Fan-funded mobile billboard promoting The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

Fox canceled Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles almost six months ago now, but fans have refused to give up.  If you’re a fan of the show and haven’t added your weight to the various campaigns designed to convince Fox to overturn their decision, then let me suggest now’s the time to join the party.

Whilst some people might tell you fan campaigns don’t help, I’m going to tell you that those people are flat out wrong.  Fan campaigns don’t always help, but then most campaigns aren’t underpinned by the same level of dedication and energy that TSCC fans are proving they have.  And make no mistake, the ‘Save the Sarah Connor Chronicles’ movement is making waves.

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Music composers Bear McCreary (Battlestar Galactica) and Nathan Barr (True Blood) will be signing CD’s this Sunday, September 13th, at 1pm at Dark Delicacies in Burbank, CA.

McCreary will be signing CD’s from Battlestar Galactica, Caprica, Eureka, Rest Stop: Don’t Look Back, and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

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Thomas Dekker as John Connor in 'Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles'

If you’re a fan of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles here is the best news you’ve heard all year.

Although the show was cancelled by Fox back in May, Thomas Dekker (aka John Connor) has just confirmed that the fight to keep the show alive is far from over, and that the real possibility exists that it may continue in the format of a made-for-dvd movie.

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Summer Glau Cast in 'Dollhouse'

It’s been rumored for some time but now it’s official.

Summer Glau (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles / Firefly) is on her way to join the cast of Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse.

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Back in May Fox entertainment president Kevin Reilly announced the cancelation of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles by saying that “ultimately we made the bet on Dollhouse for the night…so that’s it for Terminator.”

If only Fox had asked Dollhouse creator Joss Whedon what he thought they should bet on.

Whilst on the red carpet of the Syfy/Entertainment Weekly party at San Diego Comic-Con last month Whedon told Michael Hinman from Airlock Alpha that if it had been up to him he would have picked Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

“I am an apocalyptic future nut. I love that stuff,” he said. “I can never get enough of it. If they had put a gun to my head and told me to choose, I would say renew Sarah Connor because I love that show.”

And I thought the news that Whedon might cast Summer Glau in Dollhouse was bittersweet…

Dollhouse returns on Friday September 25.

Lost, Battlestar Galactica & True Blood Are Emmy Nominees

The nominees list for the 61st Primetime Emmy Awards has been announced and there are quite a few sci-fi and fantasy shows in the mix this time around.

Battlestar Galactica was the clear winner with 6 nominations including Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series, Outstanding Sound Editing for a Series, and Outstanding Special Visual Effects for a Series.

Lost came next with 5 nominations including, notably, Outstanding Drama Series and Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series (Michael Emerson).

True Blood was also successful in drawing 3 nominations.

It is pleasing to see highly underrated Legend of the Seeker is also up for an Emmy care of Joe LoDuca’s music, although one of the most notable snubs of the year has to be a lack of a nomination to Bear McCreary for his music to Battlestar Galactica. McCreary’s music to Daybreak Parts 1 & 2 was nothing short of outstanding and considering all of Battlestar’s nominations came from Daybreak Pt 2 (the series finale) it is a shame not to see Bear McCreary’s name in the nominee list.

Additional nominees include Fringe, Heroes, Smallville, Life on Mars, Sanctuary and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

Below is a modified Emmy Nominee list with all categories and nominees removed that are not from the sci-fi and fantasy genre for ease of reading.

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Whilst promoting Terminator: The Machinima series James Middleton, the executive producer of Fox’s now cancelled Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, has raised hopes that the story may continue.

Without confirming any specific plans about how the story might continue, Middleton recently spoke to Sci Fi Wire with words that clearly echo the possibility that the events of the series finale may not end there.

“I feel like I don’t want to raise anybody’s expectations about what’s going to happen with those characters,” Middleton said. “I can tell you that I love those characters. I use a business term, and it sort of belies my emotional investment in these characters, but they are a great franchise asset. My passion for them is not diminished at all, and I’ll just leave it at that.”

Whilst many people regard the TSCC finale as a reasonable story closer, I’m one of the many more who don’t.  From my perspective the first two season’s set the scene, whilst the climactic moment of the finale teased a whole new range of questions and, more importantly, unveiled a new and creative direction for both the Terminator story and the evolution of its characters.

“It was a great way for us to end the season, but we would have liked to have continued. There’s no doubt about it,” Middleton said.

“If we had gotten a third season, I should say, we definitely would have explored what it all meant, but I think there’s a great moment where we see Allison [Summer Glau], and John’s look to her is very meaningful. I think that also would have been a great thing in terms of dramatic potential. Like I said, the show has ended, and it would all be speculation, and I really don’t want to raise anybody’s expectations.”

Although Middleton is careful to place caution in his words to prevent letting fans down with unrealistic expectations, his message is clear – there were and still are intentions to take the story beyond the season finale.  Perhaps the series might be picked up by a new network (SyFy?) or perhaps the story will be developed in the form of a novel or comic – all of which is speculation for now.

Yet, despite the truth that sometimes even the best intentions lead nowhere, this is the first time a glimmer of hope has surfaced since the series was canceled.  I for one will look forward to any medium in which we might be granted our desire to see where the story goes.

