0:01

You're listening to Imaginary

0:03

Worlds, a show about how we create them and

0:05

why we suspend our disbelief. I'm Eric

0:08

Malinsky. Last

0:10

year, I did an episode about a Norwegian

0:12

show called The Foreigners. The

0:15

premise was that people from different eras of history

0:17

were showing up in modern day Oslo,

0:19

like the Vikings.

0:21

The show used time travel to explore

0:23

issues of immigration and cultural identity.

0:26

I loved it. And a lot of my

0:28

listeners told me, after they heard the episode,

0:31

they immediately binged the show on HBO

0:33

Max.

0:35

There is no HBO Max

0:37

anymore. After the Discovery Corporation

0:40

bought WarnerMedia, they rebranded

0:42

the site as Max and purged

0:44

it in a massive attempt to save costs.

0:48

The Foreigners wasn't just cancelled, it was

0:50

taken off the site. And this is happening

0:52

to different shows across streaming platforms.

0:55

The studios are removing shows for tax

0:57

purposes and so they don't

0:59

have to pay residuals to any of the talent.

1:01

Residuals is one of the many reasons

1:04

why the actors and the writers are on strike.

1:06

But it's been brutal for fans too. Last

1:10

year, I did another episode about the show Paper

1:12

Girls.

1:13

And I remember right after it dropped on Amazon Prime,

1:16

I saw a community of fans building in real

1:18

time as they watched the episodes, falling

1:20

in love with the characters, doing fan art,

1:23

predicting what might happen in season 2. But

1:26

Paper Girls was cancelled. It's

1:29

still on Amazon Prime for now, but

1:31

Paper Girls and The Foreigners both

1:33

ended on huge cliffhangers.

1:36

And personally, I'm still not over this.

1:38

I'm still mad that we will never

1:41

get to see what happens to these characters.

1:43

This was not supposed to happen. For

1:46

years, the streaming sites were operating under

1:48

the idea that more content would bring in

1:50

more viewers.

1:51

They wouldn't even reveal what the ratings were because

1:53

short-term ratings didn't matter, so they said.

1:56

People could discover these shows weeks, months, or

1:58

even years later. And when

2:01

these streaming sites launched, they had

2:03

a lot of sci-fi fantasy shows.

2:06

I assume because sci-fi fantasy fans

2:08

can get very engaged if they like a show.

2:11

Their excitement can drive social media traffic

2:14

and word of mouth. That's how Stranger

2:16

Things became a surprise hit.

2:18

But it wasn't happening to enough shows. And

2:21

they recently flipped back to the old

2:23

model from network TV days. If

2:25

a ratings don't hit their expectations within

2:28

a certain amount of time, the show is

2:30

gone. So we did

2:32

a call out and asked you to tell us about

2:34

the cancellations which really affected you. We

2:37

got a ton of responses and

2:39

we're gonna hear from some of them.

2:41

By the way, this episode has a bunch of spoilers,

2:44

although many of the people we talked with were happy to spoil

2:46

the endings that left them hanging. The

2:49

classic example of a show gone too soon

2:51

was Firefly, The Western in Space

2:53

by Joss Whedon. I've talked about

2:55

Firefly in several different episodes and

2:58

the fans have always been vocal about the show's cancellation.

3:01

When we asked for suggestions, I expected

3:03

a lot of people would mention Firefly. And

3:05

they did. What surprised me

3:08

was that even more listeners wrote in about

3:10

a different show from the early 2000s, Carnival. Carnival

3:15

was on HBO from 2003 to 2005. It

3:19

was about a traveling circus in the Dust Bowl

3:21

Depression era.

3:22

There was also a supernatural element.

3:25

The hero, Ben Hawkins, has the power

3:27

to restore life, but he's tormented

3:29

because it comes at a cost.

3:32

You have the gift.

3:36

I tried. Yes, but to restore

3:38

a life, you must take

3:40

a life. Yeah, I know, goddamn it,

3:42

I know. I took her out way, way past

3:45

everyone. You must act as a man, not

3:47

a boy. The

3:49

villain is a self-righteous preacher named

3:52

Justin Crow, who is secretly

3:54

an avatar of Satan. The

3:57

worm reveals himself in many guises.

4:00

across this once great land. From

4:02

the intellectual elite, cruelly

4:05

indoctrinating our children with the savage

4:07

blasphemy of Darwin, to

4:09

the craven Hollywood pagans corrupting

4:12

them in the darkness of the local B-Shoe.

4:15

I really enjoyed the show back then, but

4:17

I thought most people had forgotten about it.

4:20

Apparently not, and definitely not

4:22

for Anton de Groot.

4:24

When I was watching it, I remember I

4:27

was living with a group of

4:29

friends. We'd all just

4:31

graduated university, all

4:34

from the theater program together. And I

4:36

was living in a big house, I think there were five of

4:38

us all together, just in Northwest

4:40

Calgary. And I remember we made

4:43

an event of it.

4:44

We made sure to have the night off and we were going,

4:47

we had the DVD set and we were going through and

4:49

we were watching it week by week, just all

4:51

together as a group. You knew

4:53

when you started watching it that the show had been canceled, that

4:56

there were only two seasons, right?

