Heroes - various rumours about cancellation

[lathany]

Note: No spoilers (although actors still in it get mentioned).

I don't know who else is still watching this (other than floralaetifica and me), but there's a new set of rumours about season five.

About a week ago, the speculation was that a 12/13 episode series would be commissioned. Now, however, the rumour is that it's cancelled. The original source, as far as I can tell, is here.

What's the history of this?

• Heroes has dropped in rating every season from an average of roughly 15 million for the first season to 5 million in season four.
• After season four, various people, including Greg Grunberg (Matt Parkman) said that season four didn't wrap up the story properly and they expected a season five. (Ali Larter (Niki/Jessica) also said, towards the end of last month, she thought it would be renewed).
• The network (NBC) and the creator (Tim Kring) had reportedly discussed it more than once and various sites suggested that Kring was keen on a 12/13 episode season and that NBC were hinting this was OK with them (which surprised me as I thought 100 episodes was a magic number for syndication and Heroes doesn't hit that for another 22 episodes... but hey, I'm no expert on the USA TV industry).
• Then today this rumour has surfaced: that NBC are very happy with their new shows and would choose Chuck (which I've never seen) over Heroes for renewal (as both are "on the bubble", ie. NBC was unsure whether to renew or not).
• As part of this rumour, there is a suggestion that Heroes will be given a proper exit with some sort of two or four hour TV movie / mini-series. And, I guess, they might also consider the thirteen episodes at that point if one of their promising new shows doesn't deliver depending on when they make the arrangements for the finish (ie. the thirteen episode thing had already been suggested as being prepared to cover cancellation).
• One nice thing about today's news is that, apparently, NBC will confirm their schedule on Sunday (and it's published Monday). So I'll know for sure by Tuesday (UK time) at the latest.

I'm disappointed about this as I really hoped, particularly given all the earlier up-beat rumours, that it would be back. And, yes, it isn't as good as it used to be, but I still find it more watchable than pretty much anything else and I'm going to miss it. The one bright spot is the continuing rumours of some sort of resolution series/mini-series or movie. I don't want an end, but a prepared one beats the hell out of the too-many shows that didn't get one.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_kent/]

The thing is, I really don't think there *is* such a thing as a 100-hour story. Even the best series are like Harry Potter novels 4-7, bloated with irrelevance and hubris. I don't think there's a single one that couldn't have been done in eight per season.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

True. You can do The Iliad in a movie, and the complete works of Shakespeare in about the same time. And yes, the observation that 90% of everything is crap means that even for good things, 90% of *that* is pointless bloat.

But I don't mean a story that cannot be told in under 100 hours, I mean a story that you do take 100 hours over, with plenty of time for diversion along the way that is entertaining and worthwhile even though it isn't critical. In particular the problem with commissioning a series and never saying whether it's the end or not, is that you cannot have a show which, taken as a whole, develops towards some kind of conclusion. Hence you doom it to stop rather than finishing, because when you do can it, it's unfinished.

Thinking about long-running series of novels: Miss Marple / Bond / etc are totally episodic. Elric has a definite conclusion, but Moorcock has the cunning plan of publishing that and getting it out of the way, then spinning out the middle bits indefinitely. Conan Doyle tried to conclude Sherlock Holmes, and wasn't allowed to. Robert Jordan died. Zelazny returned to Amber for a much weaker second quintet. George RR Martin asymptotically approaches finished as the length of each installement tends to infinity. Rowling may be many bad things, and clearly could have used editing with a pair of shears, but she did at least finish the damn thing.

[lathany.livejournal.com]

Rowling may be many bad things, and clearly could have used editing with a pair of shears, but she did at least finish the damn thing.

Yes, I often give her a lot of credit for that. I'm so grateful I never started on Jordan.