My 90's and 2000's Experience: Star Trek: Voyager (1995-2001)

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well for a Thursday afternoon. Tonight is the 30th anniversary of the premiere of Star Trek: Voyager, the fourth live action TV series in the Star Trek franchise. So, in honour of that anniversary, I'm gonna be talking about Voyager here on the blog. I'm reverting to the format of this series to the one I used last year, because I think it works the best compared to the one I used for my discussion on The Jungle Book last week and that I'd planned to use for all future blog posts. So, without further ado, let's talk about Star Trek: Voyager. Let's get into it!

Premiering on Monday, January 16th, 1995 on UPN with the two hour TV movie, "Caretaker", which I've already reviewed on the blog, Star Trek: Voyager was the flagship series for the United Paramount Network, Paramount's attempt at owning a television network, with the hopes of keeping up with CBS, NBC, ABC, and FOX. Paramount had had the desire to own its own network since the 1970's, when they'd originally planned on using the unproduced Star Trek sequel series, Star Trek: Phase II, as their flagship series for their proposed fourth network (FOX wouldn't come into being until the 80's), the Paramount Television Service or PTVS. However, the deal for the PTVS network fell through and the pilot episode for Phase II, "In Thy Image", would be reworked into the 1979 feature film, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and the franchise's return to television would have to wait until 1987 with Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Voyager was unique because, not only was the captain a woman, but her crew wasn't fully Starfleet either. Set up in both The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, the Maquis, a group of Federation colonists who fought against the terms of the Federation-Cardassian Treaty of 2370, make up part of the ship's crew complement. And while DS9 had a good mix of Starfleet and non-Starfleet crew, Voyager had the difficult task of melding the two crews together into a single unit for the sole purpose of survival in an unknown, dangerous, part of the galaxy, far away from any Federation help. 

One the problems facing the writers of this show is that for the first time in nearly 30 years, Star Trek was a network show. Therefore, while it was free from some of the restraints that TNG and DS9 had as first run syndication shows, Voyager had other restrictions that plagued network shows in the 90's. Particularly network shows that aired between 8 and 10 at night. While network censorship wasn't as bad in the 90's as it was in the 60's when Star Trek had originally aired on NBC, they were still significant due to the fact that Star Trek had a lot of brand recognition that made it a symbol that Paramount and UPN couldn't afford to mess up by making it go as far as DS9 had in terms of how heavy an episode's subject matter could be.

Which brings me to the conclusion that placing Voyager on a brand new network, one that held very little else for non-Star Trek fans to keep tuning into the network for, was a huge mistake. The thing about FOX, CBS, NBC, and ABC, as well as The WB, and other smaller networks that have existed over the decades, is that they had a wider variety of programming to engage the audiences with. Indeed, when Voyager debuted in January 1995, ABC was seeing huge ratings with sitcoms, particularly the shows airing on the TGIF block on Friday nights. NBC had also seen a huge success with sitcoms such as Friends, and of course FOX had The Simpsons, as well as the children's programming block, FOX Kids, keeping an audience of all ages tuned in on a daily basis. UPN didn't have such a power base to draw on.

By the time Voyager debuted in 1995, Star Trek had also become less popular being that DS9 was considered at the time to be the antithesis of Gene Roddenberry's vision of the future, and TNG had just recently ended its seven year run. So placing the newest Star Trek series on a network that hardly anybody knew about, it being brand new, with very little programming to maintain a general audience's interest in said network, made Voyager a difficult show to keep on the air. Yet, in it's own limited way, at least compared to TNG's almost runaway success from 1987 to 1994, the show succeeded.

 As with TNG and DS9 before it, Playmates Toys produced a line of toys based on the new show. However, they weren't sold worldwide, as I never saw a single toy from the Voyager line when I was a kid. In fact the first time I ever saw a toy from the line for sale anywhere, was at Ottawa Comiccon back in September. And oddly enough it was the Janeway figure. The line included the entire main cast of Voyager, minus Seven of Nine, though she got her own figure in the Star Trek variety toyline that included figures for characters from all four live action shows and eight or nine movies that were out at the time, as well as Seska, a Vidiian, Lt. Carey, B'Elanna Torres in her full Klingon form from the episode, "Faces", a Kazon, and a variant of Chakotay, who is wearing his Maquis outfit. That's the entire line. Which pales in comparison to even the DS9 line. Of course a toy of Voyager itself was produced, though there were no roleplaying toys such as tricorders, phasers or communicators, as those were released through the toylines for both Star Trek: First Contact in 1996 and Star Trek: Insurrection in 1998.

Voyager had a series of novels published by Pocket Books, beginning with a novelization of the pilot episode, "Caretaker", which was published on February 1st, 1995, a few weeks after the show debuted. Though unlike the TOS, TNG, and DS9 novels, which continue to this day, there hasn't been a Voyager novel since 2020. Which is when The Autobiography of Kathryn Janeway was published. Not that Star Trek novels are as hugely popular or as integral to the franchise as the Star Wars novels have been, but they've sold well enough that Simon & Shuster continues to publish them.

Marvel Comics also published two comic book series based on the show. The first was a 14 issue monthly series, and the other was a limited series. WildStorm also published a few Voyager comics in 2000 and 2001.