4:57

I didn't, honestly. Yeah,

4:59

I truly had no idea. We

5:01

assumed that there would be another

5:04

season coming out. And because HBO was

5:06

harder for us as students to get up

5:08

in Canada, right? So we weren't party

5:11

to knowing exactly what was on the

5:13

program at the moment. And didn't think

5:15

to look it up on the internet per se.

5:18

Why did you like the show so much? Why

5:20

were you such a fan up until this

5:22

cliffhanger, not knowing the show was gonna get canceled?

5:25

I am such a huge fan of

5:27

world building and like

5:30

mythology and world building. What

5:32

I was finding with that show is, it's grounded

5:35

in those, like the Judeo-Christian

5:37

mythologies. And I don't myself have a religious

5:40

practice or belief per se, but the

5:42

stories of it are so rich and so

5:45

interesting. And the characters that they

5:47

developed within it just

5:49

had such depth and they

5:52

themselves were figuring out what

5:54

was going on in the world as the audience

5:56

was. I felt that in a way that

5:59

we were kind of going along.

5:59

the ride with the characters. And in

6:02

that as well, I'm a designer. So my I

6:05

love really great production design. So

6:06

the design that they had in that slice just

6:09

that particular era in American

6:11

history, I just is just a rich

6:14

visual. I think it was just a perfect

6:16

confluence of all of these things that I

6:18

just really love and just really speaks to me.

6:20

Yeah, I did too. I love that

6:23

1930s depression era like Americana,

6:26

you know, it's kind of the beginning of a sort of mass

6:28

produced American culture, but

6:31

it's kind of like paved on top of a much

6:33

older, even 19th century

6:35

kind of P.T. Barnum, you know, Wild

6:38

West kind of world. I feel like in

6:40

the 30s, you kind of have both worlds simultaneously

6:43

kind of still existing. And that

6:45

part about it with a little bit of the kind of like

6:48

John Steinbeck kind of like, you know,

6:51

class political social

6:52

commentary and magic,

6:55

you know, and the devil absolutely

6:58

in that kind of in that sort of world,

7:00

like the stakes are so high,

7:02

right? Like it's capital G good

7:05

capital evil.

7:07

Before it was cancelled, season two ended

7:09

on a big cliffhanger, which I'm

7:12

about to spoil. The good character

7:14

Ben Hawkins finally has a showdown

7:16

with the villain Justin Crow. Good

7:19

triumphs over evil. But Ben

7:21

has a love interest named Sophie and

7:23

we discover that Sophie is actually Justin

7:26

Crow's daughter. And it's implied

7:29

that the satanic entity inside her

7:31

father

7:32

has migrated to her.

7:34

That's a hell of a cliffhanger. Literally.

7:37

I

7:38

was mad when I found out it wouldn't be resolved.

7:41

Anton still has trouble wrapping his head around

7:43

it. It was almost like

7:45

it was a sense of disbelief. Truthfully,

7:48

it was it just mattered so much

7:50

to me and to my roommates at the time.

7:52

And we just couldn't believe

7:54

that

7:55

they would choose to let this story

7:58

go. It just given how the build

8:00

up worked, how the

8:02

characters, the world that was created,

8:06

it baffled us. We just couldn't

8:08

understand why. And of course, you know, we're not party

8:10

to those decisions in the boardrooms by any means.

8:13

But just for us who were caring about

8:15

the story, it just felt like it just

8:17

felt like a seriously

8:20

missed opportunity. And then how

8:22

long did you like how long had

8:24

this sort of rattle in your head where you sort of couldn't

8:26

let it go?

8:27

It's still rattling in my head, honestly. And

8:30

every once in a while, especially when I'm

8:32

talking to people, introducing them to the

8:34

show, that comes out immediately.

8:36

I inevitably mention that it

8:38

ends on such a cliffhanger. And

8:41

even to this day, it still irks me.

8:44

This is where Headcanon comes in.

8:47

I did an episode last year about Headcanon.

8:50

That's when fans come up with theories, filling

8:52

in the blanks, creating unwritten

8:54

fan fiction in their minds to fill

8:56

in plot holes or fix storylines

8:58

that never got resolved. Anton

9:01

came up with his own theory as to how the

9:03

show would have ended.

9:05

It goes back to

9:07

the clues that had been seeded throughout

9:10

the entire series. And I think what

9:12

goes back to the very beginning of the

9:14

series in the first episode when the

9:17

character Sampson played by Michael J. Anderson

9:19

is just, you know, speaking in a dark void,

9:22

just delivering a monologue that sets the

9:24

tone in the world. And he says,

9:28

and so it was until the day that a false

9:30

sun exploded over Trinity and

9:33

man forever traded away wonder

9:35

for reason. And just knowing

9:37

where this took place in

9:40

the timeline, we know that research

9:42

into the atomic bomb was coming up with World War

9:44

Two about to be on the horizon here. To

9:47

me, that was the biggest clue. And in a way,

9:49

I feel like they spelled out the ending in

9:52

that moment. So for me, my headcanon

9:54

used that as the clue and

9:57

that ultimately was going to come down to the

9:59

physics. space of Trinity and after

10:02

an enormous battle of

10:04

probably unspeakable damage between

10:07

Ben and Sophie that the two of them come

10:10

together in a moment of understanding as just

10:12

the light of the bomb obliterates

10:15

the two of them and this war comes

10:17

to an end when magic

10:19

ends on earth.

