Because everyone’s interested, here’s how my VCR will be wearing the same six-hour tape thin week after week this fall (assuming we don’t have the traditional every-other-day power failure that kills my VCR programming):
Wednesdays
- 7:00pm – Jericho (CBS)
- 8:00pm – Lost (ABC)
- 9:00pm – The Nine (ABC)
Fridays
- 5:00pm – Night Stalker (Sci-Fi, through Oct. 13)
- 7:00pm – Doctor Who (Sci-Fi)
- 11:00pm – Battlestar Galactica (Sci-Fi – late showing is less likely to have credits screwed with)
Saturdays
- 9:00pm – Star Trek remastered episodes (Oct. 20-TFN)
Some thoughts immediately occur. Filling a watching a six hour tape every week is not a drought of SF on TV by any stretch of the imagination – hell, it’s more like an embarrassment of riches. But upon further examination, one of those six slots is occupied by a show that’s already over and done with (either a year ago or 37 years ago), and a further two slots are filled by shows that are continuations or re-imaginings of past shows. (Not that I’m complaining for even a fraction of a second about having Doctor Who back on the air, especially not when it’s as smashingly good as it is on a consistent basis, at least for my money, and not that I’m complaining a bit about Galactica – just pointing out, shall we say, a creative technicality.)
To balance that out, it’s a rare fall schedule that has two brand new shows that intrigue me enough to start taping them from the word go. And yes, I’ve already seen all of this season’s Who episodes, and I’ll happily watch them again. I actually like to see where Sci-Fi “invents” commercial breaks – they seem to to judge points of dramatic tension quite well that lend themselves to ad breaks. (At the very least, they seem to judge that better than CBC did in season 1.)
It’s been quite a while since I’ve had that kind of a regular viewing slate. I’d get started watching Heroes, except I don’t have any 8-hour tapes handy.
Wow. I thought I was the last person on Earth still using VHS before I gave in to the massives and TIVO-ized myself at the beginning of the year. I guess I was wrong.
Come over to the Dark Side, Earl. It is your destiny.
Well, here’s the thing. I used to record stuff on VHS more fanatically than most TV stations catch feeds. I had every episode of every Star Trek series on tape, in order, with the ads chopped out, every existing episode of Doctor Who, Red Dwarf, Babylon 5, you name it. I used to have a whole closet that was taken up solely by big racks of VHS tapes (and nicely labeled ones too!).
Then along came DVD box sets. Oof. Talk about feeling like I’d wasted my time.
So anyway, I’ve got all those tapes laying around, and a small pile of VCRs I used to use to record stuff on ’em with. Most of my tapes are in perfectly good shape. Since I just blew my budget for the rest of this year on a whole different batch of digital recording equipment, Tivo’s gonna be a ways off, so my trusty tapes it is. 😆