My 90's and 2000's Experience: The First Albums I Remember Listening to

 Hey everyone, how were your weekends? Mine was busy. We had family visiting this weekend, so there was lots of activity going on. Despite me wanting to do this for the last nine and a half years, I really haven't talked about music much on any of my blogs. I have a few posts about specific albums, and I did one about my go to Christmas albums, but I don't talk about music on here even though music has been such a huge part of my life for as long as I can remember. Today, I'm going to talk about the first albums that I remember listening to when I was a kid. There are only six albums on this list, there was supposed to be a seventh, but I couldn't remember the name of the album, so I couldn't look it up to get the cover image when I was looking for the images online this morning. So let's get into it.

The first album that I remember ever listening to was Chris Isaak's 1987, self-titled, album, Chris Isaak. My dad had it on audiocassette and I remember he would play it either on the stereo system in our living room or on the portable stereo in our kitchen all the time. While I remember every song on the album, the ones I remember the most are track #1, "You Owe Me Some Kind of Love", track #2, "Heart Full of Soul", and track #3, "Blue Hotel". Mainly because all three songs are on side 1 of the tape, and they're the three I heard the most when I was a kid. I mean, I heard the whole album many times, but it was always those three songs I heard the most.

Eventually, my dad got the album on CD, though he didn't listen to it on CD as often as he did on audiocassette, but I borrowed it from him and ripped the album to my computer so I could listen to it whenever I wanted. I have it on my iPod these days and I've listened to it twice in the last two weeks. I listened to it last night before bed just because I could.

Up next is Anne Murray's 1977 album, "There's a Hippo in My Tub". My mom put this on all the time for me when I was a kid. It was all children's songs, and she'd put it on for me before naptime, when I was at home, and sometimes after naptime, if I was good enough. She had it on vinyl record, and we actually still have that record down here in our basement. Of course there were alot of songs that I loved on this album, but my favourite was track #1, "Hey Daddy", where the album's title comes from with the chorus, "Hey daddy, there's a dragon in the driveway. Mama, there's a grizzly on the lawn. You'd better come quick 'cause there's a hippo in the bathtub, and it's going down the drain, oh no it's gone!". 

Then we had Sesame Street Gold!: The Best of Sesame Street on audiocassette. I don't remember all of the songs on this album, but the Sesame Street theme is on it, along with pretty all of the major songs from the show including "Bein' Green", "I Love Trash", and "ABC-DEF-GHI" among so many others. This album was actually a compilation of the first two Sesame Street albums from very early in the 70's.

I also had the 1980 Sesame Street album, The People in Your Neighborhood. Now, I didn't listen to this one quite as much as I did Sesame Street Gold!, but I do remember listening to it quite a bit. Afterall, besides the show itself, this album is where I listened to the song, "The People in Your Neighborhood".

This next one is also from a children's television series. It's Sharon, Lois & Bram's Elephant Show Record, which I owned on audiocassette. This album came out in 1986 and contained songs sung on the TV show, Sharon, Lois & Bram's Elephant Show, which I watched on TV all the time when I was a kid. Yes, the album includes "One Elephant Went Out to Play", which was the TV show's opening theme song, and "Skinnamarink", which was the show's closing theme song. 

The final album on this list is the 1992 album, Gordon, by Barenaked Ladies, or BNL, as they're commonly known as today, which my dad had on audiocassette. While I don't remember the whole album from when I was a kid, I do remember my favourite song on that album, "If I Had $1000000", which is track #14 on both the audiocassette (on side two), and on the CD.

 Speaking of which, the album was re-released in 1996, with a different cover than what the audiocassette and CD had in 1992. This is the version that I eventually got on CD sometime in the 2000's. This is one of my favourite albums of all time and there are a few good songs on it. One of the songs, "Grade 9", was hilarious to me because one of the lines is, "Well half my friends are crazy, the others are depressed, and none of them can help me study for my math test. I got into the classroom but my knowledge was gone. Guess I should've studied instead of watching Wrath of Khan!". The reason that part is funny to me is because, when I was in grade 9, only a few years before I got this CD, half of my friends WERE crazy, none of them could help me study for tests, and I think there was one time where I watched Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan instead of studying for a math test. 

There was one other album that was supposed to be on this list, and it was by The Monkees, but I can't remember the name of it or what the cover even looks like. I could've asked my mom if she remembers, since we still have it, but, we've been busy around here and I didn't get the chance to do so. I might do a follow-up on that album at another time, but I just wanted to mention that there was supposed to be an album by The Monkees on this list, but I can't for the life of me remember what album it was or what the cover looks like. 

That's gonna be it for me for today. I haven't quite decided which day my Star Wars post is going to come out this week. I have a dental appointment on Wednesday, but it's like first thing in the morning, so I'll be home by the time I like to start working on the Star Wars posts since many of them are pretty involved. We'll see though. I might just push it back to Thursday since I don't have anything going on on that day this week. So 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: The Next Generation (1987, CHRO and Space Channel)

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. I had originally planned on doing a post on the lore of Star Trek today, like I did with Star Wars on Wednesday, but as I thought about it, I realized that I didn't have very much to say on it, because the lore of Star Trek is different from show to show as the writers of each show didn't necessarily take the time to find out what something was in a previous, or even concurrent, show before tossing it out and starting fresh. So, instead, I'm just going to be talking about Star Trek: The Next Generation as a whole, my history with it, and the merchandise that it had, as well as anything else I can think of to talk about in this post. You'll also notice that I've placed it under the "My 90's and 2000's Experience" heading. Well, TNG is a show that I watched when I was a kid in the 90's and as a teenager in the 2000's. But, I've decided to include things that I experienced in the mid to late 2000's as well, because I only just hit my mid 20s in late 2010, so I was still relatively young from 2005 to 2009. So let's get into it.