10:20

Oh, that's really interesting. I mean, that kind of makes sense. I

10:22

mean, the whole story is basically leading up to World

10:24

War II and World War II ends with

10:26

the atomic bomb, but it kind of mirrors

10:29

Ben's powers that he's

10:31

to do good, to give life

10:34

he needs to take a life and that kind of torments

10:36

him and the atomic bomb is kind of like it

10:38

ends the war, but at this horrific cost.

10:41

Yeah.

10:42

Wow. Was there anything that you

10:44

personally related to in terms of like the themes

10:46

of the show? Yeah,

10:49

I'm a theater maker. That's

10:51

what I do for a living and the

10:53

idea of show business has always

10:56

kind of like run with me and

10:58

seeing how the

11:01

family of the carnival come together and all

11:03

the other characters that like

11:05

the supporting characters that become so important

11:08

in the story as well and just this

11:10

family coming together, supporting

11:12

each other, it reminds me a lot

11:14

of the work that I do and

11:17

my friends and my colleagues that I care

11:20

about and that I work and support in my own way

11:22

and they work and support me and

11:24

that kind of like coming together of a bunch

11:26

of misfits from all over the place.

11:29

It really, really resonated with me.

11:35

I've

11:36

had this experience lately where many

11:38

of my favorite foods have gotten discontinued.

11:40

My favorite flavor of yogurt, my

11:42

favorite salad dressing, my favorite type of espresso

11:45

beans. I lived next door to a restaurant

11:47

and over the last several years they've taken four

11:50

items off the menu that were my favorite

11:52

items to order, but apparently

11:55

I was one of the only people ordering them.

11:57

It's a bummer, but it's

11:59

very true.

11:59

different than when a show gets canceled. The

12:03

job of everybody on a show is to get you hooked

12:05

on the story.

12:06

If you don't feel an emotional attachment

12:08

to the characters, they haven't done their

12:10

job. So when a show is canceled,

12:13

it can feel like a world has ended. It can

12:16

feel like a group of friends have suddenly disappeared.

12:20

It's one thing to go through those emotions as an adult,

12:23

but when you're a kid, that can be harder.

12:26

That's what happened to Lisa Urban. In

12:28

the early 2000s, she was a fan of Danny

12:31

Phantom. It was a cartoon on Nickelodeon

12:34

created by Butch Hartman, who did Fairly Odd

12:36

Parents and a bunch of other animated shows back then.

12:39

Danny Phantom is a teenage superhero

12:42

who is part human and part ghost.

12:44

Actually the opening credits explain it pretty well.

13:02

Lisa discovered the show when she was a young teenager.

13:05

Her family had just moved to a new town

13:08

and

13:08

she was settling into her new house.

13:11

And there was one day when I was sitting in my

13:13

bedroom with my small little TV

13:16

and I was flipping channels and I stopped on

13:18

Nickelodeon and the TV show Danny Phantom

13:20

happened to be on. And

13:21

I remember, oh I just

13:24

need some background noise, let's just put this on.

13:26

And as I'm watching this episode, I'm

13:28

getting really intrigued by the character dynamics,

13:30

specifically the main character Danny and his

13:32

powers as well as his sister and his friends.

13:35

And so I watched that one and then the next

13:37

episode came on and it was the Ultimate Enemy.

13:40

That was an hour-long special that was about his

13:42

future and several other ghosts and

13:44

enemies made appearances. Tucker!

13:47

Sam! Run! Run?

13:51

Where are they going to go?

13:54

It just really got me hooked because I was very curious

13:56

about all of this lore that I had never seen before

13:58

from the first season.

13:59

up to that point. So

14:02

why do you think you connected with it so much, like at that age

14:04

or that point in your life? The

14:06

show was definitely geared towards teenagers to begin

14:08

with, which was something that Nickelodeon didn't do

14:11

as often back then. And

14:13

I really also really liked the animation style.

14:15

The way the characters were drawn and the action

14:18

made me want to draw these characters and draw things

14:20

in that style a lot more.

14:22

And furthermore, he, but Hartman,

14:24

really knew how to write the stories and him and his

14:27

writing crew did a really good job of telling

14:29

very thought out stories in a 20 minute

14:31

span. And

14:33

continuing those stories throughout the seasons

14:36

and not just forgetting that something happened in the

14:38

last episode, but building upon it, building upon

14:40

it as the seasons went.

14:42

It was just really great to have that experience

14:44

and know that what I saw yesterday isn't just gonna

14:46

go away. So what happened with the show?

14:49

Season two ended in 2006

14:53

and season three did not

14:55

get its air dates until the fall of 2007.

