Legend of the Seeker - Canceled.

So word is now that's its no longer being shopped around for a new home, but is officially dead. This program in my estimation was a vast improvement over Goodkind's books. His books are no prize winners, they are riddled with grammatical mistakes, and is severely hampered by the authors seriousness about Randian philosophy. Basically, They aren't good. But he does have some fairly interesting characters, and in my estimation has his heart in the right place even if he chooses to express it through a philosophy I personally find bizarre that so many people invest so much in it. Its based on a science fiction novel more or less.. so its only a small step away from Scientology.

But the TV show, helmed by Sam Raimi, took what was good, and attempted to rebuild the whole Sword of Truth series without some of the more pernicious elements of Goodkind's books. I felt it did a pretty good job of it, Especially with the second season.

The first season, roughly adapted the first book, Wizard's First Rule. It introduced us to the main characters, and left out some of the odd ones, like the outrageously silly named Witch and her False Seeker Dobby House Elf Wannabe. And the also unfortunately named Mud People, who in Goodkind's world are literally a group of people who live in and around a lot of mud.. rather than a Racial Epithet.

On the other hand, the first season also added in quite a few " Filler " episodes, which were not adapted from the book. This produced the odd effect of forcing a 670 page book to cover 22, 45 minute episodes. It wore Thin. But it was enough of a success to get a second season greenlit. Season 2, roughly adapted the second and third books, Stone of Tears, and Blood of the Fold. Stone of Tears already is 200 pages longer than Wizard's, even if Blood is 200 pages less. I found the second season to move at a far better pace, with less filler, and more emphasis on the over all story. But obviously, not everyone felt that it was such a good idea to do away with the episodes by committee and their goofy humour and side plots. And the show was told that it wasn't going to have a 3rd season on that network. So the producers shopped around, and found no one else wanted it either.

I think Personally its a shame, the show it self was stuck with a really bad time slot on the east coast.. 11am on Sunday morning with a re-run at 6pm sunday evening.. times when a still considerable percent of the American people go to church, or are otherwise not watching television. So I'm thinking maybe that had something to do with it too.

Either way, it was a neat experiment that lasted longer than I expected it to, even if I did hope it would adapt all 11 of the books (soon to be 14). Its just a shame that it couldn't have been done better, and stayed around for a while longer. It just proves that for every step forward that Fantasy and Sci-Fi make, the successes are still treated as flukes.