Any self-respecting writer or director who wants to do television “scifi” these days ought to approach a project as if it was a single shot of 10 to 12 episodes (of 42 minutes each), and write a story arc that can be told in 500 minutes of finished entertainment.

I think there is a future for this kind of television - as a short run serial, as pioneered by the likes of those early HBO productions that later became a staple of the cable premium channels.