You all know by now that Star Trek: The Next Generation is one of my favourite TV shows of all time. It began in September, 1987, when I was only nine months old. I had VHS tapes, toys, comics, books, and other merchandise that came out in the 90's, it was my Star Trek, as much as the original series was my parents's Star Trek. 

It aired reruns every weeknight at 6:30 pm on CHRO, and then aired the new episodes on CHRO on Saturday nights at 7 pm. We would have dinner, well, my family would have dinner, I wouldn't always be able to eat with them, either because it was a period where I'd be strictly tube-fed, or I'd be in the hospital, and then at 6 pm my parents would turn on the TV and change the channel to channel 7 for CJOH News (CTV News) so they could watch the headlines and the weather forecast with Max Keeping, Carol-Ann Meehan, and J.J. Clark, and then once J.J. had finished the weather, they'd change the channel over to channel 6 so we could watch TNG on CHRO. Of course, on the big news days, the weather forecast wasn't right at 6:20, so my parents wouldn't change the channel until right at 6:30, so we would miss the first couple of minutes of the episode. Of course they were reruns so it didn't matter as much. 

On Saturday nights we'd have CJOH News on at 6, then at 6:30 was a local program called Regional Contact, and then Mom or Dad would change the channel to CHRO for that week's new episode of TNG. I mostly remember the new episodes from the sixth season which aired from 1992 to 1993, but I have a VHS tape that contains the first airing of the season 3 finale and the season 4 premiere, "The Best of Both Worlds" two parter from 1990 so I know.

In the summer of 1993 we moved out of the city, into an old, refurbished, log farmhouse. We didn't have cable and for whatever reason we didn't get CHRO over the antenna/the rabbit ears on our TVs, even though back then CHRO was broadcasting from Pembroke, Ontario at the time, and I'd get the channel on the rabbit ears of the TV in my bedroom, even before broadcasting went digital in the mid 2000's. As a result I missed season 7 of TNG during its original broadcast run. My grandparents, who lived about five to ten minutes away from us taped all the episodes onto VHS tape and my parents watched them, but, aside from the series finale, "All Good Things..." in 1994, I don't remember seeing any episode from the seventh season until the series began airing in reruns in the late 90's. 

Speaking of which, from 1987 to 2001, Star Trek: The Next Generation aired on Citytv as well, though by the time I got my own TV in my bedroom and started watching Citytv, TNG had just stopped airing reruns on that channel, leaving DS9 reruns on there, and the final season of Voyager, before that was replaced by Enterprise in the fall of 2001. However, when Space Channel launched in 1997, all four live action Star Trek shows at the time, began airing reruns on there. TNG is still airing on Space Channel, now known as CTV Sci-Fi thanks to that rebranding a few years ago. Space is how I saw the seventh season of TNG, but even then, I haven't seen every single episode of that season. Just whichever ones I happened to catch whenever they were airing season 7 episodes.

Besides watching TNG on TV, I also watched it on VHS. I had most of the first season and I think that's why I like the first season of TNG so much, even though many people find it a difficult season to get through. I had the entire season except for three episodes on VHS, and I watched those episodes over and over again. Especially earlier episodes from the season like "Haven", "Lonely Among Us", "The Last Outpost", and "Where No One Has Gone Before". And while I also had episodes from seasons 2, 3, 4, and 5, they became fewer as VHS began to wind down in favour of DVD. So season 1 is very nostalgic for me because, even though I didn't have TNG on TV anymore, and didn't have access to the reruns on TV, I still had those season 1 episodes on VHS and I loved watching them.

The first set of toys from TNG that I had were the original 1988 toyline from Galoob. My dad got me Commander Riker and the diecast Enterprise-D with the detachable saucer section from this barber shop that also had a small hobby store in the front. The other three figures that I had were Picard, Data, and Tasha Yar, but I didn't get them until 1992. The summer of 1992 to be exact. I got them from a very special person too.

So, in the summer of 1992, there was a Star Trek convention that was going to be happening here in Ottawa. Unfortunately, I was in the hospital and I couldn't go. This was the same summer that I got my first Star Wars comic and the vintage Kenner Star Wars action figures from the 70's and 80's, and saw the first five Star Trek movies for the first time. Anyway, because I wasn't able to go to the convention, the Starlight Wish Foundation arranged it so that the guest of the convention, Nichelle Nichols, could come visit me in the hospital. She gave me those three Galoob TNG figures, as well as my original Nintendo Game Boy, which I'll be talking about in another post, later on down the road. I still have all four figures plus the diecast model

I also got many of the TNG figures put out by Playmates Toys starting in 1992. I had almost the entire first wave of figures, including the entire Bridge crew, though for whatever reason Doctor Crusher and Tasha Yar didn't get their figures until later waves. I also had the lights and sounds Enterprise-D, shuttlecraft, tricoder, phaser, and the transporter. While I got rid of most of the figures I owned, I kept the entire main cast, as well as Q, Guinan, and Ensign Ro. I also kept the phaser, Enterprise-D, shuttle, and transporter, having given my tricorder to a friend of mine in high school before he moved away.

I also had, and still have, a ton of the trading cards. Including the 25th Anniversary set that were sold with the TOS trading cards (shown above), and the Inaugural Edition cards (also shown above). Like I said, I still have all of them. Some are in a binder with the TOS cards and some are in the original box, without any wrappers on them. 

I also have some TNG Pogs, or Stardiscs as they're called on the packaging. In fact, I actually still have all of the Pogs that I got in the late 90's. They're in my bedroom, on my bookshelf. I haven't looked at them in forever. I'm gonna do a full post on Pogs at a later date, but I wanted to talk about my TNG ones for a little bit.

