The Death Of Superman?

by Simon Plumbe

Prior to the current smash hit, Smallville, we had a fairly successful television outing for the Man Of Steel in the shape of Lois & Clark: The New Adventures Of Superman. However, despite having some great characters, it went through a rather turbulent time during its last couple of seasons to the extent that, after four seasons the series was cancelled. Although it was scheduled to run for at least five seasons (ABC signing a deal for two further years after the show's third year), it became apparent that ABC television had managed to back out of their agreement, ending the show.

Considering the apparent popularity of the series, why is it that ABC wanted it cancelled? Well, in the States, viewing figures for the series had slumped dramatically over the last couple of years on air. While it still had a strong loyal following, it was no longer attracting the audience it used to. Despite doing reasonably well in the viewing figure stakes, whenever a network sees a drop, they quickly panic and shows soon disappear from the schedules.

But if the show was still popular, why did its ratings start to decline? If we take a closer look at the show's fourth and final season, you can begin to see why from the drop in the quality of the episodes that were produced.

The most notable change to the series of late was the departure of Deborah Joy Levine as Producer (although she was still involved in an Executive Producer position). While no show can credit its success to a single individual, the high standards set in the early seasons of Lois & Clark have been repeated in Deborah Levine's subsequent TV project, Early Edition which was another stunning show, and had more than a passing similarity to Quantum Leap.

It seemed as if all of her interest was in Early Edition and that she no longer cared for Lois & Clark. Certainly, from the quality offered by the fourth season, it didn't appear to be produced by people with any real passion for the series, with the exception of the cast.

First of all, the final season seemed to suffer a great deal in terms of originality. Many of the episodes were either inspired by, or seemed to be carbon copies of episodes from the old Superboy series from the 80's, and it pains me to say it, but they were done much better first time around.

Following this, we had the introduction to the series of comic character Mxyzptlk (try saying that when you're drunk!) in the episode "Twas The Night Before Mxymas". The only problem is that of the character himself (there is no way I'm typing his name in more than once!!). In the comics, stories featuring him were all too predictable, with the entire plot revolving around Superman trying to get you-know-who to say his name backwards. Sure, this may have been fine in the comic books in the 80's, but it certainly wasn't suited for 90's televsion and comics.

But it didn't end there. Right from the early episodes, it was apparent that the production team had run out of ideas. We saw once again the return of Tempus and H G Wells early on. Don't get me wrong here, I'm not knocking the return of popular characters to any series - it's worked well enough with Bester (Walter Koenig) in Babylon 5, and Q (John de Lancie) in various Star Trek shows. However, the Tempus/Wells combination seems to be running a little dry. Every episode you know that Tempus is just trying to kill Superman, to change the future to his own twisted vision. What made things worse in this final season was the Tempus overkill when he returned once more for the two-parter "Meet John Doe" and "Lois And Clarks". Once is bad enough, but for a character that isn't too popular anyway, three episodes is excessive.

Then there were the episodes that strayed from the format of the show in becoming ridiculous. "Ghosts" was a limp, uninspiring ghost story that seemed out-of-place (and could have been written for ANY SF/Fantasy show), and "Toy Story" which was childish, inane, and bland.

Granted, the series did have some good episodes, including "AKA Superman" and the three-part Lex Luthor story, but even this was drawing on past Superman concepts to try and boost the shows ratings.

Ultimately, too much time during the season was spent re-hashing old ideas, re-using old characters, and spending far too much time on the relationship between Lois and Clark. Some storylines that could have been resolved in one or two episodes were stretched out for the entire season, and the series became bogged down with over-the-top American sentimentality. Finally, the ending of the series was predictable and just left the viewer with unnecessary questions that are now going to be left unresolved. There is no room for speculation on what happened in the final episode - it just happened.

To be honest, if the show was still up to the standards of earlier seasons then I would be disappointed to have seen it end, but if further seasons meant more of the same stories we have seen during season four then I am more than relieved to see its cancellation before it declined any further.