Have you ever watched the first episode of a science fiction TV show and then the rest of the series was mediocre or worse? Typically, the most money is spent on the first episode in a series, because that episode was developed as the pilot. Pilots are often produced on a speculative basis for network executives to either greenlight or nix.
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Nine noble families
If greenlighted, a budget would then be allocated for shooting the rest of the season. Budgets drive a lot of the factors regarding whether a TV show will succeed or fail. If you’ve ever read how high the budget was for Game of Thrones (website) per episode – from six to fifteen million dollars – it’s obvious why the fantasy drama was one of the most popular series ever. Cast with well-known stars, staffed with excellent writers, shot in exotic locations, lush costumes, stellar set design, special effects… The list could go on and on regarding why Games of Thrones was so wildly successful.
There have been hit television shows in the past which were literally produced on “shoestring budgets.” If you watch series online, you should check out the original Twilight Zone episodes for an amazing example of a low budget TV series which became a scifi cult hit. Similar to The Twilight Zone was The Outer Limits, a low budget scifi series from the 1960’s which gained popularity during its time on the air, but didn’t become a cult classic until the show went into syndication years later. Various networks offered marathons of Outer Limits episodes on TV before binge-watching online became the rage. Another inexpensively produced scifi classic was the original Lost in Space. But to illustrate that a big budget doesn’t always mean a big hit, the Netflix remake of Lost in Space flopped.
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Original shows
Possibly the cheapest scifi show of all time is the BBC’s Doctor Who (website). Cheap sets, cheesy costumes, tacky weapons on a budget of just a few thousand pounds per episode back in the 1960’s would hardly be predictive of a hit TV series, but the show inexplicably took off. Doctor Who fans now comprise a large devoted following. The current incarnation of the show is expected to run at least through 2020. One of the biggest jokes about the original show is that the extraterrestrial Daleks were constructed from sorry items like salvaged boxes and toilet plungers and Doctor Who cast members used laser guns which were made from egg whisks! If you like to watch series online, you can always find scifi shows available to stream for your viewing enjoyment!