The show also had trading cards published by SkyBox, the company that had done trading cards for Star Trek since 1991 or 1992. 

I think the lack of merchandise for Voyager has to do with the change in people's tastes in the mid-90's. Star Trek has always been a popular series, but its popularity has diminished since TNG was on the air in the late 80's and early 90's. Particularly during the show's fifth season in the 1991-1992 broadcast season, when everything you could name was coming out. Toys, books, comics, trading cards, model starships, Halloween costumes, pins, jewelery, VHS tapes, you name it, Star Trek had it. And they were cheap enough that the average person could afford to buy them. Nowadays to get a decent Star Trek action figure, you end up paying a huge amount for anything Star Trek related. With the exception of books and comics mind you. 

Part of the problem is by the time Voyager started airing, other franchises either returned or had begun to spring up. Power Rangers began in 1993 and stores could barely keep Power Rangers merchandise in stock. Also, Voyager debuted only two years before the Star Wars Special Editions came out in theatres, and Star Wars mania had already taking over between the success of the novels being published by Bantam Spectra, the comics being published by Dark Horse, the Original Trilogy getting a VHS re-release in 1995, the anticipation of the Special Editions, AND the anticipation of Episode I, which was due to come out in either 1998 or 1999 (George Lucas and Rick McCallum weren't locked in on the release date for the movie yet). On top of that Batman was about to release another movie, and the FOX animated series was just wrapping up its final season (on FOX). So Star Trek wasn't popular with kids anymore, and adults were also being taken by newer Sci-Fi shows such as The X-Files and Babylon 5, as well as the 1994 film, Stargate, which would launch the Stargate franchise. Not to mention shows like Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman were airing as well. So Voyager had a lot going against it. So while Star Trek had, and still has, a very devoted fanbase, the series is just niche enough that, despite Paramount's best efforts, there just wasn't enough of an audience to support Voyager during its original run in order for the same amount of merchandise that TOS and TNG had to be produced for Voyager.

Even the VHS market wasn't enough to get people onboard for the new show. While Columbia House released most of the show through its subscription service, Paramount Home Video's retail releases didn't even make it through the show's third season. In fact, they didn't start releasing the first season on VHS until April 4th, 2000. They stopped releasing the show on VHS on September 3rd, 2002. Though the Columbia House releases began in 1998 and continued until 2003, a full year after Paramount Home Video stopped releasing their retail releases.

All seven seasons were released on DVD in 2004. I have the first three seasons on DVD and I love the packaging for them. They're colourful and stylish, especially in comparison to the original DVD sets for TOS, TAS, TNG, DS9, and Enterprise. They also have some decent bonus features on them as well, focusing on particular episodes, characters, and the seasons as a whole. Voyager has yet to be released on Blu-ray, but maybe it will someday. Especially because it'd probably be much easier to do so given that the show used CGI for the ships given that the show wrapped up in 2001 as digital technology was beginning to gain momentum in the film and TV industry.

I love Star Trek: Voyager. It is one of my favourite TV shows of all time and in my Top 3 of Star Trek shows. TNG always felt high brow, because the characters had interests that weren't what most people were into in the 90's. Playing poker, archaeology, building ships in bottles, playing the violin etc. DS9 started to change that with Bashir's fondness for spy novels and Sisko's love of baseball. But, Voyager felt more realistic. The Doctor loved taking pictures with his holo-camera, Tom Paris loved watching old cartoons from the 30's and 40's. The crew played board games. Some of my favourite scenes on the show are when Harry Kim is playing Kal-toh with Tuvok or Neelix or Seven of Nine are playing Kadis-kot with Naomi Wildman in the Mess Hall. Or in the first two seasons when Chakotay is playing pool with Tom and Harry in the Holodeck recreation of Sandrine's, a bar that Tom frequented in Paris, France. 

I also loved that the crew dressed down during off duty or light duty activities. Very rarely did you see Picard and the crew of the Enterprise wear t-shirts. I mean there are scenes where Janeway is in a t-shirt in her quarters, simply reading a book. The Voyager crew felt more like real people. Not because they had conflict with each other from time to time, which TNG hadn't been able to do thanks to Roddenberry's edict against such things, but because of how they interacted with each other. And it wasn't just the main crew that were awesome either. It was recurring crew like Ayala, Chell, Carey, Hogan, Samantha Wildman, Tabor, that made the ship feel so alive. 

I also love that the show retains its storyline each season. For example in the season 4 episode, "Retrospect" Janeway and Chakotay refer to an incident involving Seven of Nine in the previous episode, "Prey", even though "Prey" has nothing to do with "Retrospect". I also love that Janeway doesn't get over the fact that she was responsible for getting Voyager stranded in the Delta Quadrant at the end of "Caretaker". It stays with her throughout the series and haunts her, even though her decision was made to protect the Ocampa from the Kazon following the Caretaker's death. 

Personally, I do wish it had taken a little bit longer for the Starfleet and Maquis crews to learn to work together, even though Chakotay immediately placed his faith in Janeway's leadership. I mean there were instances of it throughout the first season, with Seska's defection, the problems between B'Elanna and Lieutenant Carey in "Parallax", and the Maquis officers that Tuvok trains in the season finale, "Learning Curve". But the episodes where this conflict occurred were few and far between.

