I’ve been a Star Trek fan for a quite a long time, up to and including the latest offerings from the franchise: Discovery and Picard. Whilst (unsuccessfully) attempting to avoid spoilers for the last series of Picard, it reminded me of the days when I used to go and buy episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG) on VHS tape.
Back in 1987 when TNG first started on US television, there was no internet to speak of, there was no satellite (or cable) TV in the UK (BSkyB didn’t start until 1990) and video recorders were few and far between. The ones that were available were UK PAL only, and wouldn’t play US NTSC until later in the 1990’s. I remember having one (or possibly two) VHS video recorders and that was about it. No satellite, no cable, no internet.
I was aware of TNG from almost the moment it launched in 1987, as various Sci-Fi magazines and other publications began reporting and featuring articles that were TNG based. However, I didn’t get to see any episodes until September 1990 – which was when BBC2 started to broadcast them. I think the BBC broadcast a couple of seasons, before the first-run rights were lost to that new-fangled satellite company: Sky. So having recorded (“taped”) the first 40 or so episodes I was then without. Quite literally, as I didn’t have Sky Satellite.
It wasn’t until well into 1992 that I discovered that episodes of TNG had started to appear in Boots (a UK Chemists chain that also sold audio visual equipment at the time) on pre-recorded VHS tape. The VHS tapes were around £19.94 at the time (that roughly equates to £44 GBP in today’s money). They were quite expensive, but they were available to buy from Boots every two weeks – and they were the latest (or if not, recent) episodes from the US. It was two episodes per tape (and no “extras”!) and as I recall, I collected every episode from then on, on pre-recorded tape. That must have been five seasons which would work out as around 55 tapes. I had a dedicated bookcase for them!
Slight tangent – at the time I was collecting the tapes, I was working nights in a factory. The shifts were initially five per week (8 hours per shift) when then went down to four nights (9 1\2 hours per shift) but then the Friday night was done as overtime (and possibly the Saturday too). So my body clock used to be set to nights for most of the time. As a consequence, on a day off when I wasn’t working, I would frequently wake up at 3 o’clock in the morning and be wide awake (this was lunch time when I was on shift!).
Back on track – this then became the time that I would watch episodes of TNG on tape. I would sit cross-legged right in front (as in 8″ away) of my 28″ CRT 4:3 mono TV, wearing a set of headphones and watch episodes of TNG until I felt tired enough to go back to bed. Through all this, the family (partner and two children) were upstairs fast asleep.
It became a habit for quite a while and I loved it. Total peace and quiet to enjoy my favourite TV series. Bliss.
Epilogue
What happened to the tapes? Well VHS became redundant quite quickly (DVD’s became commercially available in 1997 in the UK) so the tapes became worthless. So I scrapped the lot!! In hindsight (which is a wonderful thing) I probably should have held on to them. Oh well.