What if there had been a Season 6 of Fraggle Rock?

[GonzoMan]

I know I've read a couple of threads about what it would've been like if The Muppet Show had gone on for a 6th season, but now I'm wondering the same about Fraggle Rock. The reason I'm bringing it up is because I recently read the interviews on here with Steve Whitmire and Jerry Nelson. Both said they would've been comfortable with doing another season of the show. If they had done another season, what are some ideas they could've used? Any thoughts would be appreciated.

 

[Bliffenstimmers]

After that ending? It could have worked, maybe, but I feel it would have then turned into a case of Jumping The Shark.

It's a lucky thing for any TV show to reach 5 seasons, but after that I notice most shows start to decline in quality soon after. Jim Henson did the dignified thing in ending it at that point. He could do that with The Muppet Show and Fraggle Rock because of the shows being made for syndication and cable TV respectively. He couldn't have done it with Sesame Street since his puppets were only one third of what made up the show -- the other two thirds being live actors/film producers and animators -- and that CTW didn't own the characters at the time.

With an ending like that, it's one of those kinds of endings that leave you wondering, but still keeps you satisfied enough that you couldn't ask for anything more. A similar ending shows up in A. A. Milne's "The House At Pooh Corner". An officially sanctioned followup from an unrelated writer was published, "Return To the Hundred Acre Wood," and while good in its own right sort of ruins the mystique of the ending Milne established. An additional season was tried out with NBC's animated version of Fraggle Rock, and it had some good ideas but overall mediocre execution of them. This and it can be assumed that these stories took place sometime prior to the ending of the original series, but that's just a minor note. Perhaps one of the reasons why it never took off the way Muppet Babies did was that it was trying to be as good as something that had already been established, but wound up being too different, whereas Muppet Babies was for the most part new grounds to explore for Henson and Marvel. Then again, Little Muppet Monsters was just as fresh as the Babies and still never took off, but also it also collapsed on itself from being too time consuming and costly to produce as a weekly show.

I could still see the Fraggles doing perhaps a spinoff series or a movie. I know for the longest time they have been working on and off on the Fraggle Rock movie, but who knows if anything will come of that. If they do any of those, I'm sure by now they would be very respectful of the property. It's one of the few truly Henson-esque properties the Hensons still own, and something that the kids of this generation could really use.

 

[kalopsiavian]

im not sure how that would go about! the series did kind of wrap itself up, tying off most plotlines - doc being inable to see fraggles, junior getting (and subsequently getting rid of) the crown, etc etc etc - and slap a big sparkly bow on it with the credits on change of address.
BUT there are a lot of things id like to see covered? id like to learn more abt the background characters (bc i like them too much AA), and id love to see how theyre doing now? but i feel like thatd be done better in the form of, like, a set of comics. its like that thing where you do it once and you can never do it again, ya feel me?
so while id love to see more, itd be hard to capture the same charm that the old stuff has!

 

[ErinAardvark]

The only thing I'd like to see in another season is more of Lou Fraggle. I really liked her for some reason I can't fathom (other than her color scheme).

 

[GonzoMan]

Well, those are some really interesting thoughts. They may be some good points, but I did hear that the main reason for ending it when they did was because HBO wanted to cut back on certain shows, and Fraggle Rock was one of them.

 

[Pig'sSaysAdios]

I would be okay with more Fraggle Rock, but only if it were a spin off or just about a different group of characters. They wrapped up Doc and Sprocket's story, they wrapped up The Gorgs' story, we know most of what we need to know about the main five Fraggles. But the mythology of the Fraggle world is so strange and rich, there's still so much they could explore, but I think it would only work with different main characters doing very different things.

 

[Harold43]

Had Fraggle Rock gone to a "6th season" (my understanding is that HBO split the real 4th season into the 4th & 5th seasons that we know of), there likely wouldn't have been the series ending episode arc that we were given. Television series need a sufficient amount of time to ramp up production and keep personnel so there would have been some indication from the studio offices that the series would be continuing.

There are always exceptions, especially in the competitive world of network television where television shows end quite suddenly for a variety of reasons (Isn't that right, Rosanne?), but Fraggle Rock was on HBO and so it wouldn't have been exposed to those sorts of pressures.

Even removing the "But they wrapped up the series so how would they continue?" concern, though, there would be the additional concern of original content. Writers are a creative group and I'm sure that they would have come up with any number of scenarios to keep the series running.

* Perhaps Gobo takes over for Uncle Travelling Matt and explores a new tunnel each week (a la "Star Trek: Original Series" model) and meeting new exciting Fraggles?

* Continue with the stand-alone episodes for which I'm sure the writers could've pumped out by the baker's dozens.

As much as I would have personally enjoyed a 6th season of Fraggle Rock, there is only so much material that any premise can give to you before you have to expand or significantly alter that premise. As others have written, "Jumping the Shark" is a very real concern with any creative endeavor and I enjoy the fact that Fraggle Rock, at least from my perspective, didn't. I haven't enjoyed many of the long-in-tooth reboots that have occurred lately (Blade Runner, The Thing, Conan the Barbarian, Tron, Star Trek, Alien, Star Wars, etc.).

Everyone gets old eventually; It sucks that good things come to an end but the likely alternative is that good things eventually turn into bad things if they continue to exist for too long. Fraggle Rock existed for 4 real seasons (stretched into 5). This is one case where Quality triumphed over Quantity.