List of Programs Broadcast By UPN - Drama/Sci-fi

Drama/Sci-fi

• All Souls (2001) - The program was cancelled in late August 2001 due to low ratings.

• The Beat (2000) - The Beat was produced by Viacom Productions and premiered on March 21, 2000 and ended after only six episodes a month later on April 25. Seven additional episodes were produced although they have never aired.

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer (2001-2003, also on The WB) - Buffy the Vampire Slayer first aired on March 10, 1997, (as a mid season replacement for the show Savannah) on the WB network, and played a key role in the growth of the Warner Bros. television network in its early years. After five seasons, it transferred to the United Paramount Network (UPN) for its final two seasons. While the seventh season was still being broadcast, Sarah Michelle Gellar told Entertainment Weekly she was not going to sign on for an eighth year; "When we started to have such a strong year this year, I thought: 'This is how I want to go out, on top, at our best." Whedon and UPN gave some considerations to production of a spin-off series that would not require Gellar, including a rumored Faith series, but nothing came of those plans. As previously mentioned, Buffy helped put The WB on the ratings map, but by the time the series landed at UPN in 2001, viewing figures had fallen. Buffy the Vampire Slayer had a series high during the third season with 5.3 million viewers, this probably due to the fact that both Gellar and Hannigan had hit movies out during the season (Cruel Intentions and American Pie respectively) and a series low with 3.6 million during the seventh season. The show's series finale "Chosen" pulled in a season high of 4.9 million viewers on the UPN network. Buffy did not compete with shows on the big four networks (CBS, ABC, NBC, and Fox), but The WB was impressed with the young audience that the show was bringing in. Because of this, The WB ordered a full season of 22 episodes for the series' second season. After the episode "Surprise", which was watched by 8.2 million people, Buffy was moved from Monday at 9 pm to launch The WB's new night of programming on Tuesday. Due to its large success in that time slot, it remained on Tuesdays at 8 pm for the remainder of its original run. With its new timeslot on The WB, the show quickly climbed to the top of The WB ratings and became one of their highest-rated shows for the remainder of its time on the network. The show always placed in the top 3, usually only coming in behind 7th Heaven. Between seasons three and five, Buffy flip-flopped with Dawson's Creek and Charmed as the network's second highest-rated show. In the 2001–2002 season, the show had moved to UPN after a negotiation dispute with The WB. While it was still one of their highest rated shows on their network, The WB felt that the show had already peaked and was not worth giving a salary increase to the cast and crew. UPN on the other hand, had strong faith in the series and quickly grabbed it along with Roswell. UPN dedicated a two-hour premiere to the series to help re-launch it.

• The Burning Zone (1996-1997) - It ran for 19 episodes.

• Deadly Games (1995) - The series was produced by Viacom Productions (1995-aired episodes also had the logo of Paramount Television at the end).

• Freedom (2000) - There were 12 episodes filmed (actually 13, as the pilot eventually broadcast had been reshot with somewhat different casting) but only 7 were aired in the US. Some episodes were further aired internationally, and the full series is still occasionally broadcast in Brazil.

• Haunted (2002) - The program was canceled in November 2002 due to low ratings. As a result, only seven of the completed episodes were aired. However, all eleven filmed episodes have subsequently been shown in international airings of the show.

• Jake 2.0 (2003) - The series was canceled on January 14, 2004 due to low ratings, leaving four episodes unaired in the United States. In the United Kingdom, all the episodes aired on Sky1.

• Kevin Hill (2004-2005) - Although critically acclaimed, Kevin Hill failed to attract sufficient ratings to be renewed after its first season. The series was canceled during a re-organization of UPN programming that occurred in the spring of 2005 as the low-rated network shifted its demographic aim, and because of that, UPN did not renew it for a second season.

• Live Shot (1995) - Most notable in the show's run was an early use of an ongoing story arc centering around the murder of a Los Angeles socialite. As the show was canceled with little warning, the story arc was never resolved. Also, sports reporter Lou Waller came out of the closet in the last act of the last episode to air. Consequently, the fallout of this event was never shown.

