We’re Still Not Over These 7 NBC Sci-Fi Series Being Cancelled Way Too Soon

All things end, and this is especially true for television series. Every series eventually comes to an end, sometimes after many seasons and sometimes after only a few. However, not every ending comes naturally. While some television series are allowed to tell their full stories before the end, a great many others have their time and tales cut short — especially when it comes to sci-fi. Many sci-fi series end up getting the axe well before they should, leaving stories untold and questions unanswered.

While every network can point to a sci-fi series that was cancelled too soon, NBC seems to have quite a few more than others. The network has, especially in more recent years, offered viewers a wide range of interesting and inventive sci-fi series, but they’ve also taken them away leaving fans frustrated and wondering what could have been.  Here are seven such series that the network ended that we’re still not over.

7) Timeless

Timeless wasn’t just cancelled too soon; it was cancelled too soon twice. Airing for 2 seasons between 2016 and 2018, Timeless was a time travel sci-fi series that followed a team attempting to stop a mysterious organization from using time travel to change the course of history after someone steals an experimental time machine. The series starred Abigail Spencer, Matt Lanter, and Malcolm Barrett. The series was interesting and adventurous, part thriller and all sci-fi. It earned a devoted fanbase over its short run.

Timeless was originally cancelled after just one season, but that cancellation was revered a mere three days later after negotiations with Sony Pictures Studios. However, the series was cancelled a second time after its second season. Fortunately for fans, NBC ordered a two-part final just one month after the final cancellation, allowing Timeless to wrap up its story. The series is a rare case of a cancellation reversal and an even more unusual case of a cancelled series being able to wrap up its story after the final regular episode aired.

6) Quantum Leap (2022)

NBC’s 2022 Quantum Leap reboot should have been a sure thing. Less a true reboot and more of a follow up to the iconic 1980s series of the same name, the modern Quantum Leap was set 30 years after the end of the first series and followed a new team as they tried to recreate the Quantum Leap accelerator to rescue Dr. Samuel Beckett from the past. However, Dr. Ben Song, lead physicist for the new project, ends up stuck in the past just like Beckett.

A new approach to a beloved, nostalgic show made Quantum Leap seem like a great idea and the modernization was interesting, but NBC cancelled the series right after the conclusion of its second season, citing low ratings. The problem with this cancellation is Quantum Leap never had the chance to fully develop. Admittedly, the show was still finding its footing well into its second season, but that actually worked given the disorienting nature of leaping. The show was also not done any favors by the WGA and SAG strikes in 2023.

5) Debris

Lasting just one season, 2021’s Debris is a cancelled-too-soon sci-fi series on NBC that you probably either never heard of or completely forgot about. The series followed an international task force whose job is to identify and collect the debris of an alien spacecraft that has been falling across Earth for the last six months after they’re found to have weird and frequently deadly effects. However, CIA operative Bryan Beneventi and MI6 operative Finola Jones aren’t the only ones looking for the debris; others are looking for those pieces for themselves.

The show performed well with critics and the idea of strange alien debris and a global hunt to keep it from essentially falling into the wrong hands is a fascinating premise. However, while the show had plenty of spooky vibes, the overall mystery was seen as too ambiguous and it just didn’t land well enough in its first season for NBC to keep it going, which is unfortunate as things had really started to ramp up with the debris and the extremist group trying to get their hands on it. The series ended on a cliffhanger.

4) Revolution

The second of Supernatural creator Eric Kripke’s shows to be on this list (the other is Timeless), we are especially still upset about how Revolution went down. Debuting in 2012, Revolution was set in a post-apocalyptic near future 2027 where, 15 years prior, the world was hit with a permanent, global, electrical-power blackout. In this powerless future, a man wears a pendant around his neck that is the key to what actually happened to cause the blackout and may be the key to reversing it. When a militia kills him, the man’s daughter teams up with unlikely allies to find out the truth and reclaim the future.

There were a lot of really interesting elements to Revolution. You have the political aspect of it, with the former North American countries now divided up into six different republics, the human element of it as people have adapted to an electricity-free world, and then you have the bigger drama of it as it’s revealed that the blackout was caused by the American government, who deployed weaponized technology that caused it and that the pendants have the ability to counteract that technology and restore power. The first season, while not a critical success, did well enough to earn Revolution a second season, but it was cancelled after that leaving a lot of questions unanswered. What would have been the third season of the series eventually got a digital comic from DC concluding the story, but we would have rather seen it play out on screen.

3) Believe

2013’s Believe didn’t even get a chance to finish its first and only season before being cancelled by NBC. Believe followed a little girl named Bo who was born with supernatural abilities that she couldn’t control. As her powers evolved, her caretakers turned to an outsider for help which leads to a wrongfully convicted death row inmate being brought on as her protector and the two of them trying to stay one step ahead of evil forces after Bo.

While the show’s premise is a little convoluted, it was how the show was presented that ultimately marked it for an early end. The series was cancelled before its 10th episode and while episodes 10, 11, and 12 did air, the actual season finale was never broadcast in the United States — it was broadcast as the 13the episode in New Zealand and aired in a different order in other countries.

2) La Brea

La Brea has the distinction of lasting the longest of any of the shows on this list, as it ran for 3 full seasons between 2021 and 2024. The premise is an intriguing one. A massive sinkhole opens up in the middle of Los Angeles near the La Brea Tar Pits and Wilshire Boulevard, pulling in people, vehicles, and buildings in in the process. Those pulled inside find themselves trapped in a strange, primeval land where they’re forced to come together to survive.

What made La Brea so cool is that this wasn’t just a “world beneath our world” sort of story. As the series unfolded, it turned out that the sinkholes were actually spacetime portals sending people back to 10,000 BC and, more than that, the sinkhole portals were the result of a project to deal with depleted resources and figure out how to de-extinct things. What started out as a strange world sort of story turned out to be a complex time travel thriller. The series was cancelled in its third season but did get to have a proper finale wrapping up the story.

1) The Event

Aliens, government conspiracy, action, adventure, and political allegory, The Event had it all. Airing for just one season between 2010 and 2011, The Event followed a group of extraterrestrials who originally crashed in Alaska in the 1940s. Some were detained by the government while others assimilated into the population. When regular guy Sean Walker starts investigating the disappearance of his fiancée, he finds himself in the middle of the biggest cover-up in American history with huge implications for all of mankind.

The series was complicated and twisty, making it a great thriller mystery with a lot of surprising turns that kept viewers guessing week to week. and the truth about what the aliens really want is a turn most viewers wouldn’t see coming. While the series was cancelled because of declining ratings as the season continued and ended with a major cliffhanger, that cliffhanger is still surprisingly satisfying — we just still wish there had been more.

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