The Days Before VCRs/DVRs/DVDs…
Aug. 31st, 2013 10:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
morgandawn
In the 1970s, if you missed the live airing of an episode of Star Trek, then you missed it. Maybe, sometime over the summer, the episode might be offered as a rerun at 2am. But without any VCRs or DVRs or DVD players, there was nothing to record an episode, let alone to view one. You watched what was presented to you, when it was presented to you, and how it was presented to you (no skipping commercials) on the TV or in the movie theatre.
Unless you were a die-hard Star Trek fan. Then you’d buy (for $14 in today’s dollars) a single audio cassette recording of your favorite TV show. And then, alone in your room, you’d close your eyes and imagine Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock…well, they *could* have been kissing. With your eyes closed, how would you know? Or not know?
And if you were really a die-hard fan, living in Australia where many US shows never aired, you might host a Star Trek (or Starsky & Hutch) audio cassette slumber party where you’d sit around the bonfire and listen to your favorite episodes under the stars.
some [Starsky & Hutch] fans in Australia, unable to attend Zebra Con, had their own little con. It was 14 people in a house, a book of clippings to browse, two episodes on video cassettes, and six sound tapes of various episodes. They remarked that like fans in the UK, they hadn’t seen season four yet and were being “driven white-haired” with frustration with the hints in the letterzine. Some fans slept in the caravan in the back yard, and they sat around singing into the night: “You Needed Me” (which they thought fit the episode “The Fix”) and “Sometimes When We Touch” (“whose chorus belongs in that scene in Wilderness”). Source: Fanlore.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-09-01 01:28 am (UTC)Oh my yes. I am now recalling, with limited glee, the college summer when my group of UCLA students saw the ST episodes that did not include Sulu about five times each, and no others, because George Takei was running for a muncipal office in Los Angeles, and his acting appearances were deemed screen time for political-campaign purposes. This was the early 70s.
I wonder if Ronald Reagan had this problem?