• Legacy (1998-1999) - Although Legacy was critically acclaimed, it was soon cancelled because of low ratings. UPN scheduled the program on Friday, a night of lower viewership.

• Legend (1995) - Twelve episodes were aired, including the 2-hour pilot episode. Despite critical praise, this program aired during UPN's first year of existence and after a change in network management, along with lower than expected ratings, the show was canceled along with almost every other program aired on the UPN lineup.

• Level 9 (2000-2001) - Thirteen episodes were produced, ten of which were aired on UPN, before the program was canceled in January 2001 due to low ratings. In August 2006, the Sci-Fi Channel acquired rerun rights to the series which was added to their schedule in June 2007. Sci-Fi aired the episodes never shown by UPN in February 2008.

• The Love Boat: The Next Wave (1998-1999)

• Marker (1995) - The show lasted for 13 episodes and was advertised with the tagline: "America's Coolest Hero."

• Mercy Point (1998-1999) - Mercy Point' ran from the fall of 1998 to the midsummer of 1999 on UPN.

• Nowhere Man (1995-1996) - Created by Lawrence Hertzog, the series aired Monday nights on UPN. Despite critical acclaim, including TV Guide's label of "The season's coolest hit," the show was cancelled after only one season.

• The Outer Limits (2005-2006)

• Platinum (2004)

• Roswell (2001-2002, also on The WB) - The series premiered on October 6, 1999 on The WB Television Network in the United States to generally favorable reviews. Although it quickly gained an outspoken fanbase, the series ratings declined on and off which kept the show under constant threat of cancellation. In response to the problems the series had with ratings during its first season, The WB ordered the relationship-driven standalone episodes of the early first season to be replaced with more science fiction themes and multi-episode plot arcs. Starting with the second season, which was ordered by the network after a fierce fan-driven campaign involving bottles of Tabasco sauce—a favorite condiment of the show's alien characters—being sent to the network's offices, veteran science fiction writer Ronald D. Moore was brought in to join Katims as an executive producer and showrunner and to further develop the science fiction elements of the show. Not all fans responded favorably to the shift to more science fiction-driven storylines during the second season and the ratings continued to disappoint WB, causing the network to finally cancel the show on May 15, 2001, after the show's second season finale, a move widely anticipated due to the sagging ratings. 20th Century Fox (the studio that produced the show) was able to persuade UPN to pick it up for a third season as a package deal when UPN outbid The WB for one of its popular flagship series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. During the 2001 - 2002 television season, Roswell, in its third season, aired directly after Buffy on Tuesday nights on UPN, though it was unable to hold on to the audience Buffy provided as a lead-in. This eventually resulted in the show's cancellation from UPN as well. Roswell aired its final episode on May 14, 2002.

• Secret Agent Man (2000) - Only 12 episodes were broadcast before the series was cancelled.

• The Sentinel (1996-1999) - The Sentinel was canceled after 3 seasons by UPN, with the last episode being a big cliffhanger with Blair's life in the balance. An intense fan campaign convinced UPN to give the series a further half a season to end the series properly.The Sentinel was canceled after 3 seasons by UPN, with the last episode being a big cliffhanger with Blair's life in the balance. An intense fan campaign convinced UPN to give the series a further half a season to end the series properly.

• Seven Days (1998-2001)

• Sex, Love & Secrets (2005) - The program was announced as Sex, Lies and Secrets when UPN released the Fall schedule, but the title was changed two months later to replace Lies with Love. Sex, Love & Secrets aired in the timeslot that belonged to Veronica Mars during the 2004-2005 television season; 9-10 p.m. on Tuesday nights. Unlike Veronica Mars, which had minor promotion and great reviews during its first season, Sex, Love & Secrets had neither advertising nor positive reviews behind it. As a result, when the show premiered on September 27, 2005, it garnered an embarrassing 1.2/2 rating. Next week the show improved slightly to a 1.5/2. At that point UPN pulled the show from production. UPN kept the show on for two more weeks, with it averaging a 1.3/2 in those two weeks. With six episodes left unaired, UPN took the show off its schedule entirely. The show ended up rated 155th out of 156 shows in the 2005-2006 television season, barely outranking its timeslot replacement before Veronica Mars was shifted back to Tuesday nights for the rest of the season, Get This Party Started. The unaired episodes eventually aired during a two-year syndication run over the HD-exclusive Universal HD cable channel.

