Despite being complete jerks to their once-favorite show 'Farscape,' the Sci-Fi Channel is starting up their 'Daytime Rotation' again.   This way of daytime scheduling--essentially daily marathons of some of the older series they have--allows us here at Odd Cinema as well as you, the viewer, to complete our collections of Cult TV Shows.    Here's some ones of interest:

February 24th--Buck Rogers: "Awakening" Parts 1-2, first three episodes of the series.
March 7--Galactica 1980: "Galactica Discovers Earth" Parts 1-3, "Super Scouts" Parts 1-2.
March 14--Buck Rogers: Second batch of five episodes in series run
March 25--Buck Rogers: Third batch of five episodes in series run
March 31--Galactica 1980: The last five episodes of the run, including "Return of Starbuck."

Unless Universal decides to get off their butt and decide that most of their TV series they have rotting in the archives need to be thrown onto DVD, these may be a last chance to get most of these shows in some kind of watchable format in the near future.   While Sci-Fi is toting the Battlestar Galactica (the first season) as being 'remastered and uncut' probably bodes well for this being thrown onto DVD soon, I somehow doubt that Galactica '80 will be given the same treatment due to its reputation as being the true failure of the show.  And the last time Buck Rogers was seen on VHS was in limited release when Universal was releasing one episode per tape alongside the greater part of the Galactica release at the time.   Which is funny, because while most of Galactica's run was put onto tape (the last three episodes somehow being neglected), only few of the Gil Gerard space series saw light that way (most of those episodes NOT put on tape).  Which is sad, because only one episode from Season 2 was released, which must have confused the hell out of anybody who wanted to get into the series.  Oh well.

Welcome to my listings page.  I decided to do this on the hoof because I rarely get to speak on my own page unless it's through a review.  And since I like to bitch about a few things VHS/DVD wise, I'd figured this was a nice way to do it.

So far, the Sci-Fi Channel has once again proven they're either completely stupid or mad.   The cancellation of Farscape--indeed what has made the channel change direction from a rerun-based station with a motif to a 'real live Broadcast Network'--as basically made every decision Sci-Fi has made since 1999 completely wrong.  This strikes me as funny for all the right reasons.   Sci-Fi is the offspring of the failure that is known as the USA Network, which a few years ago was wasting airtime either rerunning bad NBC sitcoms, tepid movies nobody paid to see in the theater, or completely asinine game show/reality programming which was nothing more than softcore versions of the reality shows the free networks are showing now.    Nowadays, USA is in the same boat as TBS and TNT:  the 'superstations' where you can watch a movie but you don't watch anything off of them.   They're basic sludge.  Which is indeed quite sad considering USA used to be what TNT was a few years back:  the semi-cool able-to-air-cheesy programming station that had a lot of good stuff they that would air overnight.  Now....I dare you to find something on there worth watching.

Anyway, Sci-Fi went from being a neat addition/expansion of USA Networks to being its savior by bringing in a lot of new things that appealed to a certain fanbase then subtly changing it until it was as bland as the USA channel.  No more obscure TV shows or weirdass movies, now it's either current and godawful sci-fi shows and movies that you could find easily in any crappy video store for a $1 per week rental.  Crocodile 2?   Leprachaun 7?  It's saddening, really....but the harbinger to the full-blown shitfest was indeed Farscape.

Flashback to 1999:  Sci-Fi brings in new management (whose name shall not be mentioned here) who decides to trash everything, including Mystery Science Theater 3000, the channel's official 'new' show.   It's replaced by four new shows:  Farscape, First Wave, Poltergeist: The Series, and the American rights to Lexx.   And over the next four years, the shows on here were mixed and matched due to some arcane method of logic not found on this planet.   Farscape stayed while the others were either replaced, cancelled, or shipped off to other nights to fend for themselves.   The only shows that stayed consistant were Farscape and Lexx.   Many a good show that could have had an audience--Invisible Man, Secret Adventures of Jules Verne, and Good vs. Evil--were hauled off to be shot.  There were a few others, I'm sure, but I can't remember them.   But sadly the new management of Sci-Fi didn't really understand what they were doing:  alienating a built-in fanbase for more ratings.   And when you're a genre network, you simply can't do that.  It defeats the purpose of having a genre network.   Imagine Lifetime or Oxygen suddenly airing the Man Show.   It would negate the entire purpose.   And pissing off your hardcore fans isn't a way to keep your high ratings steady.

So, we come to 2003.  Lexx has already stopped production under their own will.   The other shows are either sitting in a vault, their fans brutally pissed over being given a good show and then watching it die under the pretense of 'not getting the ratings' which is a big sack of dogshit.   And now the flagship show Farscape, who oversaw this whole period of the new Sci-Fi, has gotten hoist by its own petard.   Not that I take any joy from that, but it shows an entire incorrectness about their own purpose since 1999.   Now, while Sci-Fi tries to show everyone it's a real live network by airing tedious miniseries with plenty of name-dropping to make sure everybody watches.  But it simply won't work.  The last of the hardcore fans has now left the building.  Whomever watches the miniseries won't stay around to watch Alligator 17 or another stupid marathon of Twilight Zone episodes.  And despite Sci-Fi's boasting of high ratings, one has to admit that the return of the Daytime Rotation is a cry for help, a plea to get back the viewers it alienated over and over again and even that is a failed one, considering most of the rotation is either more Twilight Zone episodes, more New Outer Limits episodes, or more Quantum Leap episodes.  It seems that Sci-Fi will always snatch defeat from the hands of victory of sorts by pulling the same shit over and over again when they slump.   They just don't seem to learn.

But one note of irony:  Since 1997, MST3K has never left the air.   Reruns of the show continue until January 2004.  Demand for the show still is high, despite the 'lack of ratings and change of direction.'   Even while the show airs Saturday mornings it's still rated high enough to continue there for a considerable time.   If the reruns are let go in 2004, the show will have ran seven straight years on that network, longer than the Farscape experiment and the myriad of new shows that have cost more per show than MST3K ever did.

Chew on that, Sci-Fi.   I could spell it out for you, but why bother?