14:59

They

14:59

had created all the episodes and they

15:01

were ready to go and Nickelodeon just stalled,

15:03

installed, installed to air them. They

15:06

started airing overseas. And a lot

15:08

of us who were fans at the time were

15:10

getting on YouTube and even some of the not

15:12

so friendly video sites to find these

15:15

episodes and predict what might happen. And

15:17

then when Nickelodeon finally did air season

15:19

three,

15:20

they aired five episodes over the span

15:23

of a week in July,

15:24

five episodes over the span of a week

15:26

in August, and then the finale on

15:28

like a Saturday night. And then they just called it done.

15:31

Fans were really upset,

15:33

but Nickelodeon just would not budge on making

15:35

more episodes. There's a lot of theories

15:37

why I was 15 at the time. I

15:40

didn't really read into it that much. It

15:42

just kind of got canceled and the finale

15:44

was not what people wanted.

15:46

How did that make you feel at the time? It

15:49

felt like I was losing something.

15:51

The show had become such a big part of

15:53

my life in only a couple of years.

15:56

And then to have all of those episodes just kind of hit

15:58

at once and then it just went away.

15:59

I was sad, you know,

16:02

there were going to be no more stories, no more character arcs,

16:04

no more chances for Danny

16:05

to go ghost and save the

16:08

ghost world. And a lot of questions were left

16:10

unanswered.

16:11

What sounds like this really stuck with you, like, like

16:14

even as an adult, you still can't quite shake this.

16:17

Yeah, you know, it ended. And

16:20

some people just did definitely fade from people's

16:22

consciousness, but they're really strong fans

16:24

are still out there and we're still doing things.

16:26

I was creating fan art years after

16:29

the show ended. I actually just posted

16:32

my last fan fiction I posted like two years ago

16:34

and I'm in my 30s.

16:36

So like the fan art or fan fiction you did, was

16:38

it like, was it like a head cannon where you're

16:40

imagining where the story would have gone? I

16:42

didn't do a lot of head cannon because I

16:45

was not even though I'm an art teacher and an artist,

16:47

I wasn't that creative.

16:48

Every time I tried to develop my own characters,

16:51

it never went very well.

16:52

But I really got into the fan, the

16:54

fan art. I

16:56

got on DeviantArt and there was a huge, huge

16:58

fandom there of other artists posting

17:01

their fan art for Danny Phantom.

17:03

And that was kind of like the place to post it.

17:05

So I started doing a lot of stuff in the Danny Phantom

17:08

style that I was posting on there. In

17:10

terms of fan fiction, I never really created

17:12

new characters, but I have written a couple of

17:14

stories that were alternative universe

17:16

stories.

17:17

And I always kind of had an

17:20

idea of what I wanted to write, whether it was good or

17:22

not.

17:22

But it was always nice to have that place to put it.

17:24

Did you meet people like the online

17:26

community of fans? Did you meet people who

17:28

had the same experience you did? I

17:30

wish I could say yes. I actually

17:33

haven't. I met a lot of people online, but I've

17:35

never met them in person.

17:37

I did have several people that I considered

17:39

my friends when I was on DeviantArt that we would do

17:41

collaborations with or that we would share our images

17:44

and our stories with a couple of people who I

17:46

followed very avidly who had amazing head

17:48

cannons that they were doing for these characters

17:50

about when they grew up and if they had kids.

17:53

And the same with the fan fiction. I had several people

17:55

I would follow avidly because they wrote amazing

17:58

stories.

17:59

There is. There's one girl that I met through fanfiction

18:01

who I

18:02

never met in person, but we've

18:04

exchanged emails and we've exchanged, we've

18:06

actually exchanged physical packages. She

18:09

was my beta reader actually on the last story

18:11

that I wrote and then we just became really close

18:13

and so we were exchanging messages that way. It

18:16

was great to have somebody even at this age

18:18

and this long after the show to still

18:20

talk about the show with. So like

18:22

your fanfiction, what was it about?

18:24

The first one I ever published was actually

18:27

a crossover of Danny Phantom and the

18:29

Tobey Maguire Spider-Man movies. At

18:31

the time I thought it was great. Currently I don't

18:33

think it's so great, but it still gets likes to this

18:36

day on fanfiction.net.

18:37

And then I wrote a couple other ones that were just solely

18:39

Danny Phantom related in

18:41

kind of an alternate universe, like in the same city,

18:44

but characters were different and things were different.

18:47

I do want to let fans know that

18:49

there is a,

18:51

they actually just came out with a graphic

18:54

novel

18:55

that continues the story and it's not

18:57

written by Butch, but it is produced by Nickelodeon.

19:00

It's called A Twist in Time and

19:02

it continues the story and I really like what

19:04

happened. I was able to suspend my disbelief

19:07

and believe that what was happening could

19:09

be an episode of the show or a couple episodes

19:11

of the show. They really expanded the characters

19:14

and I think they also did some really good fan service

19:16

because they did refute a few things that the

19:18

fans did not like about the finale and kind

19:21

of reversed a few things without giving any spoilers.

19:25

Adults can also get hooked on cartoons

19:27

meant for kids.

19:28

I've done that with several animated shows about

19:30

superheroes that I know my 12 year old self

19:33

would have really loved.

19:35

Patricia Miranda co-hosts a podcast

19:37

called Old School Lane where they

19:39

discuss animated shows. Some she

19:42

loved as a kid, others she discovered as

19:44

an adult.