The fight to save Sarah Connor is still on.

In response to Fox axing Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles series writer and executive producer Josh Friedman has issued a personal statement.  Although we’d like to argue otherwise the cancellation of TSCC really impacts no one more than Friedman so rather than paraphrase, here’s his entire unedited statement:

From Fox’s Terminator Blog:

By now most of you have heard the news that T:SCC is cancelled. I received a call earlier today from Peter Roth at Warner Bros. and I appreciate both his personal and professional support throughout this show’s life. I know a lot of you are angry about the cancellation and want to find a place to direct your anger and to that I say do yourself a favor and find a way to move past it. Every network wants a big fat hit, especially one with a brand name behind it, and Fox was/is no different. They supported the show, they supported my vision of the show, and they gave it plenty of time to find an audience.

And what an audience we found: passionate, intelligent, kind of nuts in a good way. My only complaint about the T:SCC fans is that there aren’t ten million of them. But I prefer to be happy for the ones we had instead of lamenting the ones we didn’t.

Good shows are cancelled every year; smart shows, worthy shows, shows which move their viewers to write blogs and have viewing parties and create action figures and bury executives’ email accounts under thousands of messages. I miss Deadwood and The Wire and Arrested Development but thank God that I still have Rescue Me and The Office and a recently renewed Party Down written by ex-T:SCC writer John Enbom.

Bad shows are cancelled, too. And certainly there are those who did not like what we did and had their own vision for what a Terminator TV show should be. It’s easy to look at low ratings or cancellation as “failure” and for those who believe we’ve gone about this all wrong I’m sure today’s news will only serve to confirm a world view that I would never try to change. We’ve written the show as best we can, executed it to the best of our abilities, and sent it out in the world knowing that we worked out asses off to do something that wouldn’t be a waste of anybody’s forty-three minutes.

Thanks to a brave and talented cast, a feature crew working on a TV schedule, and everyone else who I could list but won’t because they know who they are. Mostly I’d like to thank those of you who’ve supported us and fought for us and given up hours of your life to watch our show. At the end of the day, that’s what it’s about. The watching.

Hope we do it again soon.

So do we Josh, so do we.

On that note, whilst we’ve heard Warner Bros. aren’t going to shop the series around, we’re hoping that somehow, someway, a network realizes the mistake Fox has made and works with Warner to take over where Fox left off.  Syfy, are you guys listening?  Battlestar Galactica never drew the crowd that Terminator does…think about that.  A call to Warner can’t hurt, can it?

Or maybe we’re just clinging to straws…

“[Sarah Connor] has completed its run,” Fox entertainment president Kevin Reilly said at a press conference to officially confirm the cancellation of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

“I think it had a nice little run. It was a good show,” he added.

Not good enough apparently.

Reilly explained to the press that a part of the issue was that they saw Terminator’s ratings tailing off which of course is only true for the first half of season two because in the latter half of the season TSCC’s ratings were on the rise.   In contrast Dollhouse’s ratings were sliding down rapidly in an avalance of consistent viewer abandonment.

At first he says that it wasn’t “an either/or [Dollhouse]“ decision only to effectively contradict himself later by saying, “…ultimately we made the bet on Dollhouse for the night…so that’s it for Terminator.”

A bet on one show IS an either/or decision over another.

But if you think that wasn’t enough of a kick in the teeth for loyal fans who have stuck by the series for two years, he adds:  “We make no apologies. We gave it a lot of support and some consistent scheduling. We tried and thought it was time to move on.”

We make no apologies?  Consistent scheduling?  Prior to moving TSCC to the Friday death slot the series was achieving an average of 5-6 million viewers.  Upon Fox rescheduling to Friday nights that dropped by roughly 1.5 million viewers.  There is simply no way Fox can credit themselves with offering TSCC good scheduling.

When all is said and done it is the “we make no apologies” statement that takes the cake.   It is uncalled for, not only to those (like us) who have invested time and energy watching the series, writing about the series, promoting it freely for Fox, and ultimately campaigning for its renewal, but also to the cast and crew who have done a sterling job.

Since Dollhouse was a bet over Terminator, we’ll take that bet and raise you a number of once dedicated but now utterly lost viewers.

UPDATE:  We updated this post as a result of twitter users reminding us not to buy into the hype of what is and what is not official.  Originally this post read that the series had been cancelled officially, which isn’t the case.  We’ve heard, as have other news sites, that Fox has already drawn up the official cancellation statement but hasn’t issued it yet.  In our dismay we jumped on the cancellation bandwagon.  But as many twitter users suggest, hope is not lost until that official statement is issued.  Who knows, perhaps it will be torn up by the end of the day. We’re hoping so and decided to amend this article to reflect it.

Fox has officially cancelled Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles - at least, that’s the unofficial word.

If that news wasn’t bad enough, the other unofficial word is that Warner Bros. are also giving up on shopping the series to other potential networks.

Terminator as a television series is now dead – if we are to believe EW / TV by the numbers and a host of other similar sites.

But we don’t want to believe it, so for now, we won’t.

So, tell us what you think.