Third season transitions[edit]

Jerry O'Connell felt the first two seasons went smoothly, but then there was a significant shift in creative direction of the series with the third season, with the Fox network desiring it to be a more action-oriented show than thought-provoking.[4] John Rhys-Davies was the first star of the series to leave. Rhys-Davies stated in a 2016 interview that he had been critical of how the show was written, calling the concept what "could've been the best show on television", but most of the scripts he had been given were "incomprehensible gibberish" and missed the potential of the concept. He cited that Fox had exerted too much control on the scripts as part of the reason for his departure.[5] In a 2014 interview at the Toulouse Game Show, Rhys-Davies stated that the inability to get writers that had read science fiction in the first place led to the show's downfall, and their inexperience in the area led to the show often repurposing ideas from other works. He said, "We did an episode like Tremors, one like Twister, one like The Night of the Living Dead and even one like Doctor Moreau's Island, using the film's original masks!" He found the writers were just "looting" these ideas rather than using these as a tribute, pointing to one episode where Quinn needed to cross an invisible bridge and on approaching the writer about it, discovered he had never seen Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade which Rhys-Davies had starred in and simply used the idea instead of toying with the meta nature of the scene.[6] For Rhys-Davies, "the breaking point for me was when I walked in and saw the writers sitting around looking at a DVD of Species which had just been released and saying: 'Look, we could take a bit of that scene there and a bit of that scene there.'"[7]

The series co-creator, Tracy Tormé, has often been critical of the direction the series took in the third season.[8] Tormé called the third season two-parter "Exodus" "one of the worst pieces of television ever produced, and the low point of the entire series".[9] David Peckinpah was brought onto the series in the third season (around the time when Tormé started to criticize the show). Some argue Peckinpah's involvement in the series (and by extension Fox's more hands-on involvement) caused the show to "jump the shark",[10] despite new executive producer Marc Scott Zicree's decision to restore Tracy Tormé's original "alternate history" premise for the series in season 4.[[i]citation needed] Tormé, along with co-creators Robert K. Weiss and John Landis, all departed the show during the third season.[4]

Part of Fox's involvement in the third season was to shift production from Vancouver to Los Angeles to reduce filming costs. The recurring characters were dropped due to the expense of flying them from Vancouver to Los Angeles for filming. Bartender Elston Diggs was brought in as a recurring character for six episodes, but Peckinpah eventually rejected the concept. Logan St. Clair was created to be a recurring character, which is evident in the episode's dialogue, but only appeared once. Fox did not believe she was "sexy" enough and requested she not appear again.[11]