The tragedy is, had they let it simply stay a miniseries as it had originally been intended to be, it could have been great.
Surface is a show that gives us both good (weird sea monsters show up and start causing havoc) and bad (awful filler episodes of poorly-written dialogue and rather silly conspiracies) within striking distance of one another.
The real problem is, that in the (ultimately futile and therefore rather funny) effort to make it an ongoing series, the network hosed themselves.
Because Surface was not a show that could sustain an episode that didn't advance the primary plot. And when that plot is fairly linear and beyond the power of our protagonists to alter, it makes for a pretty lame long-term story.
Much like an H.G. Wells or Lovecraft protagonist, our heroes can do little more than observe what happens around them... And by the end, their impotence has reached almost comical proportions.
In a shorter storyline, where the goal is simply to say "this is what happened/happens," that's fine.
A self-contained arc with a beginning, middle and end doesn't actually need heroes capable of altering the course of events. But an ongoing story does.
And that is what Surface was missing- a hope in hell of the "good guys" achieving anything at all.
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I'll go and sign the petition whateverBut with what they did, it's all good :)