Dispatch Ajax! Podcast
A Geek Culture Podcast - Two life-long Nerds explain, critique and poke fun at the major pillars of Geek Culture for your listening pleasure.
Dispatch Ajax! Podcast
Sci-Why? F.U.! - Garth Marenghi's Darkplace
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Greetings, fellow traveller. For our Sci-Fi Channel series finale we bring you Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, a short-lived but brilliant British parody show that never really got its due.
(Sorry we were a little late on this episode, but Jake and I both had some pretty serious life stuff happen. Trying to get back on track.)
We break down what makes the mockumentary format work so well, from the talking-head commentary to the show-within-a-show mechanics that let the creators land jokes at multiple levels at once. Along the way, we talk about the people who make it sing: Matthew Holness building an entire career-long bit as Garth, Richard Ayoade’s razor control as Dean Lerner, Matt Berry’s instantly recognizable voice work, and Alice Lowe’s deliberately sidelined role that sharpens the satire. We also trace the project’s stage roots, the specific TV influences that shaped it, and why the “lost VHS” framing turns cheap production into a feature rather than a flaw.
Cold Open And Chaos
SPEAKER_04Who are your main inspirations as an actor? As an actor. Um anyone from Star Trek, maybe.
SPEAKER_05Uh no. Well, I'm speaking personally. Um my great inspirations. I've always admired Chuck Norris.
SPEAKER_02Gentlemen, let's broaden our minds.
SPEAKER_03Are they the proper approach pattern for today?
SPEAKER_02Negative.
unknownCharge the lightning field.
SPEAKER_05Millions of tiny maggots. Maggots. Maggots. Maggots. Maggots. Maggots. Maggots. All over the floor of the post office in Leighton Star.
SPEAKER_01Maggots. Big maggots.
SPEAKER_07And bits of sick.
Welcome And Why Darkplace
SPEAKER_07Well, welcome back to Dispatch Ajax. I'm Skip. I am Jake. Your ass is brass!
SPEAKER_01Skip is my buddy. But if he was your buddy first.
SPEAKER_06Fancy egg and soup, please.
SPEAKER_01I'll cut your pork pie.
SPEAKER_07Today, of course, we're gonna round out our sci-fi channel programming uh early and you know, let's just say sci-fi channel programming. You don't do sci-w.
SPEAKER_01Well, this one we're okay with. But was sci-fi channel okay with it?
SPEAKER_07Can't learn that kind of thing on TV, I'm afraid. Today we're talking about, of course, Garth Merengi's dark place.
SPEAKER_01You are entering my dark place. I hope you're uncomfortable.
SPEAKER_07This is from Garth Merengi's official website. Garth Merengi was born in the past, graduated from his local comprehensive, which that's what I had to look up earlier. A comprehensive comprehensive, of course, is a secondary school for students between 11 to 16 or 11 to 18, depending on your area. It does not select its intake on the basis of academic achievement or aptitude, as opposed to a selective school. God, they are so bureaucratic with their school stuff. In England and Wales, comprehensive schools were introduced as state schools or on an experimental basis in the 1940s. Basically, they were funneling the class system, school education systems that they had developed in the 20th century. About 90% of English secondary schools are comprehensive schools. And according to Garth Marigi, his is now bulldozed. He taught for nine years at his local library reading group before becoming a full-time horror writer. He's published numerous novels of terror, too numerous to list, nay, count, over 500 short stories, and he has edited thirty anthologies of his own work, which have all achieved the Grand Master of Darkdom Award. Which I'm sure he created as well. He wrote, directed, and starred in Garth Moringi's Dark Place for the Peruvian Market, which subsequently aired on Channel 4 and has not been repeated due to its radical and polemic content. He commenced work on Terror Tome, which is one of his newer books, actually, during the late 1980s, continued it on alone and unaided by editors through the 1990s and on into the early 2000s and the mid-2000s, and has now only found a publisher brave enough to unleash its chilling portents. He is an honorary fellow. I appreciate that last line, because they didn't say he was an honorary fellow of what? That's just he's an honorary fellow. That's pretty good.
SPEAKER_01So we have Garth Moring, the character. But what was the show?
What The Show Actually Is
SPEAKER_01Exhumed from the archives. It was about a hospital, its doctors, and the weird occult goings on due to a portal from hell being under the hospital.
