It was early May and screenwriter-producer Mark Fergus had a feeling bad news was on the horizon. While his longtime writing partner, Hawk Ostby, who lives in Vermont, was considering the depths of Lake Champlain, Fergus was in Los Angeles, settled into his couch in his Topanga Canyon home with his wife, Julie, a bottle of cheap white wine from Trader Joe’s, and reruns of Columbo. He was waiting for a call from Alcon Entertainment confirming the death of his and Ostby’s beloved space opera on Syfy, The Expanse, after three seasons.

“The news was imminent,” says Fergus, whose 15-year career in movies and television includes an Oscar nomination for his work on the Children of Men screenplay. “We are a show that people really like, but one that’s always included in those ‘Great Shows No One Is Watching’ [stories]. I went to my comfort zone and waited for the phone to ring.”

Finally, after years of toiling on 36 episodes, the call came. It was over. In the ensuing days, Fergus continued to work on The Expanse, keeping reality at bay. He finished reading the sixth novel in the James S. A. Corey series on which the show is based, took notes, gathered them up, sealed them in a box, and “got ceremonial.” As the days stretched on, the chances of a miracle comeback felt more and more remote. “The stages of mourning were about to start,” he says.

While Fergus was buried in his book, however, fans had started a petition for Amazon or Netflix to rescue the series. It garnered more than 100,000 signatures. Viewers cobbled together enough cash to fly a plane over Amazon Studios, in Santa Monica, with a banner that read, “#SavetheExpanse.” Cakes were being delivered to Amazon Studios chief executive Jennifer Salke. Patton Oswalt begged for The Expanse’s return on Twitter. Wil Wheaton urged fans to watch the show to increase viewer numbers for potential suitors. George R. R. Martin sent Amazon chief Jeff Bezos a personal e-mail rallying behind the show.

On Friday, May 25, 15 days after its cancellation, Bezos was honored at the National Space Society’s annual International Space Development Conference in Los Angeles. A question-and-answer session with *The Expanse’*s cast and show-runner happened to precede his appearance. To the shock of those in the room—including the cast—Bezos told the crowd Amazon was saving the show.

“We always thought the show had a guardian spirit,” says Ostby. “It’s the least likely success story. We died and were resurrected in the coolest of ways.”

While show rescues may seem like a development of our multi-platform, bespoke-content-filled era, they date to the broadcast days. As far back as Taxi, television shows abandoned by one network were being taken in by another. In 1982, NBC picked up the comedy, late of ABC, for its fifth and final season. Matt Groe­ning’s Futurama, which he co-created for Fox with David X. Cohen, was canceled in 2003 after 72 episodes over four seasons—only to be revived by Comedy Central in 2006 on the strength of strong DVD sales and a healthy syndication run on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. More recently, The Killing lasted three seasons on AMC before Netflix picked it up for a final go in 2013.

Such resurrections have undoubtedly been on the rise in the era of too much TV. Our insatiable need for content and today’s advanced viewership metrics have played a hand in getting shows—such as Community, The Mindy Project, Arrested Development, and Lucifer—new lives after they were canceled by their original outlets. Equally significant is the streaming arms race, a zero-sum game for attention in which audience loyalty can be as important as breadth. (When Netflix picked up The Killing, it became a “Net­flix original” at a time when the company was interested in heading into original-content territory and wanted to start staking its claim.)