Space: Above and Beyond

Based on some chats the site was able to find: 

* First and foremost, the finale wouldn’t have been as it was; had they known in advance they’d get another season, it wouldn’t have ended with nearly all the characters dead or in mortal danger. But even with the finale the way it ended up, there were plans to continue the story.

* Essentially, they’d have been able to write out anyone who wanted out fairly easily. Even if everyone somehow returned and survived, the plan was to introduce new characters anyway. In a chat held by the Sci-Fi Channel after the show’s cancellation, Wong and Morgan stated that McQueen would’ve returned to Earth and had to face his new disabilities. His replacement would’ve been a woman, although there’s very little detail about her character. It sounds like it would’ve been an “Umbridge” situation, to borrow a phrase from TVTropes, which is itself a fairly common plot when introducing a change in leadership.

* In a separate chat with McQueen’s actor James Morrison, he described McQueen’s season 2 arc as a “warrior without a war,” and part of his recovery would’ve meant accepting his new prosthetic leg, built off the same technology used to construct the Silicates. Having his former enemies now, in some way, a part of himself might have proven difficult to accept.

* According to more dubious sources (ones that have vanished to the annals of internet history, where even the Wayback Machine can’t find them), the female commander would’ve had a lot of friction with most of the surviving WildCards, the exception being Vansen, who’d have looked up to her. Eventually, as is often the fate of “Umbridge”-type characters, she’d have screwed up and lost Vansen’s support, ultimately being sent away. This is a rather predictable subplot, so I hope they’d have done something different or more interesting with it. This would be right around the time when McQueen is getting past his problems, making way for his return.

* Furthermore, exploration of Chig culture and a look at their society and homeworld would’ve been a big part of Space: Above & Beyond season 2. Stumbling upon the incubator planet was setup for this. Delving into the alien civilization and proving that they’re not so different after all would’ve absolutely been in keeping with the show’s themes of the cost of war for the everyman.

* All of the characters in danger at the series’ end would’ve had a way out, should the continuation (in whatever form it took) have deemed their survival important to the plot. Damphousse and Vansen would’ve been captured and taken to work in a brothel (either the same one, or a similar one, to the Bacchus ship). This is an absolutely awful idea, if you ask me. Taking your only two female characters and instantly throwing them both into a situation like that is just… ugh. Especially taking into account that this isn’t even the enemy, here. It’s their own side; it’s other humans. Given that Glen Morgan actually ended up married to Kristen Cloke, Vansen’s actor, his opinion on that seemed to change. Other interviews and con appearances by him have suggested the ladies be rescued by Hawkes and West, possibly using the dead Chig Ambassador’s ship.

* Wang, meanwhile, could have survived with some kind of escape pod, left in space in a really difficult spot. From what I gather, the showrunners have gone back and forth on whether he’d have survived to season 2 or been killed off as a form of redemption, but had he survived, one of the ideas toyed with would be that rescue comes to him in the form of a Silicate identical to his torturer. So while this innocent AI might save him, he’d still have PTSD-style struggles with their shared appearance.

* West, as we know, was reunited with his girlfriend, but it’s unclear if she’d have been a continuing presence on the show in its second season. They’d have to address her somehow, either by sending her back to Earth (preferable) or coming up with a convoluted reason for her to be on the ship (…less preferable. Significantly).

* The WildCards as a whole would’ve had to face the music, being courtmartialed for leaking info to the enemy as an act of conscience. And in the end, their punishment is simply to be sent back to the front lines. Earth is doing poorly at this point, but as the first season had been leading up to, the humans were basically the aggressors in all this, so…

* By the end of the series, the war would end not with a climactic battle and overwhelming victory for the humans, but with a peace treaty that no one’s particularly happy with, having wasted years and millions of lives and countless resources, all for nothing. According to Morgan and Wong, the series would end with the surviving WildCards having a toast to fallen friends, a bittersweet note to drive home the senselessness of war."