I've just read over at Red Dwarf fansite Ganymede & Titan that the BBC will not be commissioning a third series of Hyperdrive. Naturally, the Dwarf fans out there are responding to this with celebratory hollering. I, on the other hand, see it as further evidence of the decline of Scifi-comedy on television.

Hyperdrive might not have been great television, especially when compared to Red Dwarf, but it was Scifi-comedy with fairly moderate production values. It wasn't awful, but it certainly wasn't good. Its cancellation is the latest in a long line of really bad Scifi-comedy events - the failure to secure funding for the Red Dwarf movie, the rejected proposal for a ninth series of said show, the cancellation of Futurama (although that's making a comeback), the disappointing Hitchhikers Guide movie, all of these things add up.

Scifi-comedy still has a presence on British radio with shows such as Nebulous and repeats of the recent Hitchhikers Guide radio shows based on the later books in the series, but I think that a desire for Scifi-comedy is mostly manifesting itself online in the form of Webtoons and webcomics. Jump Leads was itself born of a desire to see more Scifi-comedy out there. People still want to see Scifi-comedy, but it has to be good, and that's not happening at present.

Friday's filler strip will be a little late, as I had to spend time last night re-doing some of my work on the print edition of the comic. Sorry about that.