morgan_dhu | In Which I Enter the Modern Age (Reply)

Almost everyone I know online is doing it, but for some reason, I had never really even thought of doing it myself until a few weeks ago. And now, I wish I'd started doing it years ago. It gives me such a feeling of freedom and control. And it's so much more convenient, and, frankly, more enjoyable than what I'd always done instead. Although it is true that at first I thought I'd only do it every once in a while, when I really needed it, and now I'm doing it almost every day.

You've probably figured it out by now. I've started watching downloaded TV shows.

I started when I turned, in my usual state of heightened anticipation, to the channel that's been carrying Painkiller Jane, only to find that there was no Painkiller Jane, not that night, nor the next, nor, according to the schedules, the week after or even the week after that. Painkiller Jane had been dumped. Yet it was apparently still being aired in the US. So I did what any addict will do when there is no legitimate source for her drug of choice. I went blackmarket.

Not only did I get to see episodes of Painkiller Jane that no one in Canada was going to show me, but I rediscovered how much better a narrative works when there are no commercials. (I'd learned this about movies back when I got my first VCR, but hadn't applied it to other forms of commercial entertainment before now.)

And, like the proverbial gateway drug, the experience of watching a show I could not get in Canada made it so much easier to move to watching shows that had already aired in other countries, and were supposed to air sometime in Canada, but no one had gotten around to airing them yet, and I was dying to see them.

Yes, my next step was watching all the first half-season of Blood Ties, which had already aired in the US, and the full season of Torchwood, which had already aired in the UK.

Edit: I forgot! I also decided that it wasn't fair to have to wait over a year for the third season of ReGenesis, which has already aired on pay-TV but won't be on Showcase, the other cable channel that's a production partner, for goddess knows how long.

Ah, what a slippery slope this is. I next decided to watch all of The Dresden Files episodes, which had already aired in Canada but I'd missed them because I never watch Space (the Canadian sci-fi channel) unless I know there's something I want to watch, and they never do any publicity for their new shows anywhere else, so I didn't know it was on until after it was in media res, and I hate coming in on a series like that half-way.

Then I really hit the hard stuff. Yes, Doctor Who season three has finally started airing in Canada, but I know because I read spoilers that there are two three-part stories in the second half of the season, and I've always hated waiting for resolution, so... you guessed it, I've got the second half of the season now and I'm going to have a Doctor Who marathon.

And of course, there's all sorts of older series I'd never had the chance to see, or never get rerun and I'd love to see again. I've just discovered Sapphire & Steel, a 70s British SF series I'd heard a lot about but had never seen. And someone out there must have put VR.5 online (yes, I think David McCallum is a sex god, if you must know), although I haven't found it yet. And then there's all the still-existing early Doctor Who episodes that I haven't seen in 40-odd years (I still mourn over the fact that one of my favourite First Doctor series, Marco Polo, is among the missing). In fact, that's what's happening right now - An Unearthly Child is on its way as I type this.

Frankly, I'm tired of having to wait months, even years, for TV shows that are airing elsewhere first - especially series like Blood Ties, which is made in Canada, or Doctor Who and Torchwood, which are partly financed with Canadian money. And I'm tired of waiting forever for the quirky niche-market shows I like to get re-run or put out on DVD.

So I guess I've joined the Torrent revolution. Instant gratification R Us. I can has what I want. Naow.

And yes, I do feel uneasy about the fact that if everyone watches current or currently syndicated old TV shows this way, then stations and networks lose viewers and thus lose advertisers and then they don't buy the shows and it gets less likely that production companies will make shows that people who download shows will like, and the creative people who think up and write these shows won't work, and on it goes. I know some shows and some episodes are made available online after they've been aired by the networks that air them, but I certainly don't know the provenance of what I've been watching. I'm still working out the ethics of it for myself. But the old system isn't working any more, not for people who really want to see what's happening in to their favourite shows but can't because their shows aren't given priority by the networks where they live, and who would really like to be able to talk to their fellow fans in Australia or the US or the UK or wherever about shows that aren't airing on the same schedules.