To be honest, I think 'Sanctuary' killed itself when they killed off Ashley
I had the strong feeling that someone or some group within the network didn't like Emilie and/or two strong women on TV.
All the drama surrounding her "death", the backpedaling of the showrunners up the point where they simply pointed to the networks, but had to say "we all came to the same conclusion" to save face (which clearly wasn't their idea). Later Amanda said she fought this, but "lost". Didn't believe it either.
Then they came up with the trope, that "nobody dies in Scifi", but didn't really bring her back, which means someone simply didn't like her or the concept.
The same nonsense happened on Star Gate Atlantis, where they simply demoted Teri Higginson after a very strong first season, to script girl and command robot. When she started to get annoyed by the recycled scripts from Star Gate, she got the boot in the neck and then was removed.
To safe face, again, they brought in Tapping, who was day-by-day filming Sanctuary, so slept half of the time on camera. (Rewatch her scenes in the office, its ridiculous).
It seems, TV in the double zero years was a place of lots of behind the scenes drama, without any reason!
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!!!deleted!!! (62673455)
9 years ago
I had the strong feeling that someone or some group within the network didn't like Emilie and/or two strong women on TV.
I believe it might have been the latter. From what I have heard from people who have met Emilie she is very friendly and down to earth and TV networks have a history of cancelling good shows with strong female characters. The reason I can recall them saying was Ashley was too smart and too deeply involved in the 'Sanctuary' universe and they wanted to replace her with a character that was new to everything and not as experienced but then the character they brought in was too experienced with everything and people called her a know-it-all. I wasn't a fan of her replacement and she was criticised a lot online but I think some of the extreme fans were unfair on the actress because she was only doing her job.
I have heard other rumours about Amanda being behind Ashley's demise because she was jealous of the attention Emilie Ullerup was getting from the fans but I honestly don't know what to believe and I just think they made a big mistake getting rid of Ashley because I liked her character.
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michinine
9 years ago
I honestly don't know what to believe and I just think they made a big mistake getting rid of Ashley because I liked her character.
I liked her too, but there seem to be still a trope about not wanting strong women on TV.
The last stunt was someone on Criminal Minds trying to
completely replace all the women on the show with (maybe cheaper?) others.
In this case, the fabulous Rachel Nichols was cast for the absolute fan fav that was Paget Brewster. She got the bulk of the hate from fans, because she was cast a newbie (which was nonsense for a serious top of the line department) and then was given like 3 minutes of screentime. The men had to take up the sleeve.
They then pulled an 180, got the girls back. Paget didn't want to, but they used some contract necromancy to force her to work again on the show.
Again it looked liked someone doesn't really wanted strong women on TV, which makes absolute no sense. If the script, the actor and setup is right, this absolutely works.
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!!!deleted!!! (62673455)
9 years ago
I agree and it is annoying because many shows with strong female leads in the past have been highly successful and I am not sure if you watched ‘Alias’ but that had a huge fan base here in Australia and a lot of people I know loved the Sydney Bristow character. Jennifer Garner even did most of her own stunts in that and if you watch the bonus features on the DVDs of that show it shows her doing some of them and she did things Kiefer Sutherland wouldn’t even do for ‘24’ and was very impressive and I think it is a real shame she is being wasted now in Romantic Comedies because before she left ‘Alias’ in 2005 she said she said she wanted to do action films. Rachel Nichols is a great actress and she was originally set to take Jennifer Garner’s spot in ‘Alias’ and Season 6 was going to have her character as the main star but the network told JJ Abrams they wouldn’t renew it unless Jennifer Garner was in it.
I was disappointed Continuum was cancelled last year because she was good as Keira but I heard she might be getting a leading role in another Sci Fi TV show this year and I hope the rumours of that are true because she is too good to be wasted as a guest star in ‘Chicago Fire.’ I think she would be great as Barbara Gordon/Batgirl in a Batgirl TV show or one of the new Batman movies and I heard her say in an interview a few years back she would like to play a superhero. There is going to be a Hack/Slash TV show starting this year or early next year that is going to be based on the comic books and I don’t know if you have ever read them but they are like an adult version of ‘Buffy’ and the main star Cassie travels around with her 7 foot friend Vlad (who looks like Jason Vorhees) saving people from slashers and she has taken on the likes of Chucky, Pinhead, Halloween Man, Freddy Kreuger, the Tall Man etc and kicked their asses.
One of the main reasons there is a trope about not wanting strong women on TV is because many of the network executives who make all the decisions are narrow minded men who hate strong women because they see them as competition and it is sad this type of thing still exists today in 2016 but my cousin is a Federal Police Officer and she has faced a lot of sexism over the years here and still sees it happening to young women officers so it isn’t surprising. My own Wife and sister have faced it too in their careers and if anybody says sexism no longer exists they are blind. I don’t know if you looked at the ‘Dark Matter’ board last year but the amount of hate ‘Two’ (Melissa O’Neil) got from most of the male members after she saved the team when they were captured was pathetic and there were a lot of threads about how the show was so emasculating for men and this was STILL after it was revealed she was half cyborg.
I don’t like it and it isn’t fair but both of us aren’t in any position to change it.
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