I even have the original AMT Enterprise-D model kit that my dad bought for me way back in 1991 or 1992. It took him 20 years to build it, but he finished it just before we moved in 2016. Right now it's sitting on the shelf above my TV, along with my other Enterprise-D toys and models. It looks amazing on that shelf. 

My dad also bought me the TNG comic books that were published by DC from 1989 to 1995. I've talked about this comic book series alot on the blog over the years, so I won't say more about them here. This was how I got into comic books though.

I also had a bunch of the novels. Though most of these were ones I got second hand from a friend as a teenager and as an adult. I did talk about my early Star Trek novel collection last week, so I did have a few TNG novels when I was a kid.

And finally, I've been able to get the first five seasons of TNG on DVD. I got the first two about fifteen years ago or so at this point, and since then I've been able to pick up seasons 3, 4, and 5. These are the original releases from the early 2000's, not the slimmer re-releases from the early 2010's that came out around the time the show started getting released on Blu-ray. I haven't found seasons 6 or 7 yet though. Which is almost poetic in a way, because seasons 1-5 are the seasons that I watched on TV when I was a kid, and are the seasons I've seen the most times.

I'd love to own either the complete series Blu-ray set or the complete series DVD set, just so I could have seasons 6 and 7 that way. Both sets are pretty expensive, and the DVD set is simply the content from the individual season DVD sets, without any of the remastered elements that were done for the Blu-ray releases, or any of the extra bonus features that are on the Blu-rays either. 

Star Trek: The Next Generation is still one of my favourite TV shows of all time. I still have "Encounter at Farpoint" on VHS, and the first five seasons on DVD, so I love putting those on from time to time to watch an episode or two. I watched it so often when I was a kid, and it truly was a comfort show for me. I might talk about this in another post, but TNG was the last really popular Star Trek series with general audiences, as DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise all struggled with their ratings throughout their runs. Those three shows had less merchandise commercially available as well. The toys for DS9 and Voyager weren't available here in Canada even though Playmates Toys still released the toylines for Generations in 1994 and First Contact in 1996 here. But for whatever reason their DS9 and Voyager toylines weren't available here, so people had to go to the U.S. to get them. 

I think that's it for me for today. I'll have another post out for you on Monday. Next week is an interesting week because I have appointments on both Wednesday and Friday. So I think I'll do my "My Star Wars Experience" post on Thursday. I'm not quite sure what I'm going to be writing about yet, but I do have some ideas in mind. I also have my topic for Monday's post decided on too. So until then have a great weekend and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

Change in Plans...

 Hey everyone, I just wanted to let you know that tonight's episode of The VHS Club Video Podcast, where I was to appear as a guest to talk with Katie and Natalie about the history of VHS, VCRs and anything else we could think of pertaining to VHS, has been postponed. Unfortunately, Natalie is sick and they, and I, want to do it with all three of us ready and able to talk about VHS for an hour. So, instead, Katie has already rescheduled the episode for Thursday, September 12th, at 9 pm Eastern Standard Time. Don't worry though, I'll still be on the show, and I'm still scheduled to appear on the show in two weeks, on Thursday, August 15th at 9 pm EST to review Batman Returns, so definitely join us for that review. Anyways, that's all I wanted to say right now. I just thought you should all know that there is no episode tonight, and that that particular episode has already been rescheduled for the second week of September. I'll be back tomorrow for my lore of Star Trek post. So until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.  

My Star Wars Experience: The Lore of Star Wars

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. I'm back for another Star Wars post. Today I'm going to be talking about the lore of Star Wars, and how it has evolved and changed as each new trilogy of movies and TV show introduced us to new characters. So let's get into it.

When Star Wars first came out in 1977, it introduced to us a whole world of characters, ships, concepts, worlds and creatures. Yet, because it was a movie, not a TV show, you couldn't spend that much time with all of the characters or spend much time in those really cool places or on those ships. Nor did we get more than the barest minimum of the backstory. In the movie.

Before the movie came out though, the novelization of the movie was published by Del Rey in 1976. While the book itself is a very proto version of the movie, as it was based on the final draft of the script rather than the final version of the movie, it opens with a prologue that gives a vague, early, account of how the Old Republic and the Jedi fell and how the Emperor came to power. All this stuff that we'd get in the prequel trilogy 23 years later. This novel is how we learned that Darth Vader was a Dark Lord of the Sith, and where we learned the Emperor's name was Palpatine. His first name, Sheev, wouldn't be revealed until the early 2010s, but he's never referred to as Emperor Palpatine anywhere in the Original Trilogy. Only in novels and comics. 

Speaking of comics, the Marvel Comics series, which began in 1977 with a six issue adaptation of the movie, began telling its own stories that took place between the movies with issue #7. Throughout the original trilogy era the Marvel Comics series contained the bulk of the lore of the movies. There were novels, but, with the exception of Splinter of the Mind's Eye, the books were limited to stories about Han Solo and Lando Calrissian that took place before the 1977 movie, and had no effect on the comics or the movies themselves.

Aside from being the first original novel set in the Star Wars Universe, Splinter of the Mind's Eye introduced the Kiber Crystal. The original version of this crystal amplified a Force user's abilities, though in 2024, Kiber Crystals are the crystals used inside Lightsabers to create their blades.

The novelization of The Empire Strikes Back gave us some early information about who Boba Fett is, a human bounty hunter who wore armour that had been worn by a group of warriors that the Jedi had fought and defeated during the Clone Wars. Of course we'd get a different backstory for the character, whose name isn't mentioned at all in the movie, in Attack of the Clones in 2002.

