My viewing schedule for fall 2006.
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.… Read more
