Nostalgia Postponed

The above image is from this site.

Disappointment, joy, disaster! Back in the '90s there was a nifty little sci-fi show that aired on Channel 4 in the UK, Dark Skies: NBC's answer to The X-Files. Apparently, its American ratings were awful, and it sank at the end of the first series. Being a geeky kind of kid, it was of course on my list of things to watch rather than translate a chunk of Aristophanes. The premise was aliens were at Roswell, had demanded humanity's surrender, and the Yanks had refused, shot the beggars down, and were now (in the '60s) covertly trying to fight the aliens. A young couple (see above) got caught up in this, and kept trying to expose The Truth against the wishes of evil-minded aliens and secrecy-minded government types. The tag was "History as you know it is a lie" and they'd work in historical events, such as Kennedy's assassination. Watchers of Star Trek: Voyager will also notice the appearance of a certain Jeri Lynn Ryan in this show. More soberly dressed, mind, and with a face free from plastic and metal whatsits.

My farsighted younger self knew there would be a day when I didn't fancy watching anything on telly, and recorded them for me. Cross-temporal high-five, you spotty little guy! He didn't get 'em all, but I can stand a few missing episodes. "Then this 'disappointment, joy, disaster' stuff, Pete?" Yeah, I just tried to watch one episode, and the VHS is corrupted. Y'know, the old wavy lines of static interfere with picture quality, and you only hear one line in ten that the actors are saying. Vexing. But why that sequence of 'disappointment, joy, disaster'? Well, I was disappointed yesterday, 'cause I couldn't find an episode I thought I had. Then I felt joy about half an hour ago, when I realised it was on a tape that contains the antepenultimate and penultimate episodes. Huzzah! Then disaster: the tape's all screwy.


Is the rest of the tape screwy? Am I going to find out that I can't watch three episodes? I've two more episodes on another tape between the definitely messed-up one and these potentially messed-up others. I won't watch them without this, will I? Violate temporal law? That'd be like high-fiving my younger self. Am I really Ted Evelin Moseby? Rhetorical questions aside, I have a solution. There are about four days left on this Ebay selling I'm engaged in. I know I said something about buying Scotch the other day, but that wasn't really serious. I owe two friends a tenner each, and my brother a lot more. He'd not be happy if I spent it on something so tasty as Yamazaki. ;-) However, I know that Dark Skies, after years of delay, was finally released on DVD last autumn. £28 - I think we know where I'll be spending some of this Ebay money. I knew I'd be buying it in the end, since I don't have every episode . . . and because young me apparently failed to record the final cliffhanger episode. Tut-tut! So high quality showings of episodes will soon be in order, I fancy! At least one of the chaps I owe a tenner to will love this show, I know. You know who you are, Mr B!


It is rather groovy digging up all these bits and bobs. I turned up a couple of episodes of The Outer Limits the other night, one with the actress who plays Bruce Willis' wife in Die Hard, and another starring the actress who plays Roz in Frasier. Funnily enough, about a year ago, when I started going through these old tapes, I dug up an episode with David Hyde Pierce playing a misguided scientist brought low by his own hubris. I love that guy! Anyway, I guess I need to find something else to have on in the background while carving plastic and painting stuff. I've bored you enough, so I won't bore you with my deliberations on that. So long for now, o reader generous enough to keep going this far!