• South Beach (2006) - The show was one of the lowest-rated on television. It ranked 152nd out of the 156 original series produced for network television in the 2005-2006 season. South Beach was canceled when it was announced that the new The WB/UPN hybrid network, The CW, would not renew the show for additional seasons. It was the final show produced by Paramount Television.

• Special Unit 2 (2001-2002) - Special Unit 2 aired on UPN for two seasons from April 2001 through February 2002.

• Star Trek: Enterprise (2001-2005) - Enterprise premiered on September 26, 2001. The pilot episode, "Broken Bow", takes place in the year 2151, halfway between the 21st-century events shown in the movie Star Trek: First Contact and the original Star Trek television series. Low ratings prompted UPN to cancel Star Trek: Enterprise on February 2, 2005, but the network allowed the series to complete its fourth season. The final episode aired on May 13, 2005. After a run of four seasons and 98 episodes, it was the first Star Trek series since the original Star Trek to have been canceled by its network rather than finished by its producers. It is also the last series in an 18-year run of back-to-back new Star Trek shows beginning with Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1987. By the third season, ratings were continually declining, and the threat of cancellation loomed over Star Trek: Enterprise. This, along with the poor box office performance in 2002 of the film Star Trek Nemesis, cast an uncertain light upon the future of the Star Trek franchise in general. Fans launched a letter writing campaign similar to the one that saved the third season of the Original Series. On May 20, 2004, it was announced that Enterprise had been renewed for a fourth season, but that the show would move from Wednesday to Friday nights. This move echoed the rescheduling of the original Star Trek to a Friday night time slot for its third season prior to its ultimate cancellation, as Friday nights have traditionally been considered "death row" for a major TV production. Hired as a writer during the third season, Manny Coto was promoted to co-executive producer, becoming the series showrunner for the fourth season. Coto decided to retain the "arc" concept of season 3, but reduce it from one season-long arc to several "mini-arcs" of two or three episodes, with few standalones. The producers attempted to attract viewers by terminating a long-running story arc (the Temporal Cold War) and scheduling numerous episodes that served as prequels to storylines from The Original Series and The Next Generation. Beginning in the summer of 2004, and continuing throughout the fourth season, there were reports that William Shatner would reprise the role of James T. Kirk or perhaps an ancestor in the series, but an agreement could not be reached. The fourth season got off to a slow start in the ratings on October 8, 2004, due to the Friday time-slot, preemptions by local sports in some markets, and by coverage of the second presidential debate between George W. Bush and John Kerry in others. As well, Enterprise fans continued to indicate they chose to watch the weekend showing rather than the Friday broadcast, or chose to "time-shift" the program using their VCR or DVR equipment. In October 2004, it was announced that Enterprise was the 25th most popular Season Pass on the TiVo television recording system in the United States. Speculation as to the future of the series came to an end on February 2, 2005, when UPN announced the series had been cancelled and its final episode would air on Friday, May 13, 2005. Fan groups such as "Save Enterprise" and "TrekUnited" joined forces and announced a drive to raise money to finance a further season of Enterprise. Approximately $30 million was the goal of the campaign, based upon estimates of the cost for a full season cited by John Billingsley and others. In addition, Washington, D.C. lobbyist Dan Jensen circulated a letter on Capitol Hill in an effort to appeal to the sentiments of legislators. As a result, then Florida Congressman Mark Foley (R) agreed to sign the letter. The Washington "lobbying" effort garnered considerable press, and had a feature article on the front page of Roll Call. Production of the fourth season concluded on March 8, 2005, and by the end of the month, Startrek.com was reporting the Enterprise sets had been taken down, marking the first time that Stage 9 at Paramount Studios has been without Star Trek sets since the late 1970s. The website did not indicate whether the sets have been preserved in storage (the industry term being 'fold-and-hold') or if they have been destroyed. As of April 13, 2005, Paramount and UPN remained adamant that the cancellation of the series was final and that the studio was not interested in continuing the current incarnation of Star Trek. TrekUnited officials, however, still claimed to be in talks with Paramount over the future of the series at the time. The website IGN Filmforce, reported on rumors Paramount had actually decided to cancel Enterprise after its fourth season as early as midway through the second year, quoted an unidentified "executive involved with Enterprise" as saying this scenario was "very likely". Although widely reported as the death knell of the Star Trek franchise, the cancellation of Enterprise was followed within months by the announcement that Paramount was in pre-production on an 11th Star Trek feature film. After a false start involving Berman which would have set the film in a time period after the events of Enterprise but before TOS, Paramount recruited a new producing and writing team, which ultimately led to the release of a new Star Trek film in May 2009. Like Enterprise, the new film (which did contain an indirect reference to the series: Scotty believes he has been "exiled" to the remote Starfleet outpost, where Kirk and the older Spock encounter him, as punishment for losing Admiral Archer's beagle - whom Kirk is quite familiar with - in a transporter mishap) also adopted a prequel concept, with a different approach. UPN continued to air reruns of Enterprise for only a month after the series finale, with the last network-broadcast episode, "In a Mirror, Darkly" (Part II), airing on June 11, 2005 – this despite initial announcements that reruns would continue throughout the summer. With disruptions from local sports programming, many areas never had the opportunity to see all the episodes, which had been aired elsewhere.