SPEAKER_05Do you really buy this portal to hell deal? I wouldn't say I'll buy it less. Let's just say I'm window shopping. And right now there's a half-price sale on weird.
SPEAKER_01And various and sundry elements of the occult that they must defeat on a week-to-week basis. Being reclaimed loss footage, thus they have talking heads of the stars, writer, and director popping in periodically to tell the story of the show's making. Garth Meringi appears as himself, as well as the show within show within a show's Dr. Rick Daglas to provide commentary, as does Dean Lerner and actor Todd Rivers. It's all comedic parody of egotistical writers and low-budget horror tropes, blending absurdism and a deliberately inept style to satirize the worst parts of the horror genre.
Cast And Creative Team Breakdown
SPEAKER_01Now, Garth Merengi, and by way of Rick Daglas, is played by Matthew Holness. Holness is kind of the brain behind the idea of Garth Merengi. He was the main writer for the show. He was part of the Cambridge Footlights, which was founded in 1883. The Cambridge Footlights is a world-renowned student sketch comedy society, uh much like uh Groundlings or the Second City.
SPEAKER_07Yep.
SPEAKER_01Yep. It's kind of the British version of that. At the time he was he was there, Mitchell and Webb and John Oliver and some other people that he will work with were also there. Mm-hmm. So he was a side player in multiple uh alternative comedy shows. He went on to make Garth Morangi and then went behind the scenes for a lot of his work after that. One would assume he is a legitimate horror fan as he went on to write and direct Possum in 2018, which is a dark UK horror film. Sean Harris. Sean Harris. Sean Harris, that's right. Who you may recognize as the bad guy from the later Mission Impossible films.
SPEAKER_07Oh yeah, I forgot about that part.
SPEAKER_01I've seen him in a bunch of other stuff. Very non-comedic, very straight horror. It was dark. I read a statistic that Sean Harris doesn't smile for a single second in the entire film. And 98% of the film he has a scowl.
SPEAKER_07It's you know that's like every role he's ever done, so I don't know that that's really all that special.
SPEAKER_01Well, yeah, it's a more like turned up to 11, really. Along with Matthew Holness, there was Richard Ayawade, who played Dean Lerner, and then Metalite Thornton Reed as well.
SPEAKER_07Yes. The layers in this are fantastic.
SPEAKER_01Yes. Meta upon meta. Along with being on the show as an actor, just like his Dean Lerner character, he was the director and co-writer for the series. Ayawade is a leading voice in the comedy scene with a slew of writing, directing, and acting credits. Probably most notably writing Submarine and The Double, while being most recognizable as his character from the uh IT crowd.
SPEAKER_07Yes. Don't forget he also directed a bunch of music videos for Casabian, Arctic Monkeys, Vampire Weekend, and the IAS. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I believe that he is best friends with the lead singer of the Arctic Monkeys. Which is how he got him to do the soundtrack for Submarine and has done most of their videos. You also had Todd Rivers. Or I'm sorry, Dr. Todd Rivers, who is played by Matt Barry. Hell yeah. The haughty, histrionic, and balmy baritone has become an instantly recognizable vocal talent. Truly breaking out in the What We Do in the Shadows series in America. And he also did The Toast of London before that. Which I love. He is a style solely singular, and much of his dialogue was ADR'd in the show, leading to an even more cheesy badness inherent therein. Rounding out the cast was Alice Lowe, a thoroughly working actress with a mix of both comedy and horror. Aside from Garth, she's probably most recognizable from Sightseers and Prevenge that she didn't only star, but wrote and directed in it, highlighting her immense talent.
SPEAKER_07Good for her. Yeah, she is completely undersung in this. Granted, in Darkplace, her being forgotten and shafted is on purpose because of the misogynistic nature of the characters.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yeah.
SPEAKER_07Especially if you look at the tenor and tone and content of the first episode. You kind of understand what you're getting into here.
SPEAKER_01No, she played her role brilliantly. You also had bit parts for many other very popular British comedic persons, like Noel Fielding and Julian Barrett, both from The Mighty Boosh, and Stephen Merchant. They all pop up in the series.
SPEAKER_07It's almost like the British comedy community is like a small ecosystem where they all are in each other's shit.
SPEAKER_01Figuratively.
SPEAKER_07Matthew also appeared, of course, in works done by Bricky Gervaise and Stephen Merchant. He did stuff with the Mighty Boosh. He was in an episode of The British Office. These are all interconnected. Everybody does each other's stuff. It's kind of like, you know, seeing Will Farrell pop up in different American comedy stuff. It's very incestuous when it comes to that stuff.
