In the face of increased criticism following last week's finale of Stargate Universe, a Syfy executive is defending the decision to cancel the series.

"There is literally no one other than MGM who supported it more than we did," Senior Vice President Craig Engler writes in an open letter posted Thursday at the GateWorld fansite. "We were the only network who gave the show a try and the only ones who committed to making and airing 40 episodes before a script had been written. We invested tens of millions of dollars and thousands of hours of work over many years making and supporting the show."

Engler details SGU's ratings decline from a high of 3 million viewers to a low of 1.7 million, "below where we could sustain it." He even supplies a graph before addressing a number of rumors and accusations surrounding the cancellation, including that the network hates science fiction -- "It’s because we like science fiction that we tried it" -- and that SGU was dumped to make way for more wrestling.

"We would have happily kept making SGU regardless of anything else on our schedule if the ratings were sustainable," he writes. "We don’t discontinue successful shows to make room for other shows … no network does because no network has a full roster of successful series. SGU was judged solely on its own ratings."