I also didn't care for Robert Beltran's performance as Chakotay. It had nothing to do with the way the character was written either. Out of the entire cast Beltran is the one that felt like he was just doing a job, that he wasn't passionate or excited to be on Star Trek. Like he didn't care about Star Trek. Whereas the rest of the cast were either fans of Star Trek, had appeared in episodes of Star Trek previously, or knew enough about the franchise to respect and appreciate the fact that they were on Star Trek. For example Tim Russ (Tuvok), Ethan Phillips (Neelix), and Robert Duncan MacNeil (Tom Paris) had all appeared on Star Trek previously. MacNeil had played Nicholas Locarno in the TNG season 5 episode, "The First Duty", Ethan Phillips had played a Ferengi in the TNG season 3 episode, "Menage a Troi", and Tim Russ had played a mercenary who Picard did a Vulcan Nerve Pinch on in the TNG season 6 episode, "Starship Mine", had played a Klingon in the DS9 season 2 episode, "Invasive Procedures", and had played an unnamed Starfleet officer who served on the Enterprise-B in Star Trek Generations (1994). So at least the rest of the cast felt like they were genuinely pleased to be the stars of a Star Trek TV series. 

Whenever I've talked about Voyager on my blogs in the past, I've mentioned that my sister and I always watched the show together. Especially the reruns that aired on The New RO (formerly CHRO and A Channel, currently known as CTV 2 Ottawa) in the 2000's. I've also mentioned that I bonded with one of my friends in high school over Voyager. She wasn't a Star Trek fan, but she loved Voyager and so we'd talk on the phone while watching one of the reruns that were on after school. I didn't have very many friends who were into Star Trek, so being able to spend time with a very close friend of mine, watching the show together meant a lot to me. Even though it was only over the phone. However, I think the reason I love Voyager so much even to this day, is because it was fun, it was funny, and it had an emotional depth to it that TOS and TNG lacked outside of a few episodes, and that only DS9 surpasses. The characters were also great. In fact, and this is a spoiler for season 3 of Star Trek: Picard (2020-2023), I felt it was extremely appropriate for Tuvok to be the one to promote Seven of Nine to the rank of Captain in the series finale, since he helped her in her rediscovery of her humanity following her removal from the Borg Collective just as much as Janeway and the Doctor did.

I haven't even scratched the surface on what I can talk about for Voyager, but I think I will stop here for now. I may revisit the show on the blog at a later time, but for now, happy 30th anniversary Voyager, I'm thrilled you've been given some love on Picard, Lower Decks, and Prodigy over the last five years. 

Alright my friends, that's it for me for today. I'll be back soon with more posts. I probably won't post anything tomorrow, but I think I'll have some music to talk about next week. So until then have a great rest of your week and a great weekend and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

My 90's and 2000's Experience: The Jungle Book

 Hey everyone, the holidays are over and it's time to kick off a whole new year here at the Geek Cave. As I mentioned in my last post, this year marks the 10th anniversary of me becoming a blogger. Which means I'll have lots of surprises for you this year. I've got some great ideas for the blog in 2025 and I hope you enjoy what I have planned this year. Today though I'm kicking off 2025 with a quick discussion on my favourite movie of all time: Disney's animated classic, The Jungle Book. I'm doing this a little differently than I did last year. For the movies and TV shows that I cover on the blog, I'm going to use the image of whatever physical media release I have or have had of the thing I'm talking about. So, if you want you can imagine that you're watching me on YouTube and I'm holding the VHS and/or DVD/Blu-ray of what I'm talking about. Except that I'm not. I'm writing a blog post. Same will go for books and comics, and anything else I talk about. Now, without further ado, let's get into it.

The Jungle Book is the first movie I ever saw in theaters. I talked about this in a post a long time ago, but Disney did a theatrical re-release of the movie on July 13th, 1990. I was 3 years old at the time and being that I was somewhat healthy at the time, my parents took me to see the movie. I don't know why they picked The Jungle Book as the first movie they decided to take me to see in theaters, but I suspect it has to do with the fact that I had The Bare Necessities episode of the Disney Sing-Along Songs series on VHS and was already singing along to both songs from the movie on a daily basis.

I love the music in this movie. The Sherman Brothers were major contributors to the Disney animation studio in the 60's, and everytime I watch the movie I catch myself dancing and singing (mouthing the words) along to them. Especially "The Bare Necessities" and "I Wanna Be Like You". Terry Gilkyson wrote "The Bare Necessities" and he had originally been hired to write the songs for the movie, but his songs were mostly grim and dark and not what Walt wanted for the movie, so he called in Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman in to do all new songs. But, he kept "The Bare Necessities" in because his staff at the studio loved it. I guess it was just one of those things where if the stars hadn't aligned properly or whatever, that song would never have been in the movie and I would've missed out on many hours singing along to the song. I actually have the entire soundtrack on iTunes because of how good it is.

There are certain points in the movie where I can't help but laugh. Like the first appearance of Colonel Hathi and the elephant brigade. And both times that Mowgli encounters Kaa the snake, voiced by the wonderful Sterling Holloway. Just the fact that Mowgli defeats Kaa the same way both times, simply by pushing him out of the tree, is funny and ridiculous to me at the same time.

