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krpalmerTaking a mutual chance, I did manage to get home for the Easter long weekend. While I was there, I also managed to remember how in recent days I’d been thinking again about the combination VCR and DVD recorder my parents have had for a while and our many taped-off-the-air videocassettes stashed four rows deep in a cabinet for longer than that. In particular, I was remembering a peculiar interview series about science fiction, comics, and related topics called Prisoners of Gravity that had been on the provincial educational channel in the early 1990s, and in particular there I was thinking about an episode about animation that had discussed Akira and shown the first clips of “anime I knew was from Japan” I’d ever seen (although it had taken a bit longer after that to understand there was more animation from Japan than Akira and “the Japanese version of Robotech”).
It took a lot of digging to turn up that tape in particular alongside other cassettes with Prisoners of Gravity episodes on them, and as my parents don’t make use of recordable DVDs like I do the whole effort trembled in the balance before some discs did turn up. Resolving to begin at the beginning, I stuck the cassette in the VCR and started rewinding it from where it had been left for years. After that once-familiar process had finished with a thump, though, the cassette ejected. With a sudden sense of caution I opened the protective flap and saw the leader had snapped clean off the take-up spool, wrenched into the cassette around the other reel.
I might have just put everything aside for a general regrouping of indeterminate length, but my father is a bit more determined and handy. Getting a screwdriver, he extracted the five formidable screws that held the cassette together and worked its halves open. Threading the leader and the attached magnetic tape back into place as far as we could tell, he secured it to the take-up spool with a simple piece of scotch tape. With the screws back in place, I loaded the cassette again, hit play, and hoped. Some announcements from the educational channel played back, and then the opening familiar after so many years of “Second Nature” was being interrupted by “Commander Rick,” breaking into the signal from the space communications platform he’d crashed into trying to escape Earth. (As Prisoners of Gravity’s own “motion comics” opening credits with “banjo-less music” show, Commander Rick deciding to escape because of the headlines might offer some warning against getting caught up in the dangers of nostalgia.)
Around four hours later I’d dubbed eight Prisoners of Gravity episodes onto recordable DVDs, not rewinding the tape all the way back when I was done. I’d made sure to copy the episode about animation, which started with the fiftieth anniversary restoration of Fantasia, gone straight on to Akira (with Carl Macek commenting the visuals were more important than the story and Commander Rick disparaging the English dub), returned closer to home for a National Film Board of Canada short tailored to appeal to senior citizens and then looked at “claymation” from Will Vinton and Nick Park. The episode was old enough Commander Rick tossed in a comment a new Batman cartoon was in production. All in all, though, I don’t remember Prisoners of Gravity particularly caring for TV and movies. There were rather more shows about comics and books, and I was a bit surprised when an episode I remembered about “science fiction and mystery” interviewed Sharyn McCrumb, author of Bimbos of the Death Sun. While I’d managed to happen on and read a certain number of books the series had covered, that was one that must not have quite registered on me at the time. I do hope I’ll be able to make copies of the episodes on our other old tapes now that I’ve figured out how it’s done, but the start itself was already rewarding.
It took a lot of digging to turn up that tape in particular alongside other cassettes with Prisoners of Gravity episodes on them, and as my parents don’t make use of recordable DVDs like I do the whole effort trembled in the balance before some discs did turn up. Resolving to begin at the beginning, I stuck the cassette in the VCR and started rewinding it from where it had been left for years. After that once-familiar process had finished with a thump, though, the cassette ejected. With a sudden sense of caution I opened the protective flap and saw the leader had snapped clean off the take-up spool, wrenched into the cassette around the other reel.
I might have just put everything aside for a general regrouping of indeterminate length, but my father is a bit more determined and handy. Getting a screwdriver, he extracted the five formidable screws that held the cassette together and worked its halves open. Threading the leader and the attached magnetic tape back into place as far as we could tell, he secured it to the take-up spool with a simple piece of scotch tape. With the screws back in place, I loaded the cassette again, hit play, and hoped. Some announcements from the educational channel played back, and then the opening familiar after so many years of “Second Nature” was being interrupted by “Commander Rick,” breaking into the signal from the space communications platform he’d crashed into trying to escape Earth. (As Prisoners of Gravity’s own “motion comics” opening credits with “banjo-less music” show, Commander Rick deciding to escape because of the headlines might offer some warning against getting caught up in the dangers of nostalgia.)
Around four hours later I’d dubbed eight Prisoners of Gravity episodes onto recordable DVDs, not rewinding the tape all the way back when I was done. I’d made sure to copy the episode about animation, which started with the fiftieth anniversary restoration of Fantasia, gone straight on to Akira (with Carl Macek commenting the visuals were more important than the story and Commander Rick disparaging the English dub), returned closer to home for a National Film Board of Canada short tailored to appeal to senior citizens and then looked at “claymation” from Will Vinton and Nick Park. The episode was old enough Commander Rick tossed in a comment a new Batman cartoon was in production. All in all, though, I don’t remember Prisoners of Gravity particularly caring for TV and movies. There were rather more shows about comics and books, and I was a bit surprised when an episode I remembered about “science fiction and mystery” interviewed Sharyn McCrumb, author of Bimbos of the Death Sun. While I’d managed to happen on and read a certain number of books the series had covered, that was one that must not have quite registered on me at the time. I do hope I’ll be able to make copies of the episodes on our other old tapes now that I’ve figured out how it’s done, but the start itself was already rewarding.