New to the show, have some questions:

I can't speak to why the show was canceled, but I can say that I got fed up and quit watching halfway through S3. Each season is completely different from the one that went before it and I just didn't like 3 at all.

I also can't say why the ratings are low on IMDb, but aren't they all? Most people refuse to rate anything a 10 and a lot of immature idiots rate things 1 just to be pissy.

The show isn't much like The X Files at all. It's very dark and morose for the most part, though Season Two was lightened up quite a bit since Morgan & Wong helmed it and they were responsible for most of the funniest TXF eps. I, personally, loved S2. It's the only season I own.

The X Files was far superior. Totally classic. Millennium remains not much more than a cult show, dearly loved by Ten Thirteen fans, and few others.
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there will be snark

The show was cancelled because the ratings were continually plumetting from Season 1 on. At the end of Season 3 it still had a larger viewership than many other shows, but ultimately Fox thought it wasn't enough. They had never been huge fans of the show anyway, they thought it was too dark and depressing.
Most TV shows on imdb have actually far too positive ratings, for example the underwhelming show "Haunted" (which btw. was scored by Mark Snow and produced by Kay Maher and Erin Reindl, who had worked on Millennium too) has a 7.1 rating. The thing is that most fans vote with a 9 or 10, hence even crappy shows with cult followings have high ratings. In case of Millennium the several seasons differ so much from each other that it might be difficult to rate the show as a whole, it is almost like 3 different shows. Some fans love Season 1, hate Season 2 or vice versa, this could explain the rating.
Regarding the statement that "The X-Files was far superior" I respectfully disagree. I did watch The X-Files as a teenager, back when it first aired in the 90's, but I've never really been a fan. Several years ago I bought some of the dvd sets to rewatch the show, but I couldn't get past season 2, somehow I felt bored by all the monster of the week episodes and although I admire the concept, the execution of the show was just too silly for me, or I guess it's simply not my cup of tea. I could never relate to Mulder or Scully as characters either. Frank Black on the other hand has such a beautiful humanity to him.
For me Millennium is the far superior show, especially Season 2 really pushed the boundaries.
In the end everybody has to decide for himself though. There are people who consider Millennium a catastrophic failure and it will always be overshadowed by The X-Files success, but that is one of the reasons I love the show, it's just smaller and more personal to me. The X-Files probably has millions of fans, while Millennium might have a few thousand fans, it was never this huge cultural phenomenon which was loved by everybody, you can discover it for yourself, which makes it special.




It looks like we are 100 percent certain that we are not sure.

The creators of the show had no longterm plan. This is blatantly evident as early as season 2. As a result, the show undergoes some pretty drastic changes as it goes on.

It already was a tough sell, mainstream audiences tend to shy away from stuff this dark and horrific. X-Files benefited from being a wide assortment of interesting things, from aliens to monsters to myths. Millennium is about serial killers and evil, that's it. Add to that the fact that the show never really knew what it wanted to be, and it's understandable why it not only had a hard time attracting new fans, but lost some of its former ones as the show went on.

It is comparable to X-Files. The first season is full of stuff that is just as dark and horrific as the most demented and chilling X-Files episodes. Season 3(and season 2 now that i remember it) introduces crappy, halfassed, nonsensical, convoluted conspiracy arcs involving dark shadowy psuedo-gov't organizations.

Many season 3 eps felt like storylines X-Files writers had passed on or decided was too low quality to use.

That's actually one of the things i think doomed the show. It lost its original charm and what made it so unique and special, and instead began to feel too much like a mere X-Files clone(and an inferior one at that).

Don't take my negative comments the wrong way, the show overrall is absolutely incredible. There are numerous misteps but ultimately the good FARRRRRRR outweighs the bad and the whole series is worth watching. Tremendous stuff. It remains the most horrifying and darkest show in history, excluding x-files of course.

It was cancelled because it never achieved the ratings that they hoped for, or that its sister show, The Xfiles, got

Unless Alpert's covered in bacon grease, I don't think Hugo can track anything.

I got the first two seasons in the mail. So far I really like the show. I'm only on episode 7 or 8 so far, but I really like the character of Frank Black. I will def finnish out the show, and so far I am really liking it. I hear that each season is vastly different than the previous, so I am excited to see what season two has in store. I miss shows that lasted 20-24 episodes per season, that are an hour each. This doesn't happen anymore unfortunately. Lame.

I think the other posters here pretty much covered the reasons why it was cancelled.

The IMDb rating of 7.8 takes into account every one of the 67 episodes of the show and gives an average overall rating for all three seasons. If you check the scores for individual episodes you'll find scores as high as 8.6 (quite a few in Season 2) and as low as 6.4 (Season 3s Human Essence). Season 3 in particular doesn't fare well, with only 4 episodes (out of 22) rated higher than 8, with an average per-episode score of between 7 to 7.4. This, of course, affects the final total score, despite the brilliant showing from Season 2 (13 episodes rated above 8 - five of which are rated 8.5 or higher).

I suppose, however, that at the end of the day, scores and tallies really don't matter if you love or hate a thing. I think a lot of people didn't like the show because of its tone and subject matter. And I think also that a lot of the show's fans became fed up with it during Season 3, when "Chip" Johannessen (who also wrote some forgettable X-Files episodes) took the reigns and effectively retconned a bunch of stuff from the previous seasons.





Knowledge is limited; imagination encircles the world.

Twassell,

First, welcome to the world of Millennium. Sit back and enjoy and amazing ride! I am one of the people behind the fan campaign Back to Frank Black and I'd like to answer your questions..

1) Several reasons why the show was cancelled. At the time, the pilot episode set a record at FOX when it aired. Almost 18 million viewers tuned in. Immediately after the pilot aired, FOX started getting calls from viewers who were disturbed or concerned about the content of the show. We all love the show, but Millennium is a very dark show and kind of a hard sell to many people. Also, the show was on Friday nights at 9pm which is called the death slot. As I said earlier, the ratings were huge the first episode, but as the season progressed, the numbers started to decline and the show pretty much stayed at the same level of viewers in the first season. Seasons 2 and 3 they ratings dipped more and FOX couldn't justify keeping it on the air. Also, Chris had a new show in the works called Harsh Realm that had ALOT of buzz in Hollywood at the time and it eventually took Millennium's spot. So you can say Carter helped cancel his own show. Harsh Realm only lasted 4 episodes and was cancelled. Frank Spotnitz also had a great comment a while back that at the time they didn't know this, but the television audience had started to erode and that was also a factor. Whew.

2)I never pay attention to fan ratings or things like that. :)

3) For me, the shows are different...Millennium is not a spin off which some people like to say. I think Millennium is the better written, produced and shot show between the two. The Mulder/Scully will they won't they scenario was just boring to me and took away from the show...i never actually got past season 4. Although Millennium is classified as a cult show, it is a MUCH better show than the Xfiles.

Also, each season is completely different. Season 1 is basically serial killer of the week, season 2 goes into more mythology and season 4 tries to bring it back to the procedural type show. Many people bash the third season. I say watch it and judge for yourself...I happen to be one of the people who really enjoyed season 3. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but it just really bug me when people say, oh that season sucked or that episode sucked. I would say, when was the last time you wrote a television episode?? Ugh.

Anyway, long response, but basically, enjoy the show!

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