But I think the character that represents The Jungle Book the most for me, and is my favourite character from the movie, is Baloo the bear, voiced by Phil Harris. He's just so much fun and I think Phil Harris, who ended up doing two more voice roles for Disney in the 70's, put so much life into the character just by ad-libbing and making the character his own.

The funny thing about The Jungle Book is that the 1997 VHS release was the first tape I bought to restart my VHS collection back in 2019. I've had the DVD for about ten years now. I currently have the Platinum Edition DVD in my collection, but I originally bought the Diamond Edition DVD for myself for my birthday not too long after it had come out back in 2014 and I also had the Limited Issue DVD, as I rescued it from my grandparents's house just before the pandemic hit in 2020. Up to that point I'd only ever had the original VHS, which had come out in 1991. Truth be told, I bought the Diamond Edition DVD thinking it was the Platinum Edition DVD, as the cover it showed on the website listing on the Chapters Indigo site showed the Platinum Edition DVD cover, not the Diamond Edition cover. So when I had the opportunity to get the Platinum Edition, I took it. And a friend of mine gave me my current copy of the Walt Disney Classics VHS.

I did a rewatch of the movie this weekend, and I watched it on both VHS and DVD, because I felt it was necessary. It had been a while since I'd watched the movie. It still holds up. And I think that's because, even though the remaining people said that Walt Disney was very hands on with the movie, Walt really couldn't've been as hands on with the movie closer to when it was released in 1967, as he passed away on December 15th, 1966, while the movie was still in production. So while he was more hands on during the development and early production of the movie, I really think it was the talents of the animators, musicians, voice cast, and writers that really made this movie what it is. 

If you've never seen this movie, I highly recommend watching it. It's on Disney+ and is pretty available on DVD and Blu-ray if you wanna seek it out on physical media. 

That's it for me for today. I don't know if I'm gonna do another blog post this week or not. But, I am making another guest appearance on the VHS Club Podcast this Thursday night, January 9th, at 9 pm (Eastern Standard Time) to discuss the premiere episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, "Encounter at Farpoint" with Katie and Nat. Until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

Plans for 2025

 So here we are, less than two weeks away from the end of 2024 and the beginning of 2025. I had planned on doing another Christmas related post for you this week, but, instead, I'm gonna talk a little bit about what I hope to do on the blog in 2025. Let's get into it.

In 2025 it's going to be ten years since I first started my original Word Press blog, the Geek Outpost. Back then I just wanted to talk about what I was reading and watching such as comic books, novels, movies, and TV shows. No real theme or goal, just that it had to be geeky. So I would talk more about Star Trek or Star Wars than I would a sitcom like Friends or That '70s Show. Though The Big Bang Theory was not off the table since it was still on TV in 2015, and was also geek related. I was also exploring Marvel Comics a little bit since the MCU was so popular and outside of a few Spider-Man comics that I had as a kid, almost the entire run of the Runaways, a few issues of the Marvel Star Wars series from the '70s and '80s, and a few issues of Marvel's Star Trek comic from the '80s, I'd never read any Marvel books before. And I was reluctant to do so at that point since I already knew I was a fan of DC Comics, particularly Batman. But, with how popular Guardians of the Galaxy had been back in 2014, I wanted to be prepared because we still didn't know what Infinity War and Endgame were going to look like or what Marvel was planning for the MCU afterwards. 

My blog has changed over the years, and it changed platforms in 2020, and now it's become the very thing that I wanted it to be from the very beginning. A place where I can talk about the shows, movies, TV shows, TV channels, comics, books, and toys that I grew up with, as well as anything else that I wanted to talk about on here. That's going to continue in 2025. The blog will still be nostalgia centric, but there are shows that I want to watch and talk about here. Thanks to a very good friend of mine I have all six seasons of the Sci-Fi series, The Expanse, on Blu-ray, so once the holidays are over, and I've finished watching The Batman (the 2004 animated series, not the 2022 movie starring Robert Pattinson) and Young Justice (and done blog posts on both), I'm going to sit down and watch The Expanse. And then I'm going to talk about the show. I thought about doing reviews for each season, but I feel like that's going to be too tedious for me as this is going to be my first time watching the show and I feel like I'm going to have too much to talk about in each season and then forget to cover it in a full series review afterward, so I don't want to deal with that, and have decided to talk about the show once I'm finished the whole thing. Which is the opposite problem of what I had when I watched Community back in 2020.

On the comic book front, I'm going to dive into Robert Kirkman's 2003 superhero series, Invincible in 2025 as well now that I have all 25 volumes of the trade paperback collected editions. I thought about doing individual reviews for all 25 volumes, but I decided it would be simpler to just write about the comic book series as a whole. I've got other comics and books that I want to talk about in the new year as well, but I'll save them for a surprise as the year goes on.

I also have tons of movies and shows and so much else to talk about in 2025, it's gonna be great. I don't have any kind of release schedule planned out for the new year though. Just because there will be weeks where I only want to put out one post for the week, and other weeks where I want to put more than one out. I also have to work around medical appointments, as well as hanging out with friends and family. Blogging, just like any kind of content creation, can easily consume your life and I prefer to strike more of a balance between blogging and the rest of my life. 

