MeTV's SuperSci-Fi Saturday Night
- Thread starter JD
- Start date
We should have invited the Bay City Rollers.
It took you three-and-a-half years to come up with that...?
Apparently I need a better writing staff.
Thread bump: If anyone's interested, MeTV has begun showing Quinn Martin's The Invaders at midnight Saturday night/Sunday morning. I set up to DVR it last night, since I've never seen the whole series. But to my disappointment, MeTV has tampered heavily with it -- it's letterboxed, so the top and bottom of the image are cut off, and it's accelerated significantly to fit in more commercials, so that it looks more like videotape than film and just moves too fast. I gave up pretty quickly. I guess I'm too picky about such things to be able to settle for commercial TV anymore. If I want to see the whole show, I guess I should try to get it from the library on DVD, though it looks like I'd have to request an interlibrary loan for that. Not sure I'll bother. If anyone wants to post here about the show, though, that would be an incentive to get the DVDs so I could participate.
I've set it to record out of curiosity, but wasn't planning to watch it anytime soon. Got a bunch of other retro programming scheduled for viewing that this one won't sync up with chronologically.
The full effect of The Invaders is lost to current syndication editing. It is a series that deserves an uncut screening for any interested parties, as its one of Quinn Martin's best series, and certainly a jewel in the 60's TV sci-fi crown.
By the way, I just noticed in my blog stats that my 2010 post about The Invaders (based on a marathon of part of the first season that Syfy showed at the time) has had a modest spike in views over the past three days (up to 8 views today, wow). I guess people saw that MeTV was showing it, Googled it, and found my blog post as one of the results. I tried it myself and found that my post shows up on the first page if you search for "Quinn Martin The Invaders," though not for "The Invaders TV series" or the like. So I guess I'm getting some benefit from this showing even if I'm not watching it.
One could say the same thing about Star Trek (TOS) on MeTV as well. In comparison, TOS (as well as the later Berman Era Trek series) is shown uncut every night (except Saturday) on Heroes&Icons affiliates.
I tried to watch "Balance of Terror" this past Saturday and the cuts were brutal. I caught most of "The Invaders" in some of it's syndication runs in the 1970ies (and then again when Sci Fi picked it up for a time), and agree that it was quite well written for its time - and even started abandoning the "And only he knows..." trope by the mid second season (which was a nice change for the series; and it got even more interesting in the third season. But yes, it's very hurt by the massive modern syndication edits for more commercials as well. I love a lot of the series' music ques though.
The Invaders only had 2 seasons, respectively 17 and 26 episodes.
Ack. Just looked it up, and you're right. I always though the show had 3 seasons, but obviously not.
I I always thought the two parter that introduced William Windom as another 'believer' that had an organization was the end of te 2nd, start of a third season; but I stand corrected.
One could say the same thing about Star Trek (TOS) on MeTV as well. In comparison, TOS (as well as the later Berman Era Trek series) is shown uncut every night (except Saturday) on Heroes&Icons affiliates.
I tried to watch "Balance of Terror" this past Saturday and the cuts were brutal. I caught most of "The Invaders" in some of it's syndication runs in the 1970ies (and then again when Sci Fi picked it up for a time), and agree that it was quite well written for its time - and even started abandoning the "And only he knows..." trope by the mid second season (which was a nice change for the series; and it got even more interesting in the third season. But yes, it's very hurt by the massive modern syndication edits for more commercials as well. I love a lot of the series' music ques though.
I've seen how bad syndicated edits can be to TOS, but I think the series--unlike The Invaders--is so well known episode t episode, that the cuts do not hurt it as much as The Invaders..
I mentioned last week that my blog review of The Invaders had gotten a bump in views after MeTV started showing it. I just figured out that the same thing has been happening with Buck Rogers -- every Saturday for the past three weeks, I've gotten a viewing boost for my blog review of the Buck Rogers episode MeTV showed that night. I guess people are watching the show and searching for reviews afterward, or maybe beforehand to decide if they want to watch that episode.
It's technically not part of their Saturday lineup, but I do have a question about Night Gallery.
Does anyone know if there's a way to legally watch the full uncut episodes? From what I read on Wikipedia it sounds like there were pretty massive cuts to the episodes for syndication, and it sounds like that's all that's available, even on DVD.
I watched a parts of a couple episodes and it seemed pretty good, but I'm hesitant to watch it if I'm only getting about half of the individual episodes.
Does anyone know if there's a way to legally watch the full uncut episodes? From what I read on Wikipedia it sounds like there were pretty massive cuts to the episodes for syndication, and it sounds like that's all that's available, even on DVD.
I watched a parts of a couple episodes and it seemed pretty good, but I'm hesitant to watch it if I'm only getting about half of the individual episodes.
THE INVADERS on DVD is the way to go. It's not terribly expensive, I don't think, and you get the full episodes with 99% of them at the correct speed. I say 99% because the very first episode is time-sped on the DVDs, BUT, the saving grace there is that the unaired version of that first episode, the pilot, is also included - and it's at the correct speed.
I have the DVD sets they issued of the seasons of NIGHT GALLERY. As far as I know, they are all network versions - or at least a reconstruction of the full network versions. The show had varying lengths - it ran for an hour with shorter stories contained therein, and for a time, it was a half-hour.
I have the DVD sets they issued of the seasons of NIGHT GALLERY. As far as I know, they are all network versions - or at least a reconstruction of the full network versions. The show had varying lengths - it ran for an hour with shorter stories contained therein, and for a time, it was a half-hour.
Did anyone else notice this morning that MeTV has started re-running 'The Planet of the Apes' TV series again?
It came on right after 'The Time Tunnel'.
It came on right after 'The Time Tunnel'.
Ooh, that'd be an interesting crossover. Tony and Doug did go into the future sometimes.
