Admittedly, I’ve only seen about 20 minutes of the show, and as of yet, I’m thinking I was correct to assume so. But I’m open to find out if the show is worth checking out. Is it just another scifi “original” series (ie ripoff?) from the station who hasn’t produced quality original content since SG-1? After peeling away the bad acting, cheesy writing, and shaky camera work, is there a nugget of good story underneath? Let me know in the comments below!

I’ve been able to forgive the SciFi channel for many things over the years. Their silly quasi- original monster movies, for one. Or the fact that they only play Star Trek: Next Generation on Mondays. Even that ridiculous looking vampire detective show my brother is always talking about, that I’m sure has the words night and/or moon in the title. But their newest move, at last, has managed to drive the proverbial wooden stake home.

As you’ve no doubt seen lately, they no longer work under the above mentioned moniker. Instead, they’re now functioning under the puerilely phonetic Syfy… a perfectly framed representation of the fact that even this cherished channel is acquiescing to America’s new wave of marketing mishaps.

Like Pizza Hut, for example, which is now simply known as The Hut. Why? Who wants to eat at a Hut? When the concept of a Hut was once modified by the promise of Pizza… perhaps. But now the only imagery that comes to mind is of a rough and tumble dive nestled somewhere close to a dying river, constructed of mismatched pieces of wood and perhaps some kind of straw. Who wants to eat there?

Or Radio Shack, who rumors suggest might drop the Radio and become, you guessed it, the Shack. Would you buy a Y-Splitter from someone wearing overalls? That kind of inane change is going to force me into Best Buy for all my cabling needs.

But that’s enough digression.

I’m not sure what brought this change onto the Syfy channel, whether it was the their inability to trademark the name SciFi, or their desire to distance themselves from their namesake genre. Are they going the route of the one time Arts and Entertainment channel, known now as A&E, which made the change in order to make way for new and decidedly less cultured entertainment? Or is there some other, darker plot afoot?

I don’t mean to come off totally negative, either, as the channel still has some good to offer. I can’t find Next Generation on anywhere else, even if its only for one night a week… and the new Stargate show coming this fall seems promising in a Lou Diamond Phillips kind of way. But I can’t help gritting my teeth at the vowel-less tag every time it flashes on the screen, and wondering just how long its going to take me to grow accustomed to. My only hope is that the channel, like a rose, proves to smell the same by any other name. Even if it looks like it belongs to a new energy drink.