With all of that said, I want to thank you all for reading my posts. I've gained new readers this year thanks to the wonderful people on the VHS Club Podcast and YouTube channel. Particularly the show's hosts, Katie and Nat. Speaking of Katie and Nat, I just wanna take the time to announce that on January 9th at 9 pm EST I will be making another guest appearance on the show. This time we're reviewing the pilot episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, "Encounter at Farpoint" and talking all things TNG and Star Trek related VHS. So definitely stay tuned for that.

Alright my friends, that's going to be it for me for tonight, and it for me for this year. I will be back in the new year. So until then merry christmas, happy holidays, happy New Year, and I will see you all in the new year. Take care.

My 90's and 2000's Experience: My Childhood Christmas Movies and Specials VHS Collection

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. We're shifting gears and getting into the Christmas spirit here in the Geek Cave this week. Today I'm going to talk about my childhood Christmas movies and specials VHS collection. Let's get into it!

Up first is The Berenstain Bears' Christmas Tree. I loved the Berenstain Bears when I was a kid, and I had a ton of the books. I don't even remember who gave this tape to me or when. I just remember watching it at least once during the Christmas holidays when I was growing up. It was a little weird having actual voices connected to the Berenstain Bears, just because I mostly knew them from books since I didn't watch the 80's animated series. Just this special. I don't have this special anymore, but it is available to watch on YouTube.

Next up is The Nutcracker Prince. I haven't seen this movie in probably twenty years or so, but I remember watching it with my sister all the time at Christmas. In the U.S. the movie was released on VHS by Warner Bros, but in Canada it was released by Cineplex Odeon Video in collaboration with MCA Home Video. Kiefer Sutherland voices the titular Nutcracker Prince. It did get released on DVD in Canada and the United States in 2004, but it's long out of print, and outside of two releases in the U.K. (one in 2001 and the other in 2007), the movie hasn't been released on DVD since then and has never been released on Blu-ray or 4K. 

Alpha's Magical Christmas is a really weird release for the Power Rangers franchise. It's a sing-along direct-to-video special and isn't canon to the show or even to the 1995 movie, yet, it exists. I think I got this after Mighty Morphin Power Rangers had been removed from Global, so apart from the five episodes that I had on VHS that had been taped off Global and YTV for me in early 1994, this special was the only way I had to watch Power Rangers at all, since I didn't have the movie on VHS yet. It's pretty cheesy, but it's still fun to watch. Oddly enough Shout! Factory included it on one of the two bonus discs in the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Complete Series DVD set back in 2013, though I don't know if it was included in the 2016 re-release of the box set, or the 2018 steelbook release of the series. So even though I don't own the VHS anymore, I still have it on DVD since I have the original 2013 complete series box set.

Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas is also a bit of a weird one too because it's the first direct-to-video midquels for Beauty and the Beast and it's a Christmas one. I've watched it at least once on Disney+ back in like 2021 or 2022, but I definitely watched it more when I was growing up because of my sister. In fact, I actually think that this one was my sister's tape, but it was in the family VHS collection in the family room. This was a 1997 release too, so my sister probably didn't even get it until either Christmas 1997, her birthday in 1998 or Christmas 1998 at the latest. 

I've talked about Waiting for Santa a lot on my blogs over the years, but it was part of our Christmas specials VHS collection when I was a kid. We got it pretty late. I'm pretty sure we didn't get it until 1994 at the latest, just because it got re-released again in 1996, 1997, and 1998, and we weren't getting Barney tapes that late. While I've watched the later Barney Christmas specials on YouTube about a decade ago, Waiting for Santa is still my favourite, just because it was from pretty early on in Barney's history, and was part of my generation of Barney.

When I was a teenager, we got the live action How the Grinch Stole Christmas on VHS. We never owned the original animated version on a retail VHS release, though we did have it taped off of TV, and we still do as I found that tape. So getting this one was the next best thing. I really do enjoy Jim Carrey in the role. It just felt a little too stretched out given the story it's telling. Even watching it now, it feels pretty stretched out. I have it on DVD now, and I also watched it on Netflix in like 2019 or 2020, but I have no idea if it's still on Netflix or not. 

Is there anyone who was born between 1959 and 1995 who hasn't watched Frosty the Snowman? This one was always in the rotation, whether we watched it on VHS or watched it during its annual airing on Global or CTV. I even did a full lookback at the special itself as well as its history on home video last year. I have it on VHS and on DVD as part of a box set of classic Christmas specials.

Next is Disney's 1998 Christmas movie, I'll Be Home for Christmas, starring Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Jessica Biel, and Adam LaVorgna (with the last two being regulars on the WB drama, 7th Heaven). It's not the best Christmas movie, or even the best comedy movie, but it's still pretty funny.

The Teddy Bears' Christmas is a pretty obscure Canadian made Christmas special from 1992. I don't think it ever had a DVD release, but it was released on VHS by Family Home Entertainment. I remember watching it on VHS, though I think I also saw it on TV at one point, though I don't remember whether I saw it on TV before or after we got it on VHS. If at all. It's on YouTube. 

