Sanctuary: Its Certianly "Abnormal"

Season 2 cast of Sanctuary.

It was announced earlier this week that Sanctuary will not be renewed and was cancelled by Syfy. In the memory of Sanctuary, I've decided to review it's whole four year run. And it was a good run too.

Sanctuary originally started out as an eight episode web series created by Damian Kindler. Then Syfy decided to pick up this little web series and turn it into an 13 episode tv series. Every season with the exception of Season 3, ran for 13 episodes. What made the show even more unique is the fact that is didn't use much sets, but used green screen for most of their environments. Sanctuary was also the first show to use RED camera exclusively. Sanctuary also had strong roots in the Stargate universe as well. Most the actors who appeared in Sanctuary, had appeared in Stargate or its spin off series Stargate Atlantis.

Airing 2008, Sanctuary told the story about Helen Magnus and her team who run a sanctuary for abnormals while helping and discovering more about them. Joining her on mission to help abnormals is Will Zimmerman, Henry Foss, Kate Freelander, Bigfoot and her daughter Ashley. In addition, there is the frequent addition of either Nikola Tesla or John Druitt.  Over the history of the show, Helen and her team face many enemies such as The Cabal, and abnormals from hollow earth.

Sanctuary contained a good amount of humor, adventure and mystery. It also developed its principal characters nicely, giving them depth. Sanctuary took a smart twist at the supernatural mythology and didn't call creatures by their mythological names. Like for example a werewolf is called hyper-accelerated protean life form. Despite all its strong points, Sanctuary is yet another science fiction show out there and at times, it found it hard to stand out from the rest. The one strong point that draws attention to it is Amanda Tapping (Helen Magus) from the Stargate fandom.

Sanctuary had potential to go on for another couple of seasons and gain a bigger foot hold with increasing fans. Pity that it ended with Season 4, but on the bright side it didn't end with a cliffhanger. Although it never go to explore the plot lines they opened up with the finale. Sanctuary was a good show, and I'm sad to see it go. Promo for season 1 below.