According to The Hollywood Reporter, Syfy has canceled its pricey George R.R. Martin adaptation Nightflyers after only one season—dashing any hopes the network might’ve had about this living up to that other Martin adaptation on TV. The show, based on Martin’s 1980 novella of the same name, was about a group of space-scientists and a telepath on a space-journey who experience a series of spooky/violent events. It was also supposedly the most expensive TV show Syfy has ever taken to series, with Netflix joining up as a co-producer with the network in order to offset the costs (Netflix took on international distribution rights as well).
Syfy had pinned so many hopes on Nightflyers that it thought one of those wild “binge-friendly” gambles would help it generate some buzz, but it ended up backfiring just like those scemes always do by allowing viewers to forget about it much faster than they would have otherwise. The full 10-episode season hit Syfy’s on-demand platforms all at once back in December, with the episodes then airing on TV across 10 straight nights. By the time the finale aired, it only managed to land 420,000 live viewers—a drop of several hundred thousand from the premiere. Also, Nightflyers hasn’t made much of a splash since hitting Netflix earlier this month, which probably didn’t give the streaming service much of an incentive to keep throwing money at it.