10 Sci-Fi TV Shows That Wasted Incredible Premises

If there was ever a TV pilot that got fans excited about a new show, it was most definitely Flash Forward. The show followed the moment when (nearly) every citizen on Earth 'blacks out' for a period of 137 seconds, with each person envisioning how their life would look in six months time. Be it a return to alcoholism, the instigation of an affair or no vision at all, the prospect of seeing what lies ahead in life proved a truly exciting and innovative premise.

The opening episodes of the series were actually quite decent, with our protagonist detectives chasing down those responsible while trying to avoid the fates that awaited them. There wasn't any real weak link in the acting either, with Joseph Fiennes strong as FBI agent Mark Bedford, whose visions contained crucial information in regards to the mystery.

Sadly the show just didn't seem to know which direction to head in, becoming bogged down at the very point it should be driving forward. The decision to have an FBI agent kill himself to avoid his fate was probably meant to act as a game changer that opened up possibilities, but instead managed to undo the whole concept, with the 'forward visions' that the show was built around now meaning nothing.

The biggest issue that the show runners just couldn't overcome was that the audience literally knew what was coming, meaning it was tough to build up suspense to an exciting end point because we had already seen it.