The X-Files went nine seasons. But it was cheap to make. - Edit 1
Before modification by Werthead at 20/04/2011 01:53:03 AM
Well, relatively cheap. They filmed the first five or six seasons in Vancouver on a dime and only had (for the most part) two regular castmembers.
STARGATE SG-1 went ten seasons, which is impressive, as that certainly wasn't cheap. However, they did also mostly have stand-alones or reasonably easy-to-join-midstream arc stories. Nothing like the dense mythology of a WoT show. And whilst SG-1 had a good budget, again nothing like the budget a WoT show would need.
And of course there is a big problem in that WoT is only supposed to cover 2 years. You can spin that out a fair bit, but you're going to run into problems with actors aging faster than they should (though given that none of the characters are little kids, this shouldn't be as much of an issue as it was for LOST, or could be for GAME OF THRONES).
STARGATE SG-1 went ten seasons, which is impressive, as that certainly wasn't cheap. However, they did also mostly have stand-alones or reasonably easy-to-join-midstream arc stories. Nothing like the dense mythology of a WoT show. And whilst SG-1 had a good budget, again nothing like the budget a WoT show would need.
And of course there is a big problem in that WoT is only supposed to cover 2 years. You can spin that out a fair bit, but you're going to run into problems with actors aging faster than they should (though given that none of the characters are little kids, this shouldn't be as much of an issue as it was for LOST, or could be for GAME OF THRONES).