The Return of the Jedi novelization probably has the biggest lore dump in all of the novelizations for the Original Trilogy, even though it's an expansion of the lore dump that we got in the movie itself. The biggest thing is this is our first look at the Duel between Darth Vader and Obi-Wan Kenobi that we wouldn't see on screen until Revenge of the Sith came out in 2005. Ben also tells Luke that he had taken Luke, as an infant, to his brother, Owen, on Tatooine. Not Anakin's brother, Obi-Wan's brother. Which is interesting given that Owen is Anakin's half-brother when George got around to making the Prequel Trilogy in the 90's and early 2000's. 

Starting with the release of Heir to the Empire in 1991, writers, publishers, and other Lucasfilm employees began expanding the Star Wars lore, by telling stories set after Return of the Jedi. Though with the exception of The Han Solo Trilogy by A.C. Crispin, the books weren't allowed to tell any stories set before A New Hope as George Lucas was beginning to seriously consider making the Prequel Trilogy. Shadows of the Empire was the only novel in the Bantam era to take place during the Original Trilogy.

The comics during the early to mid 90's were also special. Besides the first six issue mini-series, Dark Empire, which took place right after Timothy Zahn's novels, the comics told stories that were mostly set after Return of the Jedi, but you also had Tales of the Jedi by Kevin J. Anderson and Tom Veitch, which took place thousands of years before A New Hope, and was the exception to George's rule that the Expanded Universe couldn't tell stories that took place before the original movie because he was making the Prequel Trilogy. Unlike the Marvel Comics run though, the Dark Horse Star Wars comics made some significant contributions to Star Wars lore. Especially in the 2000's and early 2010s. And while these early series weren't as impactful, beyond stuff like Dark Empire, Tales of the Jedi, and X-Wing Rogue Squadron anyway, they are still important books in the 90's Star Wars Expanded Universe.

The release of The Phantom Menace in 1999 opened up an entire era of the Star Wars Universe that, up until this point, we weren't allowed to know about. Sure, we still had two more movies to go, but suddenly, we could have books and comics that take place before this movie, in that unexplored era. And we got that with the novels Cloak of Deception and Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter in 2001, and the comic book series, Star Wars (later renamed Star Wars: Republic) in 1999.

The novelization of The Phantom Menace by Terry Brooks, gave us one of the most important characters in the Star Wars Universe, Darth Bane. While we wouldn't learn about his full story until the Darth Bane Trilogy got published from 2006 to 2008, but his name is first mentioned in the scene where Darth Sidious and Darth Maul are speaking on Coruscant before Maul heads off to track Queen Amidala's ship that had just escaped from Naboo. This scene is in the movie, but in the book, it's written from Sidious's point of view, so we find out what he's thinking about during that scene, which we don't get in the movie. Despite this novelization becoming Legends in 2014 when Disney rebooted the Expanded Universe, Darth Bane was brought into Canon through his appearance in the season 6 finale of The Clone Wars in 2014.

The New Jedi Order, which was published from 1999 to 2003, continued to push the Star Wars Universe further into its future, followed by the Dark Nest Trilogy in 2005, Legacy of the Force from 2006 to 2008, and Fate of the Jedi from 2009 to 2012. During this period from 1999 to 2012 though we also had novels featuring Han, Luke, and Leia, that took place throughout the post-Return of the Jedi era, both during the books that had been published during the Bantam era, and between 1998's Vision of the Future and the first book in the New Jedi Order series, Vector Prime. 

Starting with Genndy Tartakovsky's Clone Wars in 2003, we started getting a look at the Clone Wars, which is something that had only ever been mentioned in A New Hope, and in novels and comics. We also saw the beginning of the war in Attack of the Clones in 2002 and the end of the war in Revenge of the Sith in 2005, but we hadn't seen the war itself before. While the 2003 series is no longer canon, the 2008 series, starting with the theatrical feature film, really opened that era to us in a way that the Prequel Trilogy couldn't do. It also introduced us to Ahsoka Tano, someone who continues in the Star Wars Universe to this very day with the live action Disney+ shows, as well as appearing in Rebels.

Around this same time, the comics pushed far beyond the Skywalker Saga by setting the Legacy comic book series 130 years after the Original Trilogy. It gave us a new Skywalker named Cade, who turned his back on the Jedi Order after the Sith returned and corrupted the Second Galactic Empire, which had replaced the Galactic Alliance sometime after the 2013 novel, Crucible and after the deaths of Han, Luke, Leia, and their children. Unfortunately, this comic book series is part of the Legends continuity and most likely will never be retold in canon material. I've only read the first two trade paperback volumes, so I don't know a whole lot about what happens in the later issues of the series.

Then Disney bought Lucasfilm from George Lucas in 2012, and chose to make their own Star Wars movies. Suddenly all of this lore that had accumulated over the last nearly 40 years is relegated to Legends and all of this ground is ripe for the picking yet again. And while we still had a year before The Force Awakens was due to come out, Disney and Lucasfilm gave us Star Wars Rebels, an animated series set five years before A New Hope. As mentioned Ahsoka returned, we got Vader, and a whole new family of characters with Ezra, Kanan, Hera, Sabine, Zeb, and Chopper. And they really are a family in every sense of the word. We also got Grand Admiral Thrawn in seasons 3 and 4. Alot of people were thrilled with this because Thrawn is such a beloved Legends character since he was the best villain in the Bantam era novels. The show also gave us the World Between Worlds and built upon the lore surrounding the Jedi, the Sith, and the Force that we got in The Clone Wars, particularly in the Mortis arc from season 3 with the Father, the Son, and the Daughter.