• Star Trek: Voyager (1995-2001) - Voyager was produced to launch UPN, a television network planned by Paramount. This was the second time that Paramount had considered launching a network anchored by a Star Trek show: the studio planned to launch a network showcasing Star Trek: Phase II in 1977. Initial work on Voyager started in 1993, and seeds for the show's backstory, including the development of the Maquis, were placed in several Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episodes. Voyager was shot on the stages The Next Generation had used and the pilot, "Caretaker", was shot in September 1994. Around that time, Paramount was sold to Viacom, making Voyager the first Star Trek TV series to premiere after the sale concluded.

• The Strip (1999-2000) - The series was cancelled after nine episodes, with a tenth episode airing months later in July 2000.

• Swift Justice (1996) - Swift Justice aired on UPN from March 13, 1996 to July 31, 1996.

• The Twilight Zone (2002-2003) - Broadcast in an hour format with two half-hour stories, it was canceled after one season.

• The Watcher (1995) - The series aired Tuesday night at 9:00 p.m Eastern time during the network's inaugural season.

• Veronica Mars (2004-2006, also on The CW) - The series premiered on September 22, 2004, during television network UPN's final two years, and ended on May 22, 2007, after a season on UPN's successor, The CW Television Network. The original pilot filmed was darker in tone than the one aired. Thomas intended to take the script to FX, HBO or Showtime, but gave UPN "credit" as they only wanted it a bit lighter to match their standards and practices. There was also a lengthy debate as to whether Veronica could be a rape victim; UPN eventually consented. In the aired version of the pilot, Lilly Kane was found by the pool in the same spot where she was murdered. However, Thomas stated that Lilly's body was originally going to be found in the ocean, and he had a plan for events which led to Lilly's body being dumped. When Thomas pitched the idea to UPN, the network felt that it was "too dark and creepy" for Jake Kane to dispose of his daughter's body to protect his son, and the idea was changed. In January 2007, Dawn Ostroff announced that while she was pleased with the gradual ratings improvement of Veronica Mars, the series would be put on hiatus after the February sweeps to air a new reality series, Pussycat Dolls Present. When the hiatus ended, the series returned for the last five episodes of the season with non-serialized plotlines. At the 2007 CW Upfront, Ostroff announced that Veronica Mars was not part of the new primetime lineup and was "not coming back". Thomas created a trailer that took place four years after the third season finale, with the working title "Veronica in the FBI", and released it on the third season DVD. When asked if the FBI concept could happen, Ostroff said that the series was probably completely gone "in any form". Ostroff also said that Kristen Bell and Rob Thomas might collaborate on another project for the CW network. In June 2007, TV Guide writer Michael Ausiello confirmed that the cancellation of Veronica Mars was official.