SPEAKER_01It's something that's, especially in comedy, has happened time immemorial.
SPEAKER_07I think the greatest example is from the early 80s, The Ruttles, which was a mashup between Saturday Night Live and Monty Python to lampoon the Beatles.
SPEAKER_01So the Sci-Fi Horror Spoof first aired on Channel 4 in Britain in 2004, but that wasn't the origin
Origins And Key Influences
SPEAKER_01of Dark Place, because it began on the stage just a few years before then. Ayoaday's Dean Lerner would introduce the writer's new horror production, usually to laughs from the audience. As Holness said to The Guardian years later, this writer was doing a very serious horror show and couldn't understand why audiences were laughing. He was convinced it was a nervous reaction due to the sheer terror.
SPEAKER_07He did something really, really interesting, something that a lot of people don't do in that he kept the bit going. If I could liken it to anybody, I was trying to think of an o analog in any country, any big media landscape, and the only thing I could think of was half Andy Kaufman, kind of, but more like Pee Wee Herman.
SPEAKER_01Yes, that fits better, I think.
SPEAKER_07It's very much that. It's a character that we all think is a real person, though we know it's not. But everything that they do was done through that lens in that character. And not just in like this is my pen name or my stage name. No, he was an entire character. Earlier today, I listened to an interview that Garth Merengi does with Mike Flanagan, which is very funny. Because of course, eventually Garth Merengi creates a podcast, because of course he does. So Matthew Holness was a big fan as a kid of hammer horror, which we should probably do an episode on, to be honest. He was extremely young. At the age of six, he actually approached famous hammer star and neighbor, Peter Cushing, who not only, of course, is in Star Wars and a weird non-canon Doctor Who series of movies, for his autograph. And Cushing expressed concern that the child knew too much about those movies.
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_07And you know what? He was probably right. Yeah. I don't know that a little kid can't start too early. Well, I don't know that a six-year-old really gets the subtleties of the Wickerman, but I'm not an expert, but a Holness attended Chaucer Technology School in Canterbury and went on to read to read English at Trinity Hall. I don't exactly know what that means. I think that means study.
SPEAKER_01Yes. It's like doing maths.
SPEAKER_07Ah, yeah, of course. It's their version of uh reading instead of studying, that's fine. He received a master's of arts from Cambridge, graduating in Absentia because he was on the road doing comedy. As a member of the Cambridge Footlights, he appeared in a number of shows at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in the mid-1990s, which was like an alt comedy showcase. He was vice president of the Footlights when David Mitchell of Mitchell and Webb fame was the president, which just backs up our claim that it's all incestuous. He first appeared on television as a cast member in the BBC Two comedy Bruiser in 2000. That's when he launched his stage career with Garth Marengi's Fright Night with a K. Written by him and Ayowate, along with Alice Lowe. They were subsequently nominated for a Perrier Award, or maybe because it's UK, maybe it's Perrier. And that's how the whole thing burst into our reality.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Apparently, while they were coming up with the structure and the idea of the show, they were looking at different influences. I know that Ayawadi and Holeness watched a lot of TV together. Apparently, TJ Hooker was a huge influence on the structure of the show.
SPEAKER_07Of course. Shatner appears again.
SPEAKER_01They watch a lot of Twin Peaks. The Kingdom, uh, which is, of course, like an occult horror medical show set in a hospital, so that fits. Dark Shadows, um, which Holeness mentioned. And the Star Trek episode City on the Edge of Forever. Wow. Which apparently was direct inspiration for Skipper and the Shogoth episode.
SPEAKER_07Okay. Here's the thing that baffles me about this. How do they not cite Doctor Who?
SPEAKER_01Uh well, they kind of do. So I know that in some interviews that I read, Doctor Who does come up. And in fact, when they were doing the pilot, which we'll get to in a bit, Doctor Who is mentioned. As you said, he was really into hammer films growing up. He also loved Paul Poor novelists, those who could like hammer these stories out super quickly, and along with that, the pomposity that often entwines itself during their discussion of their work. Now, this leads to Garth himself and who Garth the character was based off of. There are different sources claiming different things.
SPEAKER_07Yes.
SPEAKER_01One said that Garth is based off Guy N. Smith.
