If you could bring back a cancelled TV series, which would you choose?
Submitted by The Good Girl Gone Blog.
My first response to this is to say Crusade, J Michael Straczynski's sequel to Babylon 5, because it was wildly mishandled by TNT who had no idea what an amazing, lucrative, and potentially gigantic thing they held in their tenuous grasp.
But upon further reflection, I must say that, if only given one option, I would have to pick Chris Carter's Millennium. The mythology the series had begun to establish, which often overlapped into The X Files territory, was never fully realised and the end of the third and, sadly, final season left many possibilities forever unexplored.
I have always seen the journey of Frank Black as the classic Hero's Journey as defined by Joseph Campbell, with season one being, obviously, The Departure, taking us from the Call to Adventure to roughly the crossing of the First Threshold, where Frank's life began to shift with the introduction of Lucy Butler, arguably one of the best adversaries an FBI Profiler could have - a personification of absolute purest evil.
Season two began the final phase of The Departure and delved deep into The Initiation, where not only did the series take a radical shift in style and substance from the previous season, but we were immersed in the traditions of The Millennium Group and many of their beliefs and secrets began to be revealed. The culmination of the season two finale, The Time Is Now, took Frank (in my estimation) to the stage of Atonement which left him almost irrevocably transformed.
The third season - largely concentrated on the Refusal of The Return - again shifted in style and content as Frank began a new life and a new career. But the past continued to haunt him and once-trusted allies became potential enemies. The season (and series) finale, Goodbye To All That, saw Frank facing The Magic Flight, which easily left four steps of the Hero's Journey left to explore and many questions left unanswered.
There have been rumours that there will be a Millennium feature film, now that Chris Carter has given us the last instalment of The X Files. And yet, as incredible as that idea is to me, I still think I'd rather see the final part of Frank's journey played out in a longer format.
A film can hardly begin to explore the terrifying nature of Lucy Butler and her ultimate goal and still have time to reveal who lies dead in Peter Watts' study, what was in the files Frank has in his possession, which side will Emma finally choose in light of discovering what has happened to her father, will Frank continue working outside of the protection of both The Group and the FBI, and so many other threads left dangling as Frank and Jordan drove away...
