[midasuni]

B5 was one of the first non soaps to have a continuous narrative. Stargate followed, and later seasons of ds9 copied it too. Was a great time

Later shows went for a single narrative spread over a season — 24 pioneered that, but before that Buffy had championed the “big bad” each season, although with Buffy you didn’t have to watch every episode in order for it to make sense.

Even in the 2010s the new Star Trek series (Picard, Discovery), and especially the CW arrowverse are prime examples of how poor that structure is.

[orev]

Stargate did have an overarching plot, but was still very episodic (like many other shows at the time). To me, Farscape was far more in line with the new idea of a continuous narrative.

This type of TV was enabled by TiVo/DVRs. Before then, producers couldn’t rely on people not missing an episode, because if they did they’d be lost. (Not coincidentally, Lost was also enabled TiVos for the same reason).

[devoutsalsa]

SG-1 and B5 were both fantastic. The effects in SG-1 age a little better, but I think they both hold up pretty well. I miss that feeling of hoping the VCR or TiVo worked properly so that I didn’t have to wait for the rerun XD

[teamonkey]

> TiVo/DVRs

VCRs!

[orev]

I’m aware of and was around when VCRs came out. They were always a huge pain to use and program. People would make the effort for really important things, but not for general TV shows. Because there wasn’t enough critical mass of people recording, TV shows weren’t made that would have taken advantage of it.

By the time TiVo came out, VCRs had almost been relegated to nothing, as the rental markets had moved to DVDs, and media companies were perfectly happy with consumers using products that were read-only. The idea of recording TV to a hard drive was absolutely revolutionary, as it finally made it easy enough to use and reach the critical mass needed for continuous storylines.

[ars]

> but not for general TV shows

I did. I had a fancy VCR that would automatically skip commercials "Commercial Advance", and I setup a VCR+ program on my computer so I could quickly and easily program the VCR.

When I missed a show (it was rare) I found online review sites that would recap the episode, sometimes they even had screenshots. Or I would stock up recordings and wait for the rerun, and then continue.

Back then TV stations were pretty good about having reruns relatively soon after an episode, specifically for people who missed the original broadcast. They would often do them late at night.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=VCR_Plus

[II2II]

I never really understood the point of VCR+ aside from selling Sunday papers (or whatever day the TV guide came bundled in), since it was easier to just enter the parameters based upon when the show regularly aired. Then again, I used the VCR purely for what would later be called time-shifting. Recording over an original broadcast and ending up with a rerun didn't much matter to me. But the feature to skip commercials sounds pretty sweet.

[ars]

I never got the paper, so I calculated it with a program on my computer. It was just very fast to enter some digits vs working through the menus to record something.

I later automated it with electronic listings with just the shows I was interested in, that fed directly into the VCR+ program and gave me a quick list I could enter.

> But the feature to skip commercials sounds pretty sweet.

In some ways it better than what they have now - it would fast forward through the commercial, so you could see if it made a mistake, or if there was a preview, or a special ad that was also partly the show (yah they did weird things like that then).

[Sharlin]

I guess most people never learned how to program their VCR for timed recording ;)