Message: <blockquote data-quote="John Crichton" data-source="post: 1829338" data-attributes="member: 4779">Good question.  It has never done the numbers that the WB wanted as far as I know.  However, I'm not aware of any rumors about cancellations.  Not that I am in-the-know, but I do pay very close attention to these things. After looking at the article again, I do think that the author is coming from the money/executive/network side of things a bit much.  But I'm sure there are little kernels of truth in his words.  Maybe the producers of these shows do demand alot or too much.  And I'm sure there is much debate over budgets, salaries and the like.  However, to blame it all on "The Roddenberry Principle" seems like stretching.  It's the job of the people making the shows to get as much as they can. I've stated before the complexity of the Farscape situation.  Chimera had much of it when he points the finger at bad advertising, a crummy time slot and just general lack of support for the show.  What didn't help was that the weakest Farscape eps since the middle of season 1 happened at the time of the renegotiations (beginning of the aired season 4 eps). Additionally, the end of season 3 took FOREVER to get to air.  Farscape fans were used to waiting a fair amount of time to see new eps but it was to the point where a friend of mine couldn't even remember the plotline (which was some of the best TV ever made).  4 months was the typical wait time for new eps which usally came before the end of the season and then the next season would start quickly (<a href="http://epguides.com/farscape/" target="_blank">http://epguides.com/farscape/</a>). As you can see it took over 7 months to get the last 4 eps of season 3 and then we had to wait another 6 weeks to get season 4 kickin (no pun intended).  I thought it was a good idea to put the season break in the middle of season 4 and let the last 11 eps play straight through.  The break was a little more than 4 months but it seemed longer because the season 3 and start of season 4 breaks.  But the worst of it was: NO RERUNS.  Now, I had all the eps TiVo'ed so I didn't care but I had friends who were trying to catch up and couldn't. So, yeah, the shooting schedule and simply the amount of time it took to film the whole thing played a part in the delays but the beauty of cable is that the network can make their own schedule.  I think it also bears mentioning that originally SFC tried to keep Farscape away from the Big 4's seasonal schedule.  Meaning that they would run the new eps over the summer, during lulls (January/February) and never even came close to running a new ep during sweeps.  Please note that the new eps aired after the announcement of the cancellation bucked this trend (starting with ep 4-12: Kansas).  Running against non-cable network shows, in the Friday Night Deathslot, with little advertising and no reruns to help get people back on board or newbies caught up compounded things.  It certainly seemed like SFC gave up to us, the fans. Some of the blame needs to be put on Kemper and the production team for the delays and not being a little more flexible on the budget.  Eps 4-10 were a little weak and scattered compared to other Farscape eps and this was seemingly during the critical re-negotiation phase.  So, when the rockin' main storyline wasn't being advanced, the ratings took a hit.  That is the fault of the production team, not the network. So, even if all the things KJB said were true, the network still didn't help out at all to try and get more fans interested or keep fans watching.  Compare this to early on when SFC would run Saturday marathons of nearly entire seasons or at least the plot-critical eps a few times a year.  This is how I got on board.  I didn't start watching until season 2.  But the enough of the eps were re-run that I was able to catch most of what I needed to follow season 2 and on. So saying that the producers cost us 13 eps and/or multiple mini-series doesn't hold a ton of weight with me.  Especially since there was a contract in place for a full season 5 which is what the producers counted on when they did the story for season 4.  We'll probably never really know what happened during those negotiations or what the specifics of the original contract were but to say it was all "The Roddenberry Principle" is seems like blame deflecting and to a lesser extent, some bitterness. It was interesting to get a different take, I must say.  I just think that it was a little extreme and one-sided.</blockquote>

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