Finally we have The Muppet Christmas Carol. This is one of my favourite movies of all time and I finally got it on DVD last year or the year before. Prior to that I would put it on on Disney+ to watch, and before THAT, well, I hadn't seen it for years because I don't have the VHS anymore and I didn't have it on DVD yet. But, I have it now, so I'm pretty pleased with that. Christmas is always fun with the Muppets.

And that was my Christmas movies and specials on VHS collection from my childhood. Next week I think I'm going to talk about my current Christmas specials and movies collection because I have a lot more on VHS, DVD, and Blu-ray now. In the meantime though, I might have other blog posts coming this week, but we'll see because I have a dental appointment on Wednesday and I might be getting my flu shot on Friday, so we'll see. Until then have a wonderful evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

Superman & Lois Season 4 Review

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. Sorry for the lack of posts last week, but I got my most recent Covid shot and I didn't plan any blog posts just in case I had any side effects from the shot. I didn't, but, I still chose not to plan anything and then not be able to do it. It is however, the Christmas season once again, which means I'll be doing a few Christmas related blog posts next week and the week after, and then I will be going on my two week hiatus for Christmas and New Year's. Today though I'm gonna do a quick review for season 4 of Superman & Lois as the series finale aired last night and even though this blog has become retro and nostalgia based, I've reviewed every season of the show between my two blogs since 2021 and I wasn't going to leave out the final season. There will also be some spoilers for the season, in case you haven't watched it yet, or haven't finished watching it. So, let's get into it.

When this show was first announced I was nervous because it was another Arrowverse show airing on The CW and while Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, and Legends of Tomorrow all had strong first seasons, all four shows began dropping in quality by the third or fourth season, so I was afraid that Superman & Lois would suffer the same fate. It didn't. One of the smartest things the showrunners did was sever the show's connection to the Arrowverse in 2022. This was around the time that Batwoman, Black Lightning, Supergirl, and Legends of Tomorrow were being canceled, and the production crew was getting ready to work on season 9 of The Flash, which was that show's final season. And because the crossovers the Arrowverse producers had planned for Superman & Lois got canned due to Covid restrictions, which caused a ton of logistics issues, it made no sense to keep the show in that continuity. Despite Tyler Hoechlin and Elizabeth Tulloch playing Superman and Lois on Supergirl and in the "Elseworlds" and "Crisis on Infinite Earths" crossovers. And I think that made the show better.

I think I was worried about season 4 the most simply because season 3 ended on Superman fighting Doomsday on the moon, and with season 4 being the final season and it being only ten episodes, I was afraid they weren't going to be able to do The Death of Superman justice in such a limited format. However, they didn't do that. Oh sure, Doomsday killed Superman, and we saw the effect his death had on Smallville, but the season was actually about Superman and Lex Luthor, played by Michael Cudlitz, which is another departure from the Arrowverse, as Jon Cryer played Lex in that show. So it feels like the writers just wanted to do a classic Superman vs. Lex Luthor story. The battles between Superman and Doomsday and the final battle between Superman and Luthor were some of the best fights I've seen in a CW DC Comics based TV show in a really long time.

While Lana, Sarah, Kyle, Jon Henry, and Nat don't appear in every episode, they still appeared throughout the season pretty regularly. Which was fine with me, because the way the media was saying it was that they would only be in one or two episodes and that's it. With a cast like this, the writers did a great job of balancing the storylines for an ensemble cast. Most shows aren't good with stuff like that.

This season, and its finale, showed that these writers and showrunners get Superman. They understand what he's about and what he's supposed to represent. Which is something the movies and past TV shows haven't really gotten right since the original Christopher Reeve movie in 1978. Supergirl sort of did, but being that Superman only appeared a handful of times as a support character for Kara, the writers on that show didn't have much of an opportunity to work with Tyler that much in terms of developing the character.

I'm glad we finally just got evil Lex Luthor without trying to make him sympathetic or try to deconstruct and analyze why he is the way he is. The comics have been trying to do that for at least 20 years, if not more, and we got seven seasons of that on Smallville in the 2000s. Michael Cudlitz did an amazing job in the role. This was something else I was nervous about just because they didn't fully introduce the character until the final two or three episodes of season 3 and so that season, outside of Lois talking about him, didn't really give me a good sense of what this version of Luthor would be like. He was great in the role though, and I loved it whenever he was on screen. Especially during his interactions with both Lois and Clark. 

I'm not entirely current on the comics, but I remember them doing a storyline where Superman revealed his identity to the world, so when they did it in the show in episode 7 of this season, I wasn't all that surprised, and unlike the million times Oliver revealed his identity as the Green Arrow to the world on Arrow, prior to the final reveal at the end of season 6, the writers didn't try to reverse it at any point in the final three episodes of the show.

One of the things that I really liked and appreciated about Superman & Lois as a whole is that The CW didn't make them ramp up the drama between the characters like they've done on other comic book based shows on the network, dating back to when it was The WB and Smallville was starting back in 2001. For the most part the network executives left the producers and writers to their own devices, so they could make the Superman show that THEY wanted to make instead of the Superman show the network and/or Warner Bros. wanted them to make. 