SPEAKER_07Sounds like a made-up guy, but he's not. He's real.
SPEAKER_01He was a 39 to 2020. Real writer, if you look at some of the stuff that he wrote, like Night of the Crabs or The Sucking Pit or The Slime Beast, you can definitely see elements of Garth's books there. Oh man. Although another person claimed that he was definitely based off of uh Sean Hudson, which is also if you look at his novels like Slugs, Spawn, Erebus, Renegades, they look exactly like Garth Rongay covers. At least for the wardrobe and glasses, he distinctly based it off of William Friedkin.
SPEAKER_07Of course.
SPEAKER_01The director of uh things like The Exorcist, which you might know, and uh infamous Blowhard interviews. Loves the shit talk actors. Yep, definitely had a distinct version of how he saw himself and his work and other people's work.
SPEAKER_07Wrote a tell-all book that is really inflammatory and self-congratulatory. A little like Franklinella's but less rapey.
SPEAKER_01Ugh. Gross. James Herbert also came up because when they were making the move to the small screen, it was a chance for both Holeness and Aywate to spoof some of these gore-soaked horror elements and also highlight the DIY aesthetic that some of these uh less less big uh box office shows had at the time. Now, when they made the pilot, apparently they they overplayed the seriousness, and they found when they were finished and they were watching it back, it was dull and it didn't work.
SPEAKER_07I've seen a lot of the deleted scenes. It's it is a little dull, though some of them are very funny. Oh yeah? I totally get why they cut them. I mean that's what happens when you ad lib that kind of shit, you know what I mean?
Pilot Fixes And The Meta Format
SPEAKER_01Right. So they went back and redid it to make it funnier, kind of like uh police squad-esque, but Holness said they needed to pack a lot of character bits and a decent story to main a maintain interest, because you don't want an overlong comedy sketch because that just doesn't work long term. It fits for the moment in short bursts, but that can't sustain over a 25-minute episode. Now the pilot had been set in modern times, but when they reworked it to be an older forgotten show, much like a lost Doctor Who nostalgic feel, which is what he referenced, that would feel much more cozy, the atmosphere, that would permeate the old VHS quality and the certain levels of uh sci-fi props. And that would make that standard of quality feel viable, as opposed to if you set it today. There'd be a much higher standard that would be necessary. But when you put it as a an old lost show made decades ago, it can work for being, you know, as cheesy as the show is, still be believable.
SPEAKER_07Especially since when you intercut it with modern day interviews with the actors looking back on the project, it's not only an easy way to do fun, funny cuts in the action of the show, to do punchlines and to do dry humor, which totally works. But it feels universal because though they're parodying these things that they grew up with, watching it even to this day, I'm like, oh, this must be a parody of Doctor Who in 70s General Hospital or Sane Elsewhere, even though those were not the direct inspirations, but they work so well universally in that way that you just assume, yeah, of course, through the American lens, through stuff that we would have had more access to. And so it it really works even in the American like lexicon. It makes sense. It feels real and drawn from something that even we relate to, even though we would never have seen most of the shows that they actually drew their original inspiration from.
Why It Flopped Then Became Cult
SPEAKER_01So just six episodes were made of Garth Margie's Dark Place that were crappy on purpose, but with a purpose. I don't think that Channel 4 necessarily like super got it. They relegated to a late night time slot, and the ratings weren't particularly good, as one would expect, uh, being late night as it was. Though a second series had been planned, the network pulled the plug. As Holeness reflected, I'd gone through the disappointment of having to say goodbye to it, but we always knew it would have a following.
SPEAKER_07Well, Richard Idawade cut his chops on the IT crowd, like we mentioned, for which he won a BAFTA award for best male comedy performance, by the way. He was president of the Footlights while he was at the University of Cambridge. He and Holeness debuted the characters of Dean Lerner and Garth Merengi at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2000, and then of course, then to Garth Merengi's Dark Place, and then Man-to-Man with Dean Lerner, which we have mentioned, but we will probably talk about a little bit more later. I think Idawaday is really I think he's really key in the success of this show, because he ended up having a a way bigger and better career than, at least internationally, than uh Matthew Holness. And his dedication and his work on this show, I think, really helped solidify him and that show's place in comedy history. I mean, he's relatively recognizable even in American audiences. I mean, other than a few things he's been in that I'm surprised American audiences know who he is. But he is relatively recognizable, and they definitely know his voice, which would become a staple of that character, and of this show. I think it's one of the best parts of Between him and Matt Berry, you have two of some of the greatest voice character actors in the two that come out of the UK in forever. It's true.