19:45

Then they did a deep dive into The Owl House

19:47

which ran on the Disney Channel fro 2020 until this

19:50

year. The Owl House is

19:52

about a 14 year old girl named Luz Noseira.

19:55

She is seen as like the crazy

19:58

awkward and hyperactivist.

19:59

teenager that nobody really seems

20:02

to understand. And she is

20:04

told by the principal and her mother that

20:06

she needs to go away to a normal camp so

20:08

that she can be able to act quote-unquote

20:11

normal around her peers.

20:13

Don't worry, Mom. I won't let you down.

20:16

No more weirdness. That

20:19

doesn't count, right?

20:21

She sees a owl digging through her

20:23

trash and flying away. Tiny

20:26

trash thief! To

20:28

an abandoned house across the street. When

20:31

she follows the owl and opens the door, she

20:33

is transported to a world

20:35

known as the Boiling Isles filled with witches,

20:38

creatures, and magic.

20:40

She meets up with a witch known as Eda

20:42

Clothorn, aka the Owl Lady.

20:45

I am a respected, feared...

20:48

Busted! Run!

20:51

Eda the Owl Lady, you are wanted

20:53

for misuse of magic and demonic misdemeanors!

20:57

Whoa! Witch criminal!

20:59

She decides to stay in the

21:01

Boiling Isles because she wants to learn from Eda to

21:03

become a witch as opposed to going away to this

21:05

normal camp. It's fantastic.

21:08

A lot of people were able to fall in love

21:10

with it within their own unique way. The

21:13

magic is really creative. I think that

21:16

the character growth is really

21:18

phenomenal.

21:19

Why did it resonate with you? Why did you really like

21:21

it? One of the reasons why

21:23

it resonated with me was because

21:25

I related to the character of Luz Noceira.

21:29

She was a young teenage girl

21:31

who was very awkward and

21:33

who, even though that

21:35

she was very interactive with a lot of people

21:38

in her own unique way, people didn't seem

21:40

to really gravitate towards her because they thought

21:42

that she was really weird. And as

21:44

somebody who was that at

21:46

that age, I

21:48

really related to her. She

21:51

didn't have any friends and even

21:53

though that she tried to be very

21:56

creative with her presentations, not

21:58

a lot of people seem to understand. on why,

22:01

and so she was a bit of a loner, and I really

22:04

enjoyed that. I had never seen any representation

22:07

like that in any show that

22:09

I grew up with.

22:11

The show also got a lot of praise from critics

22:13

and fans because it had openly

22:15

queer characters.

22:17

Do you want to go out with me? Oh,

22:20

I was already. I'm sorry,

22:22

I'm sorry, you can say it. Okay,

22:26

Amity Blight, do you want to go out with me? Yes!

22:29

Okay!

22:32

Patricia isn't queer herself, but

22:34

she was thrilled that a show like The Owl House

22:36

could exist.

22:38

At least for a while.

22:40

You might remember in 2021, I did

22:42

an episode called Cartoonish Gender, where

22:45

I talked about the difficulty that Disney has

22:47

had with queer characters. Their

22:49

brand is supposed to be, quote, family-friendly,

22:53

but that term has become highly

22:55

politicized.

22:57

There was a bit of obstacles

23:00

and hurdles that the people behind The

23:02

Owl House had to do in order for them to

23:05

represent these characters, but at the same time,

23:07

knowing that this is a Disney show, Disney

23:10

has reputations of cutting

23:12

off gay characters so that other

23:15

countries that did not allow

23:17

representation of queer people can be

23:19

able to go through, or they have to cut

23:22

their losses, knowing that these movies are going to be

23:24

banned and may not make them as much money compared

23:27

to if they didn't show their representation.

23:29

So The Owl House took a lot

23:32

of risks, knowing that they

23:34

were probably going to be scrutinized, they were probably

23:36

going to get a lot of notes from public relations

23:38

saying that you can't do this or standards and practices,

23:41

and they just went for it, and there

23:44

was no apologies for it.

23:47

The Owl House was canceled after three seasons.

23:50

According to the show's creator, an executive

23:52

at Disney decided that the show didn't,

23:54

quote, fit the brand.

23:57

Patricia says that could have been because of

23:59

the queer content.

24:00

But the Owl House was also a highly serialized

24:03

show. Disney cartoons tend

24:05

to be more episodic.

24:07

The Owl House was really complex, and

24:09

I think that Disney, when they saw

24:12

this, they were fearing that maybe it might

24:14

be too complex for a younger audience.

24:17

However, when the show was wrapping

24:19

up, I think that the people who were working on

24:22

Disney channel animation, they

24:24

realized a little too late on how huge

24:26

the show was, and they

24:28

should have had more of it.

24:30

How did you feel when it was canceled? Yeah,

24:32

I was pretty devastated when I heard

24:35

the announcement all the way back in 2021. I

24:38

just thought to myself, why would you do that?