Overall season 4 of Superman & Lois is a great season of television, and I'm glad the show went out on a high note. I'll admit though that I am going to miss the show. This was the best show to come out of the Arrowverse, and never once did I feel it was a slog to watch. I think that's because the show was so positive. Especially in comparison to other modern superhero and comic book based movies and TV shows. If you've never seen this show before, I highly recommend it. I also recommend giving it another try if you couldn't get into it at the beginning and fell off of it after the first season.

And that my friends is it for me for today. I might do a more Christmasy blog post later in the week, but we'll see how things go. I'm supposed to be having a friend over to hang out tomorrow, but if the weather sucks, I'll just have to re-arrange things so that I do the blog post on whatever day my friend isn't coming over on. Until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care. 

My 90's and 2000's Experience: Star Trek Generations

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. Sorry for my absence last week, but I decided to take the week off as there wasn't really anything that I really wanted to talk about. This week however is a different story. Today is the 30th of the theatrical release of Star Trek Generations, the first movie to feature the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation. So let's get into it.

Released on November 18th, 1994, my first encounter with the movie was when my dad and I went to see the 1994 live action version of The Jungle Book and I saw that the theatre we were at was playing the movie, so I asked my dad if we could go see that instead, not understanding that the tickets we were given were specifically for The Jungle Book, and not just a gift card for the theatre we were at. He said no and explained to me why. This was in January, 1995. I also had the movie's poster up on the wall at home, which was cool.

For Christmas in 1994, or maybe in 1995, my brother, my sister, and I each got an action figure from the movie, I got Picard, my sister got Guinan, and my brother got Worf. Because I hadn't seen the movie yet, I didn't know that the uniforms that the Picard and Worf figures had on were designs that had been scrapped in favour of the uniforms originally introduced in the first episode of DS9. I still thought they were cool though as they kinda reminded me of the uniforms worn by the TOS characters from The Wrath of Khan to The Undiscovered Country. Except for the base that came with her for her to stand on, the Guinan figure came with the exact same accessories the original figure from the TNG line came with, except here, they were orange instead of blue. The base was the combadge design made for the movie, but debuted in the season 3 premiere of DS9, rather than the original combadge design from TNG.

I eventually saw the movie on VHS when it came out in the summer of 1995. However, this release wasn't the retail release. It was the rental release. Back in the 80's studios often put their home video releases out to the rental market first, before releasing them to the public. By the summer of 1995 however, that was a practice that nobody used anymore, with the exception of Paramount for their home video releases of Generations, Star Trek: First Contact, and Star Trek: Insurrection for whatever reason. 

My parents rented it for us. While it's not the most popular Star Trek movie, it's still one of my favourites. I think because it has Kirk and Picard teaming up to take on a threat that Picard and his crew couldn't handle on their own, which was something the movie was heavily marketed on. Of course I was shocked by the destruction of the Enterprise-D, though nobody else was apparently because Paramount included it in the movie's trailer, like they'd done with the destruction of the Enterprise in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock a decade earlier, and would do again 22 years later with the trailer for Star Trek: Beyond.

I think I also like this movie because even though they used the TNG sets, they modified them to look more cinematic. The bridge especially looks really good. Though watching it explode was heartbreaking as this was how the production crew destroyed the TNG sets since the show was over, and they needed to re-dress certain sets like the transporter room, corridors, holodecks, shuttlebays, cargo bays, turbolifts, and possibly sickbay for Star Trek: Voyager, which was set to debut in January, 1995.

I also like Data's journey in the movie, from getting his emotion chip installed, to learning how to control his emotions rather than the emotions controlling him. I kinda felt that Scotty and Chekov were superfluous in the movie. But that's because they were only there because their dialogue was so generic that Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelley refused to come back since the dialogue wasn't specific to Spock or McCoy. Which is unfortunate. Especially because Spock could've had a much larger role in the movie as he still would've been able to assist Picard and the crew in locating Kirk. So, here's the scenario for this that I came up with.

On the Enterprise-B in 2293, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are on the ship with Captain Harriman and Ensign Demora Sulu. Kirk dies as he does in the movie, but Spock does not believe he is dead or anything like that. And neither does Guinan, who was also there during that era. Then, on the Enterprise-D in 2371, Picard and his crew are having difficulty in stopping Soran, and knowing that Spock believes Kirk is still alive, Picard recruits him to help locate Kirk before Veridian III is destroyed alongside the Enterprise, just as the ship is in the movie. 

My dad finally got Generations on VHS after the retail version came out in early 1996, and of all the Star Trek movies, I think this one, along with Star Trek III, and Star Trek V, is the one I watched the most, even by the time I got Nemesis on VHS in 2003, it was still the Star Trek movie featuring the TNG cast that I watched the most.

 

Sometime in the mid to late 2000s I got Generations on DVD. Specifically the 2004 two-disc special edition DVD release. Then in 2019 I ended up downgrading to the 1998 single-disc DVD release, along with First Contact, Insurrection, and Nemesis. I decided I didn't need both versions, and I didn't need all of the bonus features on the special edition DVDs, so I got rid of the four special edition DVDs for the TNG movies, and replaced them with the four single disc releases.

I vaguely remember my dad having the comic book adaptation of Generations published by DC Comics, along with the comic book adaptation of the TNG series finale, "All Good Things...", which was also published by DC, but I don't know what happened to either of them. I did get a copy of the comic for my own collection a few years ago, and I really enjoy it. 

