How can Seaquest change from a show about a submarine patrolling deep sea colonization, to a show about a tightly wound eskimo firefighter, and yet STILL be the SAME TV show?

Season 5 events you're describing weren't "changed direction" but "plot twists"....the difference being that they thought them up beforehand, and set them up for payoff later. There *was* a big shift between seasons, however.

Ultimately the problem is that Amy and Rory's story sort of ended at Demon's Run, but they…

The odd part is that Season 1 wasn't a very good show....then Season 2 changed *for the better* when both the hero (an Iron Man ripoff) and the antagonist (an alien bent on destroying Earth).....accidentally cure global warming, and BOTH decide to run for President of the United States! Oh god, yes.

The best part…

Even Ron Moore, in the DVD commentaries, cynically admits that they just had characters yell at each other (or even point guns at each other) when they needed to create forced drama but had just plain run out of ideas.

Season 2 officially had problems, Season 3 got better again because they went back to being closer to the comics....then lately they've veered away from them yet again, also leading to quality problems (though even Season 4 wasn't as bad as Season 2).

OP is a bit wrong: the first HALF of Caprica, ten episodes, was utterly directionless garbage...then they took a six month break, and viewers rightly abandoned it. Closing the stable gate after the horse had bolted, Jane Espenson then stopped down and Kevin Murphy became the new showrunner for the remaining ten…

Season 2 differed from Season 1, because Season 1 had sort of a final ending because they thought they'd be cancelled, but Season 2 was still *fairly* similar and worked. Well, Season 1 was a war story with the rebels having a permanent base and making guerrilla excursions against occupying aliens. Then in Season 2…

Most feel that the shift to the Dominion War arc is when the show found its footing. Particularly given that five out of seven seasons focused on it, can we really say it "changed direction" or that it "finally expanded upon the central premise" of "what dangers lurk beyond the wormhole"?

In that case the problem with "Heroes" wasn't really that it "changed direction" but that it was "completely one-note". It didn't go into a weird new direction....it bizarrely just kept recycling the same basic plot idea over and over again in each season, with slightly different variations.

Battlestar Galactica (2003-2009)

Ron Moore later...disturbingly....revealed that he never planned anything out, but would randomly incorporate ideas because he thought they were "cool" with *zero* thought as to how it would all fit together. He stated as much. His delusional rationalization was that "I'm a great…

As a would-be medieval graduate student I've run into problems with this myself. Generally, I'd advise a distinction between "women who personally fought" and "women who commanded armies". Warfare is an extension of "politics" and women did take part in "politics" (contrary to the claims of George Duby).
To put it…

1984 *did* have a central love story in it....so this *might* not be a trainwreck.....but "Kate Blanchett stars in 1984-inspired tragic love story" would be welcome news...."Kristen Stewart stars in same movie"....not so much.

It sounds like those kittens are Prisoners of Love.

Question: the last ICv2 market share figures I have are from 2010 and outdated. What is the current market share of the remaining US anime distributors?

Well it's not really FUNimation and Viz, but FUNimation and Sentai Filmworks/Section 23/Neo-ADV. Until the lawsuits clear, anyways.

When ANNcast talks about this…

What is a man, if his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed?
A beast, no more.

Surely, He that made us with such large discourse, looking before and after,
gave us not that capability and god-like reason, to fust in us unused?

Two words: SOLAR ECLIPSE.