24:41

If you have a show that is massively

24:43

popular, that

24:45

millions of people are tuning into,

24:47

both kids and adults, and

24:49

it has everything that they want, like,

24:52

why would you get rid of that? It's

24:54

really sad. I'm sure for a lot

24:56

of people, they say, oh, what's the big deal? It's just a

24:58

show, get over it. There's gonna be plenty of other

25:00

shows. Sure, but if you can

25:03

relate to a character or a story

25:05

arc that hits at home,

25:08

it's even more of a reason on why you

25:10

should feel sad that it's gonna be going away.

25:13

It's like a part of you is

25:15

gone too, and you're probably not gonna

25:17

be able to find a similar substitute.

25:24

Sometimes a show you discover as an adult

25:26

can bring you back to your childhood. That

25:29

happened with Amy Biggerstaff. She

25:31

got sucked into the gothic fantasy drama,

25:34

Penny Dreadful, which drew from classic

25:36

horror fiction. She particularly loved

25:38

the character that Eva Green played. She

25:40

was a monster hunter named Vanessa

25:43

Ives who had dark supernatural powers.

25:46

If we're to continue, you must

25:48

know how dangerous this is. How

25:51

dangerous I

25:53

am. She

25:55

also liked the character that Billy Piper played, Lily

25:58

Frankenstein.

25:59

She's an undead bride of Frankenstein character,

26:02

although she goes in a very different direction from

26:04

the classic Frankenstein films.

26:07

I must save

26:09

you from all of this. One way

26:11

or another. And my responsibility? I created

26:13

you.

26:14

I need no man to save me.

26:15

And I think in a way I created you more than

26:17

you created

26:18

me. In

26:25

a way, I

26:28

created you more than you created me. Amy

26:33

started watching the show around the time it debuted

26:35

in 2014. I

26:38

would just plop down on the couch and I

26:40

fell in love because, you know,

26:42

a thing scratches an itch, right?

26:45

Like the monsters and

26:47

the witchcraft and like

26:49

the creepy dolls and like everything that you'd

26:52

want out of like that kind of genre, I

26:54

feel like, right? And it was just, it

26:56

just hit right. It was definitely, it

26:58

was like showing me

27:00

the narrative I wanted to see when I was like

27:02

younger, right? I like wanted to open up the book and

27:04

I wanted to read about, you know,

27:06

I would read Edgar Allen Poe and all these beautiful

27:08

gothic dark things, but like for some reason as

27:10

like an adult, I was like, Oh my God. It was like,

27:12

I felt like that kid again, like reading, you know,

27:15

Dracula for the first time and feeling

27:18

like this

27:19

weight to it that I feel like

27:21

I was lacking in, you know, other things.

27:23

I was in a pretty, uh, you

27:25

know, lovely religious family.

27:28

And so everything was tidy and wonderful.

27:31

And this like filthy gothic

27:33

horror was something that was so satisfying

27:36

to me and it really made me feel excited.

27:38

And so having that moment later on in life, I

27:40

think I connected really hard just having

27:43

that feeling back.

27:45

Wait, that's interesting. So you, you grew up in like

27:47

a religious family that the, your

27:49

love of goth was, you know,

27:51

it wasn't like your parents being like, Oh, that's cool. You

27:53

do you. It's like, this was really much

27:55

a very much you going in a direction that

27:58

you were craving that you weren't getting at home. Yeah,

28:00

I never really felt like I didn't

28:02

feel like I could wear black or I couldn't, you know,

28:04

like it wasn't that kind of an environment

28:07

as wonderful as my family was.

28:10

It was definitely not a space that I felt

28:12

like I could occupy. You know, I was queer

28:14

and I didn't know the language. And

28:17

I think there was a lot of those

28:19

narratives that I think we find in those

28:21

stories. I'm going

28:23

to be hyperbolic, but you know, I'm a

28:26

Heart on my Sleeves person.

28:28

You can't explain what you like about things sometimes,

28:30

but I plopped down on the couch to

28:33

like watch what I imagined would

28:35

be like a couple episodes maybe I was catching

28:37

up.

28:38

And it was like the last two

28:40

episodes. And I didn't see it

28:42

coming.

28:43

I remember sitting there and just

28:46

being like, no. And just saying,

28:48

no, no.

28:49

Because it

28:52

felt, it felt so

28:54

fast. It felt like, yes, it was three

28:56

seasons. But as

28:59

a fan, I just felt like that's not how

29:01

that would go down. That's not

29:03

how this story would end. And

29:05

it really broke my heart. Like

29:07

I remember being so upset

29:10

and I didn't have anyone at the time

29:12

that was also watching it. I

29:14

like I couldn't find anyone to like echo my pain.

29:21

She did find some fans online, but

29:23

she felt like they were all just screaming into the void

29:26

and she wasn't satisfied with any of the explanations

29:29

that she found online either.

29:31

I mean, I imagine the show suffered from the same problem

29:33

that a lot of sci-fi fantasy shows do.

29:36

A high production budget with a potentially

29:38

limited audience.

29:40

The showrunner said that he wanted

29:42

the story to end at three seasons,

29:45

but it didn't feel that way to Amy or many

29:47

other fans.

29:48

I'm going to spoil the ending right now.

29:52

The character that Eva Green played, Vanessa

29:54

Ives,

29:55

was killed by another character on the show.

