Chron

[prog]

It's interesting to think that there are high school kids today who watch syndicated ST:TNG after school, and they have the same relationship with it that I did when I watched ST:TOS every weekday afternoon, 20 years ago.

Is TOS still in reruns anywhere, I wonder?

Comments

[wrog]

and then there were those of us who saw ST:TOS when it first aired (well okay, the tail end of the second season and all of the third -- I wasn't quite old enough to stay up for the first season...)

Never mind that I don't believe the two series were ever quite so analogous. ST:TNG started out with a quasi-mainstream appeal that ST:TOS took over a decade to achieve (if ever). In the 70s, ST:TOS (or SF TV as a whole (*)) was very much a Geek Ghetto -- outside the community, clever ST references would generally earn blank looks at best.

(*) I think it's also difficult for '90s folks with their B5 and Skiffy Channel to comprehend the extent to which '70s SF TV was a vast wasteland of suck. The whole reason ST:TOS was able to take off in syndication was because there really was nothing else of comparable quality aimed at that niche. Remember, the original show was a failure by network standards, so no one at the time was inclined to try something similar again --- Space:1999 (another expensive failure) was probably the high point of the decade. It took Star Wars (and its TV echo, the original BSG) to turn things around (and yes, that was a step up from what preceeded it...)

[radiotelescope.livejournal.com]

Whereas by the end of the 90s, we were getting shows like "Lexx"!

[wrog]

you don't understand ...

There was a "Logan's Run" TV series.
"The Bionic Woman" was a successful show.

I don't know how to convey the full horror of this;
the bottom is so very far down.