(October 1999) [Printed in "Reality Module No.12."]

Old TV Shows - And New

Channel 9 has kindly (and unexpectedly) been showing reruns of "My Favorite Martian" at 3:30PM on weekdays. I've been catching them on videotape. They are still eminently watchable after 30 years. Uncle Martin is still my favourite TV alien. His character has a dignity and an intellect missing from later wannabees like Mork or Alf.

And then last year I was watching the really old episodes of "Bewitched" on Channel 7 - 1964, B&W - many of them charming and sensitive from before the series became camp. (Then Channel 7 began chopping out more and more scenes to fit in commercials - until the stories began to lose their structure and coherence - and I gave it up as a cruel joke.)

They've been shoving old episodes of "Lost In Space" on late at night. I taped a few to watch at more civilised hours - but found that they didn't do much for me. (Though there are some episodes I remember from long ago as being pure magic. Would that we could select the episodes we wanted to see from some online database. Maybe by 2010.)

Likewise I've been watching episodes of the modern series "Sabrina: The Teenage Witch." (Based on the only character from Archie Comics I found remotely interesting.) It's silly but it has nice special effects (much more sophisticated than those in "Bewitched") and some delightfully imaginative and whimsical ingredients. (I especially like the talking cat & the magic book.)

Justin Semmel filled me in on the background of the characters in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" - so I've been watching that. It's like "Beverly Hills 90210" meets "Evil Dead." The really odd thing is - it works!

They've just started the new season of "Sliders" on Channel 10 - a show I have a love/bored relationship with. I missed the 1st episode of the season (the TV station didn't bother promoting it) - so had to effectively reconstruct it from elements of the 2nd episode. The story concept remains to me a fascinating one - but it is not properly realised often enough in this show.

"Babylon 5" is over but I missed the last couple of episodes because Channel 9 changed the day they were screening it. "Star Trek:Voyager" and "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" continued - but they aren't good enough to make me want to say anything about them.

I never watched "Stargate SG-1" nor "Millennium" - so that the fragments of episodes I've seen are cryptic to me.

These are some of the shows I watch - it's not all science documentaries and foreign language movies on SBS!

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Last Updated: 14 March 2003