29:58

It's this, they play it off. is this very

30:00

like honorable death kind

30:02

of situation where she's finally

30:05

getting the escape into, because she was very

30:07

Catholic in the show, and I

30:09

think to some degree I related

30:11

to the religious aspect of that,

30:13

even though I was not Catholic. And so there was this

30:17

moment for me where I was like, no, this

30:19

isn't where she goes. She doesn't come back to

30:21

this moment. Like she doesn't like

30:23

her escape isn't kind of denying

30:26

the darkness that she had the

30:28

thing I loved about her, right? She was like

30:31

kind and like vicious and like

30:33

beautiful and like powerful, but also like

30:35

complicated and sad. I

30:37

didn't feel like there were the signals of

30:40

the story is being tied up.

30:42

We're getting closer to her like

30:44

finale. I think I was also very

30:46

upset because Vanessa Ives, powerful,

30:50

Gothic queen, you

30:52

murder her, right? Her story is what

30:55

felt like swept away in a

30:57

disrespectful way. Lily, this

30:59

character that I feel like is so

31:02

refreshing to see. It was such a wildly

31:05

complicated character.

31:07

They knocked her down a little bit. I felt

31:09

like, you know, it was like they put these two

31:12

powerful women

31:15

and they kind of just like threw

31:17

them out at the end. It made me so

31:20

angry because it was like, oh my God, you made

31:22

me

31:23

feel like I was watching narratives

31:26

that aren't typically, you know,

31:28

these strong female

31:30

characters all the time

31:32

in these genres, right? And

31:35

this is still a very male dominated show,

31:37

but it was like those two figures were so

31:39

incredibly beautiful

31:41

and rich. And then it felt

31:44

like, oh, of course, you

31:46

just didn't see that

31:48

they were great. And at the end,

31:50

you just kind of treated them like how

31:53

I have grown to expect female characters

31:55

to be treated.

32:02

Of all the listeners who emailed us, there is

32:04

one person whose story, I think, perfectly

32:07

summarizes what it feels like to

32:09

be left hanging after getting emotionally

32:11

invested in a group of characters. Trevor

32:14

Mobs was a fan of the show Stargate Universe.

32:17

It was one of several spin-off TV shows

32:20

based on the Stargate movie, which

32:22

came out in 1994. The

32:24

show Stargate Universe ran from 2009 to 2011.

32:29

Starts with them fleeing an attack through

32:32

a Stargate, not having control

32:35

of where they're going, and they end up stranded on

32:37

an alien ship on the other side of the universe.

32:40

And straight away, they're struggling

32:43

to do things like have air

32:45

and water and all of that. So

32:48

it's very much a sense of

32:49

they're stuck and trying to survive.

32:52

And I think maybe part of the reason

32:55

it got canceled was because people

32:57

who liked Stargate in general

32:59

might not have liked the tone of

33:02

this show.

33:03

People who liked darker shows might not have thought that

33:05

they liked a Stargate show.

33:07

So it kind of, I think, maybe fell in the

33:09

cracks. So how did it end?

33:12

In the second season, they start

33:14

getting pursued by these drones

33:17

everywhere that they go.

33:19

And I can't help wondering whether the writers

33:21

of the show were looking for metaphors for

33:24

the fate of the show itself.

33:27

But in the season two finale,

33:29

they come up with

33:31

this slightly crazy plan

33:35

that the only way they're going to escape the drones is

33:37

for everyone to go into hibernation for

33:40

three years and basically

33:43

travel in hyperspace for that long

33:45

until they can escape. But there's

33:47

a catch.

33:48

One person is going to have to stay

33:51

behind, not go into hibernation.

33:53

It's even worse than that. They will

33:55

have two weeks in which to fix

33:58

a problem. they can't

34:00

fix it, they will have to kill themselves to get

34:02

everyone else a chance to survive. One

34:05

character volunteers. So the very last

34:07

sort of scene of the show is the last couple

34:09

of people going to hibernation and saying goodbye

34:12

to him.

34:13

You're a good man Eli, I get this done. I

34:16

wanna see you on the other side. Right,

34:18

right. And then, you know,

34:20

all the lights, all the power turns off as

34:23

much as possible. And it's just him

34:25

standing alone on the bridge gazing out. He

34:28

has a slight smile on his face. I had a chance to rewatch

34:31

the scene because it's on YouTube. But

34:33

I was not prepared for that as

34:35

an ending at all. I was just so shocked

34:39

because I couldn't think of anything more

34:41

lonely than that. I

34:43

mean, you were already stuck

34:46

billions of light years from every

34:48

other human being and then

34:50

everyone else is gone and you're left on your own

34:54

like that. And I was just completely devastated

34:56

by it. I mean, I can remember

34:58

just crying and wailing

35:01

and I had a nightmare about it that

35:03

night or the next night because I just couldn't think

35:05

of anything more lonely.

35:09

If they'd all died, I wouldn't have found

35:11

it so distressing. I mean, it would have been very bleak,

35:13

but it was just that idea of one person

35:16

being left so alone.

35:18

You know, even years later, I can remember

35:21

just that emotion

35:23

of the loneliness. I think that's probably one of

35:25

my biggest fears and it just resonated.

