Ghostwatch: Behind the Curtains

In one sense, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was a microcosm. A big microcosm. At its height, the series' parent TV franchise embodied four multitasking programmes that successfully built upon a measured mix of speculation and contextualisation. In broader terms, Star Trek as a whole, dramatically explored the disparate notions of belonging and isolation, love and loss, and the militarisation of peace-keeping. Its very premise was a fascinating contradiction; a series that presumed a future without conflict, but where gunboat diplomacy was part of the day job for an exciting star-fleet of exploratory vessels, each busy combing the cosmos for answers to Life, the Universe, and Everything. Earlier this week, for the first time and in most eager anticipation, I caught a limited, theatrical screening of, What We Left Behind - Looking Back at Star Trek: Deep Space Nine . This new, feature-length retrodoco, revisting the classic television curio (sound familiar?), discusses both th...

Greetings, Ghostwatchers! Seeing as we're still getting quite a few messages coming in via social media pertaining to the return of Behind the Curtains on DVD, download, or some other medium ('8 Track' still being the rank outsider), it finally seems time for as best an update that can be mustered, re the current status of the doc.   You might recall, in October, the @Ghostwatch Twitter account ran a poll enquiring as to the preferred medium for the doc to return, after selling out... ooh, ages ago, now. 'Blu-ray' won the vote with 44%, and we immediately looked into setting up an Indiegogo campaign to help make this happen. Despite some rousing support, the crowdsource/pre-order came up a bit short of the minimum required, so we took a moment to pause and rewind...

Greetings, Ghostwatchers! Bringing you a brand-new GHOSTWATCH mention of note, courtesy of yesterday's afternoon edition of ITV's The Chase, hosted by the perpetually-effervescent, Bradley Walsh. If you haven't seen the highly-popular game show before, a small team of contestants engage in often, unenviable battles of wits against a rotating team of leading quiz masters for the chance to win a cash prize split upwards of four-ways. Its recurrent, inescapable airing typically follows the channel's sister show, Tipping Point; which, opposed to navigating a high-stress environment built on answering rapid-fire questions against the clock, mostly relies on the well-timed jabbing of a silver-sprayed, disc-dropping, plastic plunger, wired to a heaving shelf.

Greetings, Ghostwatchers! I have a theory. Overall quality is measured by complexity of coding. An admittedly simplistic view, perhaps, but if true, one potential reason why some of us have such megalithic aversions to even the barest of spoilers, ahead of our latest, upcoming, un-screened installment, marked on the calendar in red felt pen.

Greetings, Ghostwatchers! What a wonderful Hallowe'en! I'm pleased to report that National Sèance went fabulously well, once again, with many great/funny/interesting/concerning comments coming in, almost all of October 31st. But this year marked a rare, double-viewing for our annual event, with BBC Two's 'live' Inside No. 9 special, Dead Line , also airing slightly earlier, on Sunday 28th October.

Greetings, Ghostwatchers! Well, I did hope that we'd have some truly groovy news to share in time for National Séance, and here it is... Ghostwatch: Behind the Curtains is set to finally return, this time on Blu-Ray! A reissue for the doc has been in the offing since... ooh, Prehistory, at the very least. It was wonderful to witness our film briefly shine on the unfathomably short-lived, BBC Store, last year (a future TV broadcast would also be lovely to behold, someday... ahem). We have genuinely received so many requests for a re-release, and now, having sold out of DVDs, the time seems finally right to take the HD plunge. The doc was actually shot in Hi-Def, so short of some additional post-production to bring everything up to spec, there should be little issue in transferring the film to disc.