I never owned it, but when I was in the sixth grade I borrowed the junior novelization of Generations from my fifth grade teacher's classroom library in January or February 1999, when I was stuck inside during the shorter recesses or the really cold recesses that we had. I don't remember much about the book itself, but I do remember that it had those eight, glossy, pages of colour still images from the movie, including one of Riker, Data, Troi, and Worf on the bridge either just after the Klingon Bird-of-Prey was destroyed, or as the saucer is crashing onto Veridian III.

Overall, Star Trek Generations is my favourite of the movies featuring the TNG cast. I still watch it pretty regularly. I own it both on VHS and DVD, and I love it. I can't believe it's been thirty years since the movie first came out. It's insane to me how that happened. The funny thing is is that I decided to do this post today because I wanted to talk about the movie. I had no idea it was the movie's 30th anniversary today until I looked at the release date on Wikipedia.

That's it for me for today. I'll be back soon with more posts. I'm not quite sure what I'll be talking about next, but in two weeks the series finale of Superman & Lois is airing so I'll definitely be talking about the end of the show after the finale airs. So join me for that in two weeks. In the meantime I have other posts I want to do before the Christmas season officially kicks off in December. So until then have a great rest of the evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

My 90's and 2000's Experience: The View-Master Stereoscope

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing okay. Today I'm going to be talking about something I didn't think I'd be able to talk about after experiencing it in the modern day as an adult. I'm talking about the View-Master Stereoscope toys I had as a kid, as well as the reels that were made for them. If you grew up in the 80's and 90's you'll remember these little devices. So let's get into it.

This is probably the version of the View-Master you'd remember if you grew up in the 80's and 90's. It's also the one you see in shows like Stranger Things or The Goldbergs whenever the View-Master is needed in an episode. I also had this version when I was a kid, but it was actually the second one that we had. I do remember seeing one of these at the hospital or at school when I was in kindergarten or grade one. 

This is actually the first one I owned. I honestly don't remember when I got it exactly or who got it for me, I just remember playing with it alot when I was a kid. In case you don't know what a View-Master is, it's this device that you place these flimsy white plastic reels which show images from a movie or TV show or just random pictures and you press a button or slider on the right hand corner (if you're looking into the view finder) to change images, much like you would on a Stereoscope from the 50's and 60's to look at old pictures on. Each press of the button turns the reels around to change the 3-D image you're seeing. I had several reels to go with my View-Masters. Let's take a look.

First up is a random preview reel (Canadian apparently) that shows single images from three cartoons, a live action show, and random shots of Calgary, Alberta, the CN Tower in Toronto, Ontario, and the Olympic Stadium in Montreal, Quebec. The cartoons are just a random shot of Spider-Man that looks like a cartoon but is probably from a View-Master reel set from 1977 or 1978, an image from the 1973 View-Master reel set, Superman Meets Computer Crook, and a shot of Mickey Mouse facing the bear from the 1939 cartoon, The Pointer. The live action show is from the Electra Woman and Dyna Girl segment from The Krofft Supershow, which first aired in 1976.

The next set I had was called Hollywood Mickey. This was actually the only set that I had that was complete. I think this was just some stills that were never part of a cartoon or TV show, because I can't find anything online to suggest that the reels are actually from a previously released cartoon and for the time it was too modern, if you wanna called early 90's modern that is, for it to be from a Mickey Mouse animated TV show (Mickey Mouse Works wouldn't come out until 1999). So it was most likely stuff made specifically for this View-Master reel set. 

Believe it or not, this next set was my introduction to the live action Ninja Turtles movies. I had reels A and C, but not Reel B for the first movie. While I'd seen the original 1987 cartoon series, which was my first introduction to the Turtles, and read the Archie Comics series, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures, I didn't see any of the movies until the early 2010s when I got the three live action movies and the 2007 animated movie on DVD in a four-pack. So this was my experience with the first two movies when I was a kid.

Yes, I also had the first two reels for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze. The reason that I didn't have all of the reels for these sets, besides Hollywood Mickey is because they were all second hand. Chances are my grandparents found them at a garage sale or something like that.

The last set we had, which I'd forgotten about until last week, is the set for Beauty and the Beast from 1991. We only had Reel B and Reel C, which goes from "Be Our Guest" to the end of the movie. I don't know why I didn't remember that. Probably because we had that movie on VHS and we watched it all the time. 

I don't have an image of it, but I remember we kept both View-Masters and the reels in a red and green The Real Ghostbusters lunch bag with Slimer on the front. The reason I even came up with this topic is because last week my dad was going through some stuff in our basement and found the second View-Master and all the reels we had. We got rid of them, but before we did, I spent an hour going through all of the reels. Which was pretty cool given that I hadn't seen them in about 20 years and I actually thought we'd gotten rid of both View-Masters and the reels back then. I'd had no idea that they'd stayed around for all those years since they were no longer in my personal possession. So it was cool discovering that we still had them stored away down here in the basement.

And that my friends is it for me for today. I've got some movies to watch thanks to my friends at the VHS Club Podcast, so that's what I'll be doing this weekend. I'll be back next week with more posts. Until then have a great weekend and I will talk to you later. Take care.