35:29

Yeah. Has that always been a fear of yours? I

35:32

actually think about it now. It's probably a worse

35:34

fear now as I'm getting a little older and thinking

35:36

about, I live alone and

35:39

thinking

35:40

about what's gonna happen as

35:44

my family gets older and I don't

35:46

have a partner or kids

35:48

of my own and who's going to

35:51

take care of me as I get older, things like

35:53

that. So

35:55

when the show ended, which is I think over 10

35:58

years ago, I already, I did live alone. but

36:00

I was obviously younger and I

36:03

might not have been as conscious

36:05

then of being afraid of loneliness

36:07

as I am now, but clearly it pushed

36:10

my buttons. Yes.

36:13

In talking with everybody in this episode, there

36:15

is a kind of, I mean, this almost feels

36:17

kind of trite compared to what that character is

36:20

going through and what your existential fears are. But

36:23

when a show is canceled, you know,

36:25

very often it's like, well, the ratings were

36:27

low and, you know, the production budget

36:29

was high, typical for sci-fi films, our

36:32

TV shows. And you're like, but I was watching

36:34

it. But what about me? You know, and sometimes

36:36

you go online and you realize, oh, wow, there

36:38

really weren't that many people watching it. And it's

36:40

sort of like, it almost feels that sense of loneliness

36:43

of like, I was watching that show. And

36:45

it's like,

36:46

sorry, that's not enough for us.

36:49

Yeah. Well, it's also interesting with

36:51

the scenes that are on YouTube. Of

36:53

course, you see lots of comments on there of people

36:56

saying how sad they are that the

36:58

show finished the way it did. But

37:00

of course, you know, that's self-selecting. It's

37:02

only the people who are

37:04

hunting for that scene to watch it again

37:07

and remind themselves. And

37:09

most

37:10

of the world just probably moved on

37:12

not caring about it.

37:14

Yeah. Did you come up with any like headcanon

37:17

to sort of even resolve it in your head as to, at

37:20

least in my mind, I've got to come up with something or

37:22

that just never feels satisfying?

37:24

No, for me, it never felt satisfying.

37:27

The fact that he has a slight smile is you're

37:29

supposed to maybe think, oh, he's going to make it.

37:32

And therefore they're all going to make it. But, you

37:34

know, they set up a situation as being

37:36

incredibly desperate that even with all of this,

37:39

they say, you know, that they might

37:41

not,

37:42

none of them might ever wake up from

37:44

the hibernation. I also think,

37:47

to be honest, I have a perception that American

37:49

shows

37:51

tend to avoid being really dark and

37:53

tend to avoid having bleak

37:56

endings. I was a fan of

37:58

the X-Files and I remember. There

38:00

were some X-Files episodes that deliberately

38:04

left things unresolved in a

38:06

way that I really enjoyed. And I think

38:10

I do remember some reaction of

38:12

some American fans

38:15

seem to really dislike having things that weren't

38:18

all neatly wrapped up and everyone was happy at the end.

38:20

Maybe it's because

38:23

I'm an American, but I can't leave

38:25

things there, feeling unsatisfied and

38:27

frustrated. In the

38:29

next episode, we're going to hear from fans

38:31

who have had the opposite experience. They feel

38:33

quite satisfied and happy with

38:36

their favorite shows or movies, even

38:38

if they know they're kind of alone.

38:42

Nobody knows when the Hollywood strikes are going

38:45

to end, and we're going to run out of new stuff

38:47

to watch pretty soon. There are

38:49

all these critically claimed shows and movies

38:51

that some of us never got around to watching, but

38:54

there are also unsung gems that

38:57

our friends and loved ones have been trying

38:59

to convince us to watch for years. I

39:02

have been on the opposite end of that conversation many

39:04

times, wondering if this

39:06

show or movie is so great and I should really watch

39:08

it, how come I never heard of it before? Or

39:11

why did it do so poorly at the box office or in

39:13

the ratings? In the next

39:15

episode, we'll discover why we're wrong

39:18

to ignore these recommendations.

39:21

That is it for this week. Thank you for listening. Special

39:23

thanks to Lisa Urban, Amy Biggerstaff,

39:25

Patricia Miranda, Anton DeGroote, Trevor

39:28

Mobs and everybody else who brought in. And

39:31

special thanks to Chris Stevenson, a listener

39:33

who suggested this topic. If

39:36

you liked this episode, you should check out my episode,

39:38

Imaginary Deaths, from 2018. I

39:41

talked with listeners about the deaths of fictional characters

39:44

that they never stopped mourning. My

39:46

assistant producer is Stephanie Billman. The

39:49

best way to support imaginary worlds is to donate

39:51

on Patreon.

39:52

At different levels, you get either free imaginary

39:54

world stickers, a mug, a t-shirt,

39:57

and a link to a Dropbox account, which is a

39:59

full-length interviews of every guest in every episode.

40:02

You can also get access to an ad-free version of the show

40:04

through Patreon, and you can buy an

40:07

ad-free subscription on Apple Podcasts.

40:10

You can subscribe to the show's newsletter at

40:12

imaginaryworldspodcast.org.