This is becoming a great year for those of us who have been waiting for DVD releases of shows that, so we'd been told, could not be released in North America.
First Max Headroom gets a release (I can't remember the details but I recall reading a few years back something had held it up for DVD release).
Then we get the back-to-back news that both the original 1970s Bionic Woman and Six Million Dollar Man are coming out.
Now, it's been announced that another so-called "unreleasable" production, the 1996 Doctor Who FOX TV movie, has been cleared for North American release:
http://gallifreynewsbase.blogspot.com/2010/08/tv-movie-coming-to-north-america.html
So that's 4 shows more or less in a row that I'd never expected to see on a (legal) North American home video release.
I can't help but wonder if this doesn't in some way bode well for the potential of a 1960s Batman release before the end of commercially viable non-violatile media. I mean, in the case of the DW TV movie many of the same issues that plague Batman were in play, in particular the "different studios owning different pieces" part that had rendered it impossible to issue the film to VHS or to DVD before this.
I know it's wishful thinking, but considering that both the SMDM/BW and Doctor Who announcements were things I was convinced were impossible 3-4 months ago, who knows? I was convinced we'd never see unaltered pre-21st Century TV series on Blu-Ray, too, and then we got The Prisoner, the original version of Trek TOS, and now Space:1999 and the original Twilight Zone are being lined up. So I'm starting to think anything is possible!
Alex
First Max Headroom gets a release (I can't remember the details but I recall reading a few years back something had held it up for DVD release).
Then we get the back-to-back news that both the original 1970s Bionic Woman and Six Million Dollar Man are coming out.
Now, it's been announced that another so-called "unreleasable" production, the 1996 Doctor Who FOX TV movie, has been cleared for North American release:
http://gallifreynewsbase.blogspot.com/2010/08/tv-movie-coming-to-north-america.html
So that's 4 shows more or less in a row that I'd never expected to see on a (legal) North American home video release.
I can't help but wonder if this doesn't in some way bode well for the potential of a 1960s Batman release before the end of commercially viable non-violatile media. I mean, in the case of the DW TV movie many of the same issues that plague Batman were in play, in particular the "different studios owning different pieces" part that had rendered it impossible to issue the film to VHS or to DVD before this.
I know it's wishful thinking, but considering that both the SMDM/BW and Doctor Who announcements were things I was convinced were impossible 3-4 months ago, who knows? I was convinced we'd never see unaltered pre-21st Century TV series on Blu-Ray, too, and then we got The Prisoner, the original version of Trek TOS, and now Space:1999 and the original Twilight Zone are being lined up. So I'm starting to think anything is possible!
Alex
