Riceball
Master Member
Yes, because that worked out so well for Stargate and Babylon 5...
SG-1 Seasons 9 and 10 were basically rehashes of the same problem, and don't even get me started on the B5 Telepath War...
Well, both SG-1 & Atlantis ran on the same basic premise of being under threat by some vastly superior alien race and neither were written with a definite end game in mind outside of the defeat of the big bad but as far as I know they never knew when that was going to happen. They ran like pretty much any other show on TV then and now, run until the network decides to cancel you.
As for B5, the whole telepath war thing was something they had to sort of create at the last minute when their 5 year plan was threatened by cancellation during season 4. That whole story line was really filler since they had to wrap up everything a season early which left them with nothing for season 5.
What I'm talking about is akin to B5 where they have a plan for only a set number of seasons and they're given a guarantee of that many seasons by the network. However, if the show is proving to extremely successful then the network would have the option of continuing the show beyond the original promised number of seasons if the show's producers are given notice well before the last season has even begun pre-production and are promised another set number of seasons for the extension. Basically follow the Japanese anime and British TV methodology of shows only running for a limited number of seasons that would help avoid needless seasons of treading water before rushing into the end game because they just learned that the upcoming season will be their last.