Corona | Coming Attractions

Buoyed by strong Friday night ratings on Syfy, the specialty cable channel has ordered full season renewals for Stargate Universe and Sanctuary. 20 episodes have been ordered for each show, thereby granting Universe a second season and Sanctuary a third.

According to Syfy (and related by The Hollywood Reporter to us), Sanctuary averaged 2.2 million viewers for each episode of its fall half-season while SGU ticked higher with an average of 2.6 million (these numbers include online digital download viewings too.) The remaining 10 episodes for each series will begin airing next April, with the new seasons scheduled for broadcast in the fall of 2010.

Led by Stargate SG-1 star Amanda Tapping, Sanctuary is an hour-long action fantasy that centers on a group of special individuals that protect the two worlds of normal humans and special creatures. Tapping serves as an executive producer on the series.

In its 10 episodes SGU has carved its own look and story style separating it from the two earlier series in the long-running sci-fi television franchise. Led by Robert Carlyle (who plays a Machiavellian scientist), the show takes place almost entirely on a spaceship billions of light years away from Earth. The group of stranded scientists, soldiers and civilians can't control the ancient spacecraft and have been narrowly avoiding death by the seat of their pants. The show's difference in tone, darker characters and more adult content have drawn comparison to Syfy's recently ended Battlestar Galactica series, as well as the ire of Stargate fans who feel that the gritter SGU doesn't sync up with the established mold of the IP. One of the show's producers, Robert Cooper, said that the backend 10 episodes will stick to the course and further develop the SGU style. For instance, the series will introduce an extraterrestrial that is "more along the line of a District 9-type alien" than the ETs seen in Stargate SG-1 or its spinoff series Stargate Atlantis.