State Of The Stream: More Sci-Fi Coverage, Fewer Vampires

There will be lots more science fiction, and a lot fewer vampires, in SciFi Stream’s future.

This past year has seen a huge explosion of the number of genre shows on broadcast and cable networks, as well as in active development. Now online genre shows have appeared on the horizon, starting with Amazon’s The After and Netflix’s Sense8 and Daredevil. So, at the end of the 2013-2014 broadcast season, we’re making plans for which shows we will be covering (and how extensively) next season, and we’re planning for some significant changes here on the site!

The challenge is that there are some 40 active shows to cover in the broadly-defined genre of “speculative fiction” — that’s science fiction, fantasy, comic books and superheroes, and horror. We don’t have that much manpower, and you the reader clearly aren’t interested in every genre show that’s on television. (Check out the list of shows that got the most traffic in 2013.) SciFi Stream needs to fine-tune just where to direct our efforts.

So What’s the Plan?

Starting this summer SciFi Stream will be covering fewer shows, and those we do cover will be covered more deeply — more news stories, episode info, discussion forums, photos, etc. Not every show on the site will get the same depth of treatment, but we’re cutting loose those shows that most of our readers aren’t interested in.

Where do we draw that line? First, we’re taking the site back to a more strict definition of “science fiction” — shows with a premise rooted in things like space, technology, alien life forms, futurism, and time travel, all as explorations of the human condition. Second, we’ll cover most of the superhero / comic book genre — shows like Arrow, The Flash, and Gotham. On top of that we’ll continue to cover a handful of carefully chosen shows in the fantasy genre — swords and sorcery shows like Game of Thrones, and adventure fantasy like The Librarians.

What we are cutting is the horror genre, including most monster-based shows. Since SciFi Stream is a spin-off of the Stargate site GateWorld, our readers have never been all that big on young-adult vampire and werewolf series. (Your humble editor also just doesn’t watch them, which makes them rather hard to write about.)

There are exceptions. Some monster-based fantasy shows remain popular with our readers — such as Grimm, which will continue to have its episode guide maintained. And The Walking Dead lies squarely in the horror genre, but it’s so good that we’re not only continuing to cover it … we’re counting the days till it returns in October.

Here’s the Rub!

Many, many, many new shows on television these days come with a bit of a fantastical or supernatural twist to their premise … though, week-by-week, that premise turns out to not necessarily drive the show all that much. Person of Interest (a personal favorite) is a weekly procedural, built on top of the mythology of emerging artificial intelligence that seems to be growing more sci-fi-ish each season. Resurrection is about dead people coming back without explanation, though week-by-week it plays out like a pretty typical small-town family drama. The premise for Starz’s Outlander is set up by a time-travel event … but just how sci-fi is the show after that? And the new ABC show Forever looks to be a forensic procedural whose lead character happens to be immortal.

It’s hard to figure out just how sci-fi a new show is going to be until it has premiered, or even until it has aired a few episodes.

These sorts of shows make for tough calls for SciFi Stream’s editors. What we’re interested in are shows that are more obviously sci-fi in the way they tell stories each and every week, and not just in their underlying premise. Do we cover a promising new show before it premieres, in the hopes that it will turn out actually to be science fiction? Do we ignore a show until it proves itself to be solidly in the genre … and then have to play catch-up?

We’ll continue to make those judgment calls (see the “Watch List” below — it’s the shows we are keeping an eye on, but not actively covering), and weigh your interests in a show (based on comments, forum posts, and site traffic) before deciding to continue our coverage or cut it.

So that’s the plan. Starting this week, we will be de-listing several shows from the menus above and expanding our coverage of others. We’re really excited to be able to focus our efforts on the shows that we really love. And we hope it’ll make for the SciFi Stream you want.

Below you can find the current list of series we plan to cover in the next year. If you don’t see your favorite, sound off below!

2014-2015 COVERAGE LIST:

12 Monkeys (Syfy)
The 100 (The CW)
Agent Carter (ABC)
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (ABC)
Arrow (The CW)
Ascension (Syfy)
Continuum (Showcase / Syfy)
Daredevil (Netflix)
Defiance (Syfy)
Doctor Who (BBC / BBC America)
Dominion (Syfy)
The Expanse (Syfy)
Extant (CBS)
Falling Skies (TNT)
The Flash (The CW)
Game of Thrones (HBO)
Gotham (FOX)
Helix (Syfy)
Heroes: Reborn (NBC)
Killjoys (SPACE / Syfy)
The Librarians (TNT)
Once Upon A Time (ABC)
Orphan Black (BBC America / SPACE)
Sense8 (Netflix)
The Walking Dead (AMC)

WATCH LIST:

The After (Amazon)
Atlantis (BBC / BBC America)
Constantine (NBC)
Grimm (NBC)
Haven (Syfy)
Intruders (BBC America)
The Messengers (The CW)
Olympus (Syfy)
Resurrection (ABC)
Sleepy Hollow (FOX)
Z Nation (Syfy)