Good news scifi fans, SyFy has renewed “Stargate Universe” for a second season and also Amanda Tapping’s “Sanctuary” for a third.

Both shows will have a twenty episode order set for the fall airing and have already begun production in Vancouver.

Currently, “SGU” is on hiatus midway through their first season and will come back in April.  “Sanctuary” is currently airing their second season.  Ratings for both shows have averaged above the 2 million viewer mark- “SGU” with 2.6 million and “Sanctuary” 2.2 million.

“SGU” has met with mixed fan reaction, the tone being much more “Battlestar Galactica” than the shiny in comparison “Stargate” franchise.

Executive producer, Robert Cooper talks about “SGU”s fan reaction and about the remaining episodes of season one:

“We’re dealing with 15 seasons of expectations with a certain fanbase.  Hopefully, as the show goes on, people will appreciate ‘Universe’ for being its own thing.”

The mid-season finale left the ethically-divergent, but driven in the pursuit of Ancient knowledge, Dr. Rush (Robert Carlyle) stranded on a planet.  Cooper indicated that the remaining episodes of season one will be more “serialized and build on the fractures within the show’s group of spaceship-trapped castaways”.

Cooper elaborates on this plot point:

“The implications of leaving Rush on the planet, the real division that will cause amongst the crew, the judgment of those characters and their actions are going to have a big impact on the show.  We have a lot of things planned for the second half of the season.”

To add to the development of this first season, Cooper reveals the appearance of an alien race:

“There is a big story point coming up that does introduce an alien race. It’s more along the line of a “District 9”-type alien. Our interaction is handled in a very “Universe” way; they’re not the typical “Stargate” alien bad guys.”

Intriguing, no?

[Source] THR