And as far as hdtv broadcasts go: I have noticed a disturbing trend towards “chopping episodes”.
In the past, it was mostly related to the opening and/or end credits, which was ok I guess. But in the last years or so when I stumbled across an episode and thought “I could watch that again” … I don’t know what they are thinking!
They are editing out lines of dialogue, sometimes complete scenes where there really is no need (no offensive language, nudity or violence).
A few days ago I found Voyagers “Year of Hell” and it had several minutes missing and it whoever edited it did such a clumsy job, even someone who didn’t knew the episode would have noticed that some sentences certainly didn’t end where they did.
But just an hour later I saw some show that depicted a guy who got shot with blood splattering and some boobage … I guess that’s ok then ???So I have become a bit distrustful of tv broadcasts …
I started watching the remastered TNG and Buffy on Sci-Fi when they started re-airing them here in England, however I picked up they basically cut things out at random episode by episode so I gave up and went back to my DVDs.
It’s not even consistent censorship, some episodes you can say ‘bastard’ and in other episodes, in the exact same context, they cut it.
That’s exactly what’s bothering me about it - if it would at least follow certain rules that would appear logical (like language, violence, nudity). I mean I would get it if certain things would be consistently edited pre-watershed, but as you have said, it is really random and most of the time it doesn’t make any sense.
Also I don’t get why other content (for example a gay kiss) would be considered offensive (thinking about the kiss between Dax and a female trill in episode “Rejoined” of season 4), I mean seriously, it’s 2020, what the ****?
Same thing happened a lot with Torchwood … as if we have never seen two women or men kissing … it’s so sad.
I even read about a discussion that seems to have taken place within the upper ranks of a broadcasting company that is about to aquire the free-tv-rights for further Trek-Content (namely Discovery) and now poses the question “should we place Discovery into a late evening slot because of the gay stuff?”
And here I always thought SciFi (or in this case Star Trek) was about advancement in all areas (social and racial diversity was a key point with TOS in the 60’s as far as I remember)? Seems like we’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere
😦