SPEAKER_01I think both of them have had multiple big time, whether it's Star Wars or Super Mario movies or Fallout TV show, multiple video games and whatnot. They voice act all over the place.
SPEAKER_07And they're really great at it, both of them. Uh for for completely opposite reasons.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, too true. So being on the late night time slot and being a horror spoof, it did have some fervid fans, but it just didn't quite get the push it needed to stay on the air. But I think this is probably one of the most quintessentially cult properties that's come out in the past twenty, thirty years. Oh, absolutely. Truly underground. You know, it it was kind of pre lots of stuff on YouTube, stuff being pirated and whatnot. Um, so it was just through word of mouth that it spread.
SPEAKER_07This was only A few years after The Office comes out. The British really pioneered the idea of the Mockumentary, uh, especially the Mocumentary series. And this, I think, tapped into something wholly new that even The Office didn't. And I feel like this was the perfect time in the perfect place for this to be situated. It really did something really interesting, but unfortunately, kind of flew under the radar at the time. Yeah. But only for a few years.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, at the time it just didn't do much. There were other bigger shows coming out at the same time that essentially have no cultural footprint. Like stuff like Murder City, No Angels, The Smoking Room. They had bigger ratings than Garth Murgus Dark Place, but I'd never heard of any of those shows. No, I don't know any of those. And they've left nothing. But there was there was a success. It was a cult fandom, and that spurred on a DVD and didn't have much advertising. And obviously, there was like no social media or streaming. So it was essentially a death sentence for Dark Place. But the ratings were apparently high enough to allow for a spin-off show, which was Man to Man with Dean Lerner. Also produced by Channel Forced Film Division, Film 4. Holeness and Ayawate wrote that script as well. That was in 2006 that that was out. At that same time, the Dark Place finally found a new home. It made its way across the pond in August of 2006. The SyFi Channel picked up Garth McGee's Dark Place. Unfortunately. They also put it on at the worst times. So I believe when I looked it up, it originally aired, I think, at midnight, the first episode they showed. That's about right. Just surrounded by lackluster garbage. And then the subsequent weeks that it aired, it was on at like a 10 o'clock time slot. Really, I don't know who they're trying to capture. It didn't have repeat airings either. It was just kind of one and done for episodes, which is bizarre.
SPEAKER_07And nobody had any faith in the show at all. And yet it went super viral anyway. I picked it up secondhand, somebody showed it to me, you know, and then I showed it to other people. That's how most of the people that I know saw the show.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. It was sci-fi that that brought it over to America, but it was its uh close counterpart Cartoon Network that its adult swim really brought it to prominence. Yep. So even though Sci-Fi brought it over, it was the Brit Block of a programming that aired on Fridays at midnight in 2009 that really allowed it to become a hit in America. And that was Look Around You, The Mighty Boosh, The Office, and Garth Marie's Dark Place. That's how I saw it. That was like, wow, wow. This is this is some new, interesting comedy, really doing something. It was paired around other things of similar interest, similar comedic style, similar comedic voices, really pushed in that way and given a slot that was able to catapult it to different types of viewers and really let it develop a fandom in America.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, and I feel like that breakthrough in America really led to the, though not as heralded, but for the most part, but I think well-regarded British comedy from that era, or at least the era in which that was released, that did break into America, like um Brass Eye, Big Train, Mitchell and Webb, specifically that Mitchell and Webb look, that I think that maybe not have broken through as well had Cartoon Network not done that. Because that's
Garth Lore And Wild Bibliography
SPEAKER_07when I started discovering all of those shows subsequently. And then it was just like direct pipeline after the underground success of Darkplace. And the Mighty Boosh, sort of independently.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think it was the proliferation of that. I think BBC America having its own programming that they started to do in the early 2000s, getting its own channel, because in 2014 AMC Networks acquired almost 50% stake in the network and really kind of gave it slots to show in the US. But it's it's one of those things that you know, as Stephen Merchant said, who played one of the bigger comedic voices in that British comedic scene, and he played a chef in uh the Hell Hath Fury episode. That's the misogynistic Liz episode where she gets telekinesis.
SPEAKER_07Hell Hath Fury was the first episode where I was really into it.
