The Real Ghostbusters coming out on DVD

[Jan]

According to TVShowsonDVD.com the entire series of The Real Ghostbusters is coming out on DVD from Time-Life and is available for preorder now.

http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/news/Real-Ghostbusters-Complete-Series-Details/10112

There's supposed to be an interview with JMS as well as a number of other folks and 21 on camera commentary tracks.

I pasked JMS if he'd done any commentaries or episode introductions and he replied:

Yep. It was really like old home week.

jms

Jan

[Snatcher42]

Thanks Jan, great news. A holy grail of TV on DVD for me. Ordered!

[raw_bean]

I absolutely loved this show as a kid. Ah, the memories.

[Jan]

Wish I could afford it. Maybe once I'm employed again.

Jan

[frulad]

In all honesty, I'd only want the first season or two. I certainly don't want to shell out for the "Slimer" episodes as I thought the show had become too watered down by that point. Oh well, off to netflix for it.

[JoeD80]

In all honesty, I'd only want the first season or two. I certainly don't want to shell out for the "Slimer" episodes as I thought the show had become too watered down by that point. Oh well, off to netflix for it.

That's around the point that jms left the show:

Yeah, I walked off the show when they a) decided to emphasize Slimer, and b) make Janine a "mommie" character rather than the hard-as-nails, sharp, sarcastic person she'd always been. It wasn't a show I wanted to do anymore.

He wrote a few more episodes after when they let him change Janine back to the way she was, but I think he did those freelance and didn't go back on staff.

[Snatcher42]

In all honesty, I'd only want the first season or two.

According to some episode guides, that's over half the set (78 episodes). Though apparently many of these lists are wrong. It's hard to figure out exactly what the "seasons" are. Does anyone know exactly how far in JMS left? And as others have mentioned, apparently he even wrote a few after that.

[JoeD80]

According to some episode guides, that's over half the set (78 episodes). Though apparently many of these lists are wrong. It's hard to figure out exactly what the "seasons" are. Does anyone know exactly how far in JMS left? And as others have mentioned, apparently he even wrote a few after that.

There was a network season on ABC which counts as season one (13 episodes total). Then there was a syndicated season which counts as season two (65 episodes -- 13 weeks of 5 episodes each). These are the two seasons (78 episodes total) that jms was story editor on, as well as writing many episodes in those two seasons. jms then left the show and didn't return. However, the show asked him to write several more scripts, and he did with some conditions:

1) the new story editors were not to so much as *touch* my scripts, or the deal was off;
2) in my unverse the Junior Ghostbusters did not exist, and would not appear in any of my scripts;
3) I wrote the old Janine, not the "new" Janine, and that was with all of her attitudes intact. They agreed.

The first script he wrote with these conditions was "Janine, You've Changed" which was the first episode of season *six*, and he wrote several others in season six.

[Snatcher42]

Thanks for the info, Joe. However on tv.com I'm also seeing some JMS episodes in Season 3 (#81 Slimer is that you, #88 The Grundel) and Season 5 (#107 Live from Al Capone's Tomb, #108 The Halloween Door), before his aforementioned contributions in Season 6. What's the deal with those, leftovers from 1 and 2?

[JoeD80]

Thanks for the info, Joe. However on tv.com I'm also seeing some JMS episodes in Season 3 (#81 Slimer is that you, #88 The Grundel) and Season 5 (#107 Live from Al Capone's Tomb, #108 The Halloween Door), before his aforementioned contributions in Season 6. What's the deal with those, leftovers from 1 and 2?

I forgot to mention those of season 3. That season is kind of weird: It was a network season that ran at the same time as the syndicated season (season two). So there were actually 6 episodes of Ghostbusters a week -- 5 syndicated and 1 network. jms didn't work as story editor on the 2nd network season, but some of the episodes he had written were held over for it.

As for the season five episodes, I guess I missed those. They would've been the first ones he wrote with his new terms. "Janine You've Changed" was then used as the opener for season six.

[raw_bean]

Wish I could afford it. Maybe once I'm employed again.

Jan

Ditto, as it happens!

[Dan Dassow]

Preview Night at Comic-Con: Lovecraft Lives!

Preview Night at Comic-Con: Lovecraft Lives!
Discover
Blogs / Science Not Fiction

...

And by making Lovecraft a character, The Strange Adventures of H.P. Lovecraft brings back into view an underrated American author who deserves to be much more widely knownùthe influence of his blending of the modern and scientific with the atavistic and supernatural can be be felt not just throughout literary science fiction and horror, but even in something like Ghostbusters (itÆs no coincidence that when J. Michael Straczynski, the creator of Babylon 5, was writing for the animated Ghostbuster series, which was somewhat darker than the movies, he wrote an episode centered on Cthulu, the monstrous demi-god that is LovecraftÆs most famous invention, along with the dreaded book The Necronomicon.) Fingers crossed for chapter two!

[Snatcher42]

I forgot to mention those of season 3. That season is kind of weird: It was a network season that ran at the same time as the syndicated season (season two). So there were actually 6 episodes of Ghostbusters a week -- 5 syndicated and 1 network. jms didn't work as story editor on the 2nd network season, but some of the episodes he had written were held over for it.

Ah, thanks for the clarification. In a way that's good news, since even though JMS didn't script-edit "season 3", it means that chronologically we don't fully get to the decline of the show until close to 100 episodes in!

I haven't watched Ghostbusters since childhood, but I absolutly adored it back then. So I'm really looking foward to re-discovering it via this set. That my favorite writer was involved is icing on the cake. Hope it holds up. I think it will!

[JoeD80]

he wrote an episode centered on Cthulu

That episode was written by Michael Reaves, although based on a premise from jms:

"The Collect Call of Cthulhu" was written by Michael Reaves from a jms notion (at least I'm pretty sure it was; I was handing out premises left right and center back then, and didn't take credit for any of them, so I'll leave room for error there). I did write the follow-up episode, though, "Russian About," which btw had Walter Koenig doing a voice job.

[vakie]

There are more details on the extras at tvshowsondvd.com:

http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/news/Rea...ackaging/10507

JMS is on the visual commentary track for 3 episodes, and there are other B5 personnel on there as well (Kathryn Drennan, David Gerrold, Marc Scott Zicree).

They've also got screen captures of the visual commentaries:



http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/news/Rea...s-Extras/10519