The first novel in the new canon to be published was A New Dawn, which was a prequel novel to Rebels. It tells the story of how Kanan and Hera meet and get involved with each other. So it's a more personal story, which falls in line with what Filoni and his team were doing with Rebels in those first couple of seasons, and again in season 4. So it doesn't add grand lore to the Star Wars Universe that the TV show did. And it wasn't meant to. It was meant as a tie-in to the TV show. It did introduce Rae Sloane, an Imperial admiral who would become important in later novels and in comics and video games. 

When the comic book license returned to Marvel in 2015, they started a monthly ongoing comic book series set between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, much like they had done in 1977 following that initial six issue adaptation of the movie. This series was a bit more personal like A New Dawn was, simply because Jason Aaron couldn't do as much with the movie characters since this main series took place between the movies, and it was confined to the Original Trilogy era because of the fact that the Sequel Trilogy was being made, and they also couldn't do as much with them unless they were tie-ins to The Force Awakens.

 Speaking of the Sequel Trilogy, there wasn't as much room for stories between the movies, so the focus of the Expanded Universe, and, later on down the line, in the Disney+ TV shows, was turned to stories that could be told between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens because there was so much time between the two movies that could be explored. 

Since then we've had so many comics and novels that have really expanded on things introduced in the movies, in Legends material, and even in reference books. The books and comics also introduced characters who made appearances in the TV shows. For example, the Aftermath Trilogy introduced a character named Cobb Vanth. He wasn't a main character and only had one or two scenes per book, but he was brought into season 2 of The Mandalorian, played by Timothy Olyphant, and then into The Book of Boba Fett. Rae Sloane, who was introduced in A New Dawn, was the main antagonist in this trilogy, and is a POV character in all three books. I haven't read the full trilogy, so I know she's a main POV character in the first book, and from what I've read on Wookieepedia, she remains so in Life Debt and Empire's End.

Another character, who made their live action debut in The Book of Boba Fett, was Black Krrsantan, the Wookiee bounty hunter. He was actually a comic book character originally. He debuted in issue #1 of the 2015 Darth Vader Marvel Comics series, and went on to be a main character in the first thirteen issues of the 2016 Doctor Aphra comic book series, as the Chewbacca to Aphra's Han Solo.

Star Wars is one of the few franchises where the books, comics, video games, and reference books, be it Legends or Canon, are just as important as the movies and TV shows. And that's because from the very beginning, George Lucas saw the value in the story of the Star Wars Universe continuing beyond the movies. In fact, Splinter of the Mind's Eye was originally written because if Star Wars had been a moderate success, the book would act as the basis for the film sequel to A New Hope, which is why the book's story is such a small scale story, in case George had a limited budget that was even smaller than Star Wars's had been. Barring that, it would act as a novel sequel to the movie if the movie had bombed entirely. 

As a result, the lore morphed and changed as each movie came out, as each book was published, as each TV show was produced. It's fascinating to see how the Jedi and the Force are portrayed now in The Acolyte and even in Ahsoka, compared to how they were portrayed in A New Hope in 1977. Even between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, because that movie's director, Irvin Kershner, and its writer, Lawrence Kasdan, portrayed the Jedi and the Force, through the scenes on Dagobah between Luke and Yoda, differently than George Lucas had portrayed them in the original movie. Because, in the original movie, the Jedi were more like superheroes, and the Force is merely the source of their superpowers. 

Unlike most other franchises, so many people have contributed their takes on the franchise throughout the years, and that makes it an interesting one to be a fan of, because it's so different today than it was, even when I was a kid, growing up in the 90's, before the prequels started coming out, when we only had three movies, two animated shows, and a handful of novels and comics. And all of their contributions mattered, and still matter. Even the Legends material still matters because so much of it informs the way Star Wars is today, even if the stories themselves are no longer canon.

Alright my friends, that's it for me for today. I'll be back on Friday for a look at the evolution of the lore of Star Trek. In the meantime though, as mentioned on Monday, I'm appearing on the VHS Club Video Podcast tomorrow night at 9 pm ET on YouTube, to talk with the hosts, Katie and Natalie, about the history of VHS and VCRs. If you can't make it for the live show tomorrow night, the episode will be up on various podcast platforms on Friday for you to listen to. Again, that's the VHS Club Video Podcast on YouTube tomorrow night at 9 pm Eastern. Until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.  

My 90's and Early 2000's Experience: TV Shows on VHS

 Hey everyone, how were your weekends? Mine was rough and weird, which is an interesting combination to say the least. Anyways, in honour of my guest appearance (my first of two) on The VHS Club Video Podcast this Thursday night at 9 pm eastern, where hosts, Katie and Nat, and I will be talking about the history of VHS, I've decided to talk about TV shows on VHS, and take a look at some of the tapes that I own now, and ones I owned or rented or borrowed when I was a kid. So let's get into it.

Unlike movies, TV shows very rarely made it onto the VHS format. Alot of older shows such as I love Lucy, Gilligan's Island, and The Dick Van Dyke Show (to name a few), along with all four original live action Star Trek shows got fully released on VHS through either Columbia House or Time Life, which were mostly known for releasing exclusive music compilations on audiocassette and CD through a monthly or weekly subscription service. But you never saw weekly network shows like Full House or Family Matters getting VHS releases in the 80's and 90's. Though the first season of Friends got a VHS box set release alongside its DVD counterpart in 2002, though, that was an extremely rare thing.

