Summary
- Dark Angel, a sci-fi series by James Cameron, was canceled after 2 seasons and had themes reminiscent of his other works.
- Dark Angel’s cancellation was due to complex plot elements in Season 2, which led to a drop in viewership.
- Dark Angel’s budget and marketing approach made sustaining it on TV challenging, even with Cameron’s involvement.
Imagine how different the world of television would have been if James Cameron had gotten the opportunity to create his own sci-fi TV series. Well, it turns out he already did. He created one in the early 2000s — which, however, got canceled after just two seasons and almost became forgotten over time.
Dark Angel on Fox remains the first and only TV show created by Cameron (unless he decides to make a miraculous re-entry into television after or in between his Avatar sequels). The sci-fi series, which marked Jessica Alba’s breakthrough, deserved more time and room for experimentation, but sadly, it didn’t get the chance.
Related
5 Great HBO Shows That Were Canceled After One Season
Although the majority of HBO TV shows manage to run their course, it doesn’t always work out that way, with some being canceled after a single season.
What Is Dark Angel About?
At the time of its release in 2000, Dark Angel was set in the dystopian near future of 2019 in Seattle. The show revolves around Max Guevara, a genetically enhanced super-soldier. She escapes from a secret military facility as a child and tries to lead a normal life. However, she faces a series of challenges as she tries to avoid being caught by government agents while searching for her siblings, who were all scattered to different places after their escape.
|
Series |
Dark Angel |
|---|---|
|
Created By |
|
|
Genre |
Sci-fi action drama |
|
Seasons & Episodes |
2 seasons, 43 episodes |
|
Network |
Fox |
|
Cast |
|
|
Years Active |
October 3, 2000 – May 3, 2002 |
Max’s main adversary is the secret U.S. government institution called Manticore, the place she escaped from. Manticore was responsible for creating super-soldiers, raising and training them to become assassins for covert missions. A group of these runaway young soldiers detonates an electromagnetic pulse weapon, destroying communication systems in the U.S. and plunging the country into recovery. Ten years after this event, Manticore is still determined to reclaim its lost assets, while the escaped super-soldiers, known as X-5s, try to reunite.
What Made Dark Angel Special?
Signature Cameron At His Best
Just by glancing at the plot, themes, and visual aesthetic, it’s evident that this cyberpunk show has all the makings of a bona fide James Cameron classic. Jessica Alba’s Max is another addition to Cameron’s array of strong female characters, much like Sarah Connor from Terminator or Ellen Ripley in Aliens. In the late ’90s and early 2000s, there was a wave of strong female-led shows like Xena: Warrior Princess and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Dark Angel was very much a part of this wave. The manga Battle Angel Alita was a major influence on Cameron for the show, and he later went on to produce an adaptation of the manga as a full-length film.
Dark Angel drew comparisons from many critics and fans to older gothic works like Frankenstein. In fact, Max’s genetic engineering often led to her being labeled as a postmodern feminist Frankenstein’s monster. The show also displayed influences from classics like Blade Runner, while maintaining a distinct flavor of its own. The timing of the show also perfectly aligned with the hype around Y2K at the start of the millennium. The event inspired the electromagnetic pulse that collapses the world and sends it into a unique dystopian situation in the story.
Why Was Dark Angel Canceled?
It’s a showbiz convention that everything James Cameron touches turns to gold, and that almost seemed to be the case with Dark Angel in its 22-episode first season. The series made its presence felt on the award circuit, especially turning Jessica Alba into the star she is today. Moreover, Dark Angel averaged nearly 10.4 million viewers per episode. But this wasn’t the case with the second season.
While Season 1 had a good balance between self-contained episodes and a larger Manticore arc, Season 2 may have gotten a little too ambitious for its own good. At first, it was easy for viewers to jump in at any point, but the introduction of new plot elements, like failed genetic experiments, a “chosen one” narrative for Max, and a deeper Manticore backstory, made it all too complicated. This led to a drop in the ratings for the show, and the switch from Tuesday night to Friday night airtime didn’t help either. In the end, the show began to average around 6 million viewers per episode when Fox decided to cancel it.
Dark Angel’s Failure Was Inevitable
Too Big For A TV Show Of That Era
In hindsight, Dark Angel‘s cancelation may have been unavoidable. Despite a popular and successful first season, it was still hard to sustain for Fox. The two-hour premiere episode had a budget of around $10 million, and Season 2’s individual episodic budget was around $1.3 million each. The studio had to treat the show like a marquee movie project, which meant going all out on promotions with trailers, billboards, and marketing.
Even Cameron and the show’s co-creator, Charles H. Eglee, were a little skeptical about the show’s possibility of becoming huge. While they had differing concerns about going over budget, the creators had always been on thin ice with this project. Cameron shared his thoughts in a 2001 interview with the Sun Journal:
If it flies, it flies. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t … If people connect with it, which I hope they will, fine. If we don’t find an audience, we deserve to be off the air. It’s that simple.
Legacy Of Cameron’s Dark Angel
As Dark Angel marks the 25th year since its premiere, it deserves another look from James Cameron fans, as well as sci-fi aficionados in general. It was adapted into a video game of the same name, which came out in 2002. The storyline also continued with a series of original novels written by Max Allan Collins. Possibly, Dark Angel may not have been so short-lived had it come out in a post-Game of Thrones era of TV.
More
5 Great Netflix Shows That Were Canceled After One Season
While some cancelations come as not surprise, many great Netflix shows were canceled after just one season despite their positive reviews and ratings.