Wednesday, December 10, 2014

At Flashbak: Déjà vu All Over Again: Five Sci-Fi TV Clips Shows from the Depths of Hell



At Flashbak, my latest article remembers the horrors of science fiction TV clip shows!




"Once upon a time, major TV series in America were expected to be on the air and producing new material for twenty-five to thirty weeks a year.

Sometimes, production companies fell behind in this rigorous schedule. 

Sometimes they simply ran out of money, or were budgeting for an expensive, upcoming sweeps installment, and needed a breather.

And sometimes, the producers were just rushing to put something together in anticipation of a writers or actors strike.

All such production disruptions could necessitate the creation of the dreaded “clips show,” an episode of an otherwise beloved series in which protagonists convene to recollect “events” in their lives, sometimes to solve a mystery.  But the ploy was…transparent.

These “memories” are then visualized on screen as, literally, clips from previous episodes.  Even the best of shows in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s were not immune to the horror of the “clips show.”

Here are five examples of this unfortunate necessity, and they are all pretty bad."

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