Usually the TV shows that got VHS releases in North America were TV shows made for kids. Particularly cartoons, though some live action shows made for kids, such as Power Rangers, and the rest of the Saban family of Tokusatsu shows, also got VHS releases throughout the 90's and into the early 2000's. These tapes usually contained anywhere between 1 and 4 episodes per tape, depending on the show. For example Anime such as Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball Z, Digimon, and Pokemon got complete season or series sets, with each tape containing four to five episodes per tape. Though Sailor Moon had to wait until 2000 for it's complete season releases for the four seasons that aired here in North America, as its initial VHS release contained six tapes with two episodes per tape, making up the major story episodes of the first season, as well as a four tape box set that contained the first thirteen episodes of season 2.

I think one of the reasons this was is because, well, VHS wasn't as good a quality as Betamax and Laserdisc were, and so the limitations of the medium meant that only so many episodes could be placed on the retail releases of VHS. And it was impractical for consumers to collect more than a handful of these volumes given that there were about 177 individual tapes released for all seven seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation, as each retail tape only contained one episode per tape, with the series premiere, "Encounter at Farpoint" and the series finale, "All Good Things...", being feature length, or the equivalent of two episodes worth of content on their tapes, though the Columbia House Collector's Edition releases for the series contained two to three episodes per tape, depending on whether an episode was a two parter or not, though both "Encounter at Farpoint" and "All Good Things..." each had their own tape, with "Farpoint" getting a version where it's the broadcast two part version of the episode that began airing on TV following the premiere in 1987, as well as the original feature length version that aired as the premiere in 1987.

Most kids shows that had home video releases in the 80's, 90's, and early 2000's rarely had more than five volumes released, which usually only contained a small portion of the show's first season, or first couple of seasons. We'd have to wait until the early 2000's to get DVD season sets for our favourite shows. And not every show had VHS releases in North America at all. Often in PAL regions like the U.K. and other European countries released entire shows onto VHS for some reason. For example, while we only ever got one VHS release for Power Rangers In Space, Australia got two or three releases.

Let's take a look at the shows that I either owned or borrowed or rented on VHS both when I was a kid and now as an adult. I'm just gonna go in alphabetical order as the images are organized in the folder on my computer. I'm also not going over every single tape that I owned, rented or borrowed from that particular TV show, if I owned, rented, or borrowed multiple tapes from that series either. So let's get into it.

First up is Alvin and the Chipmunks: Go to the Movies - Batmunk. This tape, released in 1992 by Walt Disney Home Video contained the season 8 episode, "Batmunk", which originally aired on September 29th, 1990. The eighth (and final) season of the 1983 series, Alvin and the Chipmunks had been named The Chipmunks Go to the Movies, and each episode parodied a movie, episode 4, "Batmunk", was a parody of the 1989 movie, Batman, which had just come out on home video in 1990. My parents rented this tape for me when we went over to my grandparents's house for some event that was adults only. I stayed in my grandparents's basement for the evening. This is the only VHS release of Alvin and the Chipmunks I've ever seen, though the show itself had reruns on both YTV and Global throughout the early 90's. I've never owned, rented, or borrowed any others, though the Go to the Movies releases seem to be the only home video releases that this series ever had.

Next up is Animorphs. As mentioned in a previous post, the Animorphs TV series only had four VHS releases under the title, Animorphs: The Invasion Series, containing about 12 or 13 episodes of the show's first season. While I saw all 26 episodes of the series on TV, I only ever owned the first VHS release, The Invasion Begins, which contained the first three episodes of the series, "My Name is Jake Part 1", "My Name is Jake Part 2", and "Underground".

Next was Barney's Birthday, which contained the Barney & Friends season 1 episode, "Happy Birthday, Barney!", which had originally aired on April 21st, 1992. The Barney franchise is weird when it comes to home video releases, because most of the releases aren't episodes of the TV series, Barney & Friends that aired on TV. Instead they were mostly direct-to-video episodes or feature length specials like Barney's Imagination Island, which did air on ABC as a Primetime special called Bedtime with Barney: Imagination Island in 1994. While TimeLife released the majority of the first season of Barney & Friends on VHS, the episodes they didn't release, like "Happy Birthday, Barney!", were released by Barney Home Video. What's interesting about this release is that the cover art resembles the 1992 re-releases of the Barney & The Backyard Gang direct-to-video episodes that began the franchise from 1988 to 1991, and the original 1993 release of the direct-to-video episode, Barney's Magical Musical Adventure. Other episodes of the TV show did get home video releases throughout the 90's and 2000's, but there's never been North American complete season DVD sets. This is the only episode of Barney & Friends I ever owned, rented or borrowed when I was a kid, but we had plenty of other Barney VHS tapes at the time.

Next up is Beast Wars. I watched this show on YTV when I was a kid, but I never owned, rented, or borrowed any of the VHS releases at the time. I actually own all three Canadian Beast Wars VHS releases now as an adult. My best friend bought them for me at conventions in the last couple of years. Each tape contains about three or four episodes edited together into a feature length movie. The U.S. has six VHS releases for Beast Wars, though neither version contained the entire series. I've only watched the first tape but I plan on watching the other two tapes soon.

Next is Donkey Kong Country: The Legend of the Crystal Coconut. This is a tape containing four episodes of the animated series, Donkey Kong Country, which aired on Teletoon here, edited together into a feature length movie. My parents rented this tape for me when I was in my early teens sometime in like 1999 or 2000, maybe 2001 at the latest. My brother and sister were going out and it wasn't something I was doing with them so my parents rented this for me so I could have my own mini movie night by myself. This was the only VHS release that this show ever had, but it's an interesting look at the show.

That's the thing about TV shows on VHS versus TV shows on DVD and Blu-ray. It was much easier to sample a TV show on VHS than it is to sample it on DVD and Blu-ray because one VHS tape might hold about 1 to 4 episodes of a particular show on it, and chances are pretty good that, even if there are multiple VHS releases from a show, you wouldn't've gotten every VHS tape from the show, so these tapes were the best way, outside of actually watching the show, if it was current, on TV, to see if you like that particular show or not. And the best way to introduce a show to someone else.

