Posts Tagged ‘wish list’
Wish List 2: Spellbinder
Tuesday, December 8th, 2009I thought I would review another series that is not yet on DVD, at least not in the US: Spellbinder. I am sure that not many of you have heard of this series. I believe I saw it on the Disney Channel in the 90s. I watched quite a bit of childrens programming back then, including Ocean Girl, Space Cases, and the Secret World of Alex Mack. But my favorite was Spellbinder.
Spellbinder was a tale of alternate worlds. It starts in our world, where teenager Paul Reynolds is playing a prank and accidently stumbles through a gateway to a parallel world. This world has an agricultural society that is ruled by ‘Spellbinders’. Spellbinders are people who use powersuits to manipulate electricity. Paul is befriended by Riana in the Spellbinder world and together with his friends in our world, they work on a way to get Paul back.
I really enjoyed this series, but unfortunately, I did not tape it when it was on. This series was only shown once in the US to my knowledge, so I have never had the opportunity to see it all the way through, since I missed several episodes while it was being shown. There was a second series, Spellbinder 2: Land of the Dragon Lord, but it was not as well written and it had little to do with the first series so I soon lost interest in it.
If you would like to get more info about this series, check out these pages on Amazon, iMDb and Wikipedia.
Wish List
Sunday, November 29th, 2009Do you have a wish list of old TV series or movies that are not available on DVD that you wish were? I know I do. I though I might post about them from time to time. So here is the first post and the series that I thought I would highlight is Star Cops.
I know some of my friends from the San Francisco Bay area have seen this series, but most other Americans will be unfamiliar with it, which is just a shame. This series was made in the late 1980s by BBC, and it was a very well done and intriguing show. Unfortunately, it only ran for one series of about 9 episodes. The premise of the show is that it is set in the near future where there are many national space stations orbiting the earth and a multinational moon base. And one of the things people have brought with them as they have moved into space is crime. So there is a multinational police force set up to handle this. In the first episode, a reluctant detective is sent up to as a possible candidate for the commander of the Starcops and is very disturbed when a spacewalk turns deadly apparently because of suit malfunction. Turns out there have been several suit malfunctions over the years, and the question is, is this normal, have the suits been sabotaged, or has the Russian company who makes them deliberately overlooked suit safety for some reason. The opening scene will give you the answer, but it will take a determined detective to come up with the truth.
I loved this series, for several reasons. This series was made during the Cold War and it has that era’s tensions between countries. No nationality was portrayed in a rosy light – each one had its own faults. And although the setting was futurist, the crimes were what could come with the advancement of men in science and space. Even though this series was made in the 80s, it still has a futuristic feel to it.
I made a recording of this show on VHS when it played on the local PBS station and I have since transferred it to DVD. In fact this is one of the few recordings that I bothered to transfer to DVD. If you want your own copy, you are going to have a hard time finding it. This series was apparently put out on DVD in the UK, but there was never a region one encoding made. So most of us in the US are out of luck. But even those in the UK will have a hard time finding it since it is, to my knowledge, no longer being sold. I would love it if they put this series out on DVD here so that I could replace my poor quality recording, but I am still glad that I have my recording so I can revisit this show every once in a while.
If you want to look into this series more, check it out at Amazon, on Wikipedia, and at this BBC site.
One more note, although I would love this series no matter what the theme song was, this is one of those shows that I find myself rewinding just to listen to the haunting theme song. It was written by Justin Hayward of the Moody Blues and I wish I had a recording of it. I think I have just inspired myself. I am going to go to YouTube and search for it. It has to be out there.