Mercy Point Online

This was an interesting show, no way around it. Sort of a cross between Star Trek and ER. Unfortunately, it was cancelled! Isn't that always the way? Put an intriguing show on the air and then dump it just because it doesn't take off right away. I only caught the last several episodes in July 1999.

When I contacted my local UPN station, they said that when the show originally aired in the fall of 1998, it received "very low ratings." They filled me in that the network aired the episodes I saw to fulfill its commitment to the producers. Interestingly, however, they noted that "it is always possible that a cable network (like the Sci-Fi Channel) will pick it up."

Keep your fingers crossed. Joe Morton was great. I can't remember having seen him in anything except "Terminator 2: Judgement Day." The entire cast was doing a great job, from what I could tell.

Agree or disagree? Feel free to e-mail me.

The great tragedy of UPN and WB is that they sucked out all the creative air in the room provided by a lot of the really imaginative stuff we were seeing in syndication in the early nineties, and replaced it with the "too many studio suits schlock" that the main three networks were still producing and still produce to this day.

The "Neat Idea" behind UPN was that they were going to create this network with a new Star Trek show at the center of it's content. But the problem was, they had to fill the rest of a schedule with content as well.

So let's do a story about a hospital on a space station. Okay, you had Deep Space Nine and Babylon 5 running at about the same time, but both scheduled to come to an end soon.

What you got was a show that recycled every Medical Show Cliché imaginable into a Science Fiction slant. The old, "Anti-android bigot gets her life saved by an android." or "Injured athlete life is saved, but she has to adapt to not being the same anymore." We saw these clichés on M*A*S*H and every other medical show... and they were barely interesting then.