Gargoyles was one of my favourite shows when I was a kid. And, like most TV shows for kids at the time, it had five VHS releases, which completed all thirteen episodes of the first season. The first VHS release (not pictured here) contained the five episode pilot episode, in a condensed movie form titled Gargoyles: The Movie - The Heroes Awaken. The remaining four volumes contained two episodes each, rounding out the remaining eight episodes of the season. In addition to Gargoyles: The Movie my parents rented Volume 1, The Hunted, which contained episode 6, "The Thrill of the Hunt", and episode 7, "Temptation", and Volume 4, Brothers Betrayed, which contained episode 12, "My Brother's Keeper", and episode 13, "Reawakening". Disney shows on home media are always interesting to see, because they either never get fully released, or if they do, it takes forever to get the entire series out.

As I've mentioned before on the blog, Goosebumps wasn't a show that I watched growing up. So when my best friend found the VHS release of the first episode, "The Haunted Mask" at the same convention as the first Beast Wars tape, I asked him to pick it up for me for exactly the reason I mentioned above. I wanted to sample the series, and I've never found any of the DVD releases that the show has. I've only watched the tape once, and that was on Halloween, so I think I'll be watching this tape as a Halloween thing every year, since I'm not a fan of horror movies.

Inspector Gadget was a show I loved when I was a kid. Even though it aired in the 80's, it aired in reruns all through the 90's and I watched it right up until 1996 or 1997. Except we never rented or owned or even borrowed any VHS releases for the show. I didn't even know if it had any VHS releases because I never saw them in stores, nor did I see them for rental at the video store. I finally got one of the show's VHS release, The Invasion, when I got a massive haul of VHS tapes from someone I knew a few years ago now. This tape was from 1990, and it contains season 1, episode 16, "The Invasion". Another thing that I like about owning episodes of TV shows on VHS is that in the case of a show like Inspector Gadget, where the show's DVD releases, including the complete series set, are all out of print, and are prohibitively expensive to buy a copy, having an episode or two on VHS is a way for me to watch the show on physical media, even if it's just the one episode.

Power Rangers is a massive franchise, containing three movies, and thirty seasons of Television, and its history on home video is just as extensive. Especially during the time between 1993 and 1996 when Mighty Morphin Power Rangers was on TV, because those three seasons alone had alot of VHS releases. Particularly the first two seasons. While I never owned any of the show's VHS releases, outside of the Christmas special, Alpha's Magical Christmas, we did rent all five parts of the "Green with Evil" mini-series, which introduced Tommy Oliver, the Green Ranger, from Rogers Video in either 1994 or 1995. Then later, in high school, I borrowed five of the six Power Rangers: Power Playback VHS tapes that were released in 1999, from one of my friends. The only one she didn't own was the Blue Ranger Adventure tape, which contained the season 1 episode, "Food Fight", and the season 2 finale, "Blue Ranger Gone Bad", which was the only time that that episode was ever released on VHS. At some point during this series I'll do a complete overview of the Power Rangers: Power Playback line as it not only contained VHS tapes, but a toyline as well. 

Renting the VHS releases was the only way my siblings and I ever got to watch Rainbow Brite. For whatever reason, the show never aired in reruns here in Canada in the 90's, unlike other cartoons produced by DIC Entertainment, like Inspector Gadget and The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin. But the VHS tapes were always available to rent at Rogers Video, which is where my family went to rent VHS tapes. So this was how my siblings and I saw the show. Out of the six releases that the show had (one episode was released as a single tape, and as two individual tapes as it was a two part episode, and was technically the show's pilot episode), we rented four of them, and we rented them frequently. In fact, I think half the time we went to the video store just to rent Rainbow Brite tapes.

Rugrats is another show that I watched on TV all the time, but I never saw on VHS. By the time the show started here in Canada, replacing Mighty Morphin Power Rangers after Batman on the Zone on YTV in the fall of 1994, we weren't going to Rogers Video as often, and had started renting videos from the gas station, so we weren't getting as big a selection of tapes like we did at Rogers Video. So I didn't see any Rugrats VHS releases in the stores. I have A Rugrats Vacation in my collection now as it was part of the same massive collection that the Inspector Gadget VHS I own was part of, but, growing up, the only Rugrats thing I ever saw on VHS was The Rugrats Movie that came out in theatres in 1998.

Spider-Man: The Animated Series (just called Spider-Man on merchandise and the show's title card) was another show I watched on YTV that I never saw on VHS when I was a kid. There seems to be alot of those aren't there? My best friend also found two tapes from the series at conventions. I reviewed The Venom Saga on the blog late last year, but I haven't watched the second tape, Tablet of Time, yet.

Oddly enough I did watch the pilot episode of DS9, "Emissary" on VHS when I was a kid. Just not the official retail release. My parents taped the premiere off CHRO back in 1993. Last year, I was at a friend's place for the weekend before my birthday and she took me to a local thrift store, where I found the VHS release of "Emissary". I was shocked because, up to that point the only Star Trek VHS tapes I'd found at thrift stores were the movies and the Columbia House Collector's Edition release of "Encounter at Farpoint", so to find any Star Trek episode tapes at all was awesome.

Something else that I wanted to bring up in this post is that, if you had any TV shows on VHS, chances are you had a certain selection of episodes, and that's it. So, you'd end up watching those particular episodes over and over again because that's all you had, whether you taped them off the TV or owned the official releases if a show had any. Like, for example, I had most of the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation on VHS because my grandmother bought the official releases for me. Because of that I have more nostalgia for the first season of TNG than most people do, even if they were old enough to have watched the season as it aired during the 1987-1988 television season, because I watched those episodes so often. That's what you did back then. You watched what you had in your collection or what you could rent from the video store, or borrow from a friend or relative. 

