So as I’ve been making my way through mythologies of the world I’ve been aiming to try to point out that there are more sources to be used than the typical Eurocentric folklore that has dominated much of the fantasy genre. In the course of that, as of just this week I’ve covered Egypt and pointed out that it would be just a wonderful idea to use it because it could be used in literally any fashion you need to.

Imagine my surprise when it turned out that Fox had green-lit the production of a show called Hieroglyph, an ancient Egyptian fantasy series created by Travis Beacham of Pacific Rim fame. It was like TV was listening to me already, and apparently Fox was so in love with the concept and Travis’ work up to that point that they skipped right on past making the pilot and instead ordered a full 13 episodes to begin production immediately. There’s advertising for it already with promotional shots of the cast in full costume and looking all Egyptian and the first episode has already filmed and they’ve begun production on the next 12 episodes and-…

Oh, it’s cancelled already.

WTF Fox?

How Are You So Bad At This?

As many screenwriters know, pilots get produced and then rejected all the time. It’s just a fact of life in the industry that when you pitch an idea that production of the first episode doesn’t translate into a successful launch. But when a studio actually orders 13 episodes and begins promotion of the show, you’re at least getting on the air. Commercials for your show are usually a sign they intend to actually show the thing to the public.

Not on Fox.

Some people who aren’t initiated on the concept may not be familiar with Fox’s history of cancellations but they’re quite infamous for mishandling shows without any outside interference, especially in this particular genre. Other networks have issues, don’t get me wrong. NBC managed to screw up Heroes by airing it a half season at a time either due to planned hiatuses or an unfortunate writer’s strike. CBS can only successfully work three genres: crime procedurals, dumb comedies and dumber reality competitions. And ABC, well, let’s just say they’re damn lucky that Agents of SHIELD eventually got better because otherwise they would have been the first Marvel production to completely bomb since the experiment started with Iron Man.

Then again, the better half of the season may have been an implanted memory…

The point is, broadcast networks have a lot of money but not a lot of skill when it comes to speculative fiction. The only network to pull off fantasy shows successfully, continuously and repeatedly is the CW and most people feel uncomfortable even mentioning them.

For reasons I can’t quite understand.

But Fox is a beast of a different nature, because they mishandle everything. If CBS is going to back a comedy or procedural crime show, chances are they’ll get at least 100 episodes and a spinoff (give or take half a dozen) out of it. If NBC backs a show, even if the ratings start to struggle, it’ll still miraculously get five seasons before someone else picks it up for the sixth. And if ABC wants to do something…well it’s a subsidiary of Disney so nothing is going to stop it.

Fox, on the other hand, is the network that takes the most risks but cancels the fastest. Don’t get me wrong, they have big brass ones for going through with shows like Glee or 24. In fact, stop to consider that pitch for a moment and realize how insane 24 must sound to the average executive.

“It’s going to be presented completely in real time and follow a not-so-likeable hyper-masculine anti-hero who will fight a single terrorist plot over the course of 24 episodes. At no point will any episode have a conclusion or a standard three act structure because it’s going to take the entire season to complete a single arc.”

The guy who signed off on that must have a hard time finding comfortable pants, both for the massive balls and the loss of bowel control. In fact, the story of the first discussion over it had the producer saying quite plainly “Forget it, that’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard.”

And yet they still did it, because that’s what Fox does.

Shine on you crazy diamonds, shine on.

So it’s not that they have a lack of courage and an inability to take risks, they take them all the time. Rather, the problem is that Fox’s one true talent is to take a critically acclaimed fan-favorite with a cult following, completely misjudge where it’s going, and pull out before they have any chance to learn if it’s going to pan out or bite them in the ass. Need proof? Remember that these are the guys who cancelled Family Guy right before it became a smash hit, cancelled Futurama before it became so popular other networks wanted to buy it, and cancelled Firefly after airing all of its episodes out of order and in an erratic (often pre-empted) schedule. Then again, Firefly had only 13 episodes, no one’s going to miss that, right?

Oh yeah…

No, Fox is actually something of the premature cancellation king, achieving cancellations of popular shows by simply fumbling them in comical fashion. And all of this has been to chase that magical title of most amusing cancellation, I’m sure. There is a list of cancellations for shows that have never aired an episode, showing that they’re not unique in the Hieroglyph fiasco. But what makes Hieroglyph a particular stand-out is that no one outside of Fox tried to stop them, no one died, and they only had a single episode so they didn’t see a trend of poor quality. This was all internal and they advertised this thing before pulling the plug like some sort of game of TV Executive Chicken.

Alas, Fox simply just needed to prove to the rest of the networks that it could cancel better than any of them and did so by coming as close to the show never existing at all that it could possibly come without rejecting the pilot or the initial pitch. And for that, I salute them. But for now I have to wonder if they may feel hollow, wondering where they can go from here. Having come closer to the Television equivalent of absolute zero than any other network could dream of without one of their stars dropping dead on set, one would imagine that topping it would be difficult.

In fact, as far as I can imagine, the only thing that could really top this would be to green-light a show, hire the cast, put them in costume, take a single shot on set that you post directly to Instagram. After that finishes uploading, inform everyone the show’s cancelled. That may be the true pinnacle of absurd cancellations. But, until that day comes…

They’ll keep on trying.

(I write books. Someday I may write TV shows… unless Fox is interested, in which case I may already be cancelled 🙁 )