"The Enemy Within" from the first season of TOS is another Star Trek episode tape that I found at the thrift store where I got "Emissary" from. This release is the original 1985 VHS release, with the transporter background on the front cover rather than the 1991 blue coloured re-release. When I was a kid I had the Columbia House Collector's Edition release of the season 3 episodes, "The Enterprise Incident" and "The Empath". These are the only TOS episodes I ever owned on VHS because I'm not a huge TOS fan. As I've said in other posts, I appreciate what TOS did for television in the 60's, and the fact that it began one of my favourite entertainment franchises of all time, but otherwise, it's a TV show from the 60's that I watched when I was a kid. My parents's Star Trek so to speak, as they watched it when it first started airing in syndication in the 70's. 

Speaking of 60's television, this Batman VHS, containing episodes from the 1968 cartoon, The Adventures of Batman, was the first time I ever saw any Batman animated show, as I wasn't allowed to watch Batman: The Animated Series yet. I enjoyed it though because this Batman cartoon felt like the 1966 TV series, even though Adam West and Burt Ward were replaced by Olan Soule as Batman, and Casey Kasem as Robin, in the series, though they'd return for the 1977 follow up cartoon, The New Adventures of Batman. I actually borrowed this tape from the local library as one of the assistants at my school at the time, worked at one of the branches of the public library on the weekends, and got it out for me to take home to watch. 

Now we return to the 80's for this next batch of VHS releases. If you've spent any time at all on either of my blogs over the last few years, you know how much of a fan of Teddy Ruxpin I am. Not just the original toy and the book and tape sets, but the animated series, The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin, as well. I had four of the original twelve 1987 VHS releases for the show when I was a kid. I had Guests of the Grunges, Take a Good Look, Grubby's Romance, and Tweeg Gets the Tweezles. I watched these four tapes so many times when I was a kid that I'm surprised I didn't wear any of them out. Thanks to a long distance friend, who was kind enough to digitize all twelve tapes, and send them to me through Dropbox, I've been lucky enough to be able to revisit the four tapes I owned when I was a kid, as well as the one tape we rented, Escape from the Treacherous Mountain. These tapes are another example of watching the same episodes over and over again because that's all you had from the show in question. Especially once the show had ended its original run, ended its initial syndicated run, and didn't come back in reruns ever again.

The Care Bears Family is another show I watched in reruns on TV, but also had VHS from as well. I only had two tapes. One, Travels In Space, contained episodes from the show's third season that homaged Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation, as well as campy Sci-Fi movie serials like Flash Gordon. The second tape, which I didn't include an image of, was called Fabulous Fables, which contained four episodes of season 2, where Grams Bear tells Hugs and Tugs stories that the other Care Bears stand in for the characters in those stories.

My dad had an episode of The Jetsons on VHS when I was a kid. This tape was part of the Hanna-Barbera Super Stars collection. There was a trivia game at the end of the episode, making the tape a full 30 minutes, as the episode, without all the commercials, was only about 25 minutes long. I didn't watch this tape quite as often as I did the other ones I had in my childhood collection, but I did watch it a few times. 

Being the Winnie the Pooh fan that I am, I loved the 1988 animated series, The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, which I watched alongside reruns of Adventures of the Gummi Bears on CJOH (CTV Ottawa). I also had five of the ten VHS releases as well. I had The Great Honey Pot Robbery (my favourite), The Wishing Bear (which I still own), Newfound Friends, Wind Some, Lose Some, and King of the Beasties. And because I only had these five tapes, this is another example of watching what I had once the series had finished airing in 1991, as it didn't stick around in reruns after that here in Canada. At least, not on any channel I ever watched. While the show did have some DVD releases in the 2000's, they've been out of print for over a decade now, and no complete series sets have been released. Though the entire series is streaming on Disney+.

I only ever had this one VHS tape for the 1985 Star Wars: Ewoks cartoon, and it broke on me almost immediately. I only got to watch it the one time before my parents had to throw it out because our VCR destroyed it. I suspect it has more to do with the condition of the tape when we got it rather than the VCR itself, which was an older top loading one, because it only ever did it with three of our tapes.

I had a ton of Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends VHS tapes. Maybe not a ton, but I had seven of them. Technically six, since one of them was destroyed by that top loading VCR that my siblings and I had in our space in the common area of the second floor of the old log farmhouse we lived in from 1993 to 1996. Funnily enough Shining Time Station was airing on YTV at the time we first started getting these tapes, so alot of the episodes on these tapes I also watched on TV as they were part of the Shining Time Station episodes.

The last tape I wanna share with you today is Where's Spot?, which was a VHS released by Walt Disney Home Video in 1993, containing episodes from the BBC animated series, The Adventures of Spot, based on the children's book series by Eric Hill. The animated series that began in 1987, and had a second series in 1993. Somehow Disney got the North American home video license for the show. I only ever owned this one tape, but the VHS releases were heavily advertised on other Walt Disney Home Video releases, such as the Disney Sing-Along Songs releases, throughout the mid to late 90's, beginning in 1993.

That's it for TV shows on VHS. Like I said at the beginning of this post, very few shows got the VHS treatment unless they were shows made for kids or a Sci-Fi series like Star Trek, The X-Files, and Doctor Who. But it was fun looking at the tapes in my collection throughout the years. I'll be back on Wednesday for another Star Wars post. And don't forget to check me out on the VHS Club Video Podcast on YouTube on Thursday night at 9 pm ET, or on Friday on your favourite podcast streaming/downloading platform. So until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.