SPEAKER_01Oh, could have been. But as Steven Merchant said, uh, I don't think it ever really got the plaudits and attention that it deserved at the time. But he says I get a tweet or Instagram message about it almost every day. People are still discovering that show.
SPEAKER_06Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_01Yep. Uh and wholeness told the scene magazine in 2023. I'm quite pleased because most of the stuff I love has always been cult. I think that the mechanics of cult fandom are sort of in dark place anyway. It's kind of a show about cult TV and about cult fandom and cult books, so I feel it was destined to be that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_06Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_01Yep.
SPEAKER_06Yep.
SPEAKER_01It's a bad show done amazingly well with a mile-a-minute details of ineptitude, all while slammed against the recontextualization of the meta-narrative, a hack writer beefing his own ego and importance through an illusion of achieving next level game-changing brilliance in this TV show that was awful from the get-go. It's depth beyond pastiche. The show within a show, within a show, parodying, parodying horror and medical shows while delving into the mistaken geniuses who falsely believe themselves statues of grandeur. It works because of the sincerity, the layered and attentive writing and jokes, and the parodying love of the genre that the people making this know so well.
SPEAKER_07Yeah.
SPEAKER_01It's just so much fun. And every time you watch it, there's such detail and layer that you just get something out of it new every time.
SPEAKER_07Every time. The thing that is fascinating about to go on some of the comments I was making earlier, Stephen King is so present in this, and yet not an inspiration for it, that I feel like there's like a truth to it that they don't even intend, but is so there. It's very, very, very much about Stephen King, and yet not. Uh and the way that we as Americans at least, we project that on it. Okay. Yeah, I mean, I get it, he's Stephen King. He's not, but Stephen King totally fits into this, at least partially into this. You know, with the output, the way that Stephen King used to put himself into everything, his own ego, the coke-fueled, maniacal way that he would write, and then eventually direct his own work during the 80s, 70s, and 80s. There is such a there is such a Stephen King vibe here that you can't not see it. When I watch this, I'm like, okay, this is obviously a mashup of like Stephen King and Doctor Who. It's not. But it but it rings so true in these genres that you're like, how can you not see that? You know what I mean? It's so blatant and so obvious and so so expertly executed in its jump cuts, its bad editing, it's dubbed over dialogue, the concepts, the formats. You can almost layer this over all Western pop culture, cult pop culture during this era, and you can make connections. And it works on so many levels that you totally get it. And I think it inspired a lot of other shows that would come out later. I think Rick and Morty can all almost directly derive its its its entire thing from this.
SPEAKER_01I think Darkplace is deeper than uh Rick and Morty in a lot of ways. And Rick and Morty, they're like they're pulling from so many, so many strings of pop culture. But definitely I think Darkplace is one of those.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, and Rick and Morty sort of was doomed to become a parody of itself at some point, based on what it's lampooning and things like that. So I think m maybe thankfully Dark Place didn't go on very long. Otherwise it would have been it its own joke and would have died of not loved property. The initial premise for it That's what I love so much about it, is that it it is taking from very specific things that aren't American, that most Americans don't know, but we still identify with it. Cause like, I don't know, like I could see taking stuff from Misfits of Science or Star Trek or a lot of other American properties that you see you need. Think of like the schlocky stuff from the 70s and 80s that we watch. I totally see those shows in this show. I think it's relatively universal for its time and its place, and I think it came out at the exact time that it was supposed to. Not popular, but once it went underground and sort of became viral, I think it really rang true with a lot of people. And that's why it still has staying power.
SPEAKER_01Continue.
SPEAKER_07Well, in that sense, I thought it'd be fun to go down some of the fun Garth Merengi rabbit holes here. The Guardian interviewed Garth Merengi. Not Matthew Holness. And here's some quotes from that that I thought were funny. This is from an interview by Rich Pelley about three years ago. Because Holness is still doing live tours and writing three books and a fourth one on the way. Well, it's like two and then a like a novella. I was listening to them on Audible earlier today because I had a bunch of Audible credits built up that I didn't realize. I bought all of the books that Garth Merengi has written. He's not playing. Garth Murinky's Terror Time. Apparently it's been thirty years in the making. How come it took so long? In brackets, wiping antibacterial gel onto his hands. The nature of time has been the main issue. Seconds and minutes quickly form themselves into hours, transmuting by degrees into days, weeks, months, and ultimately years. Before you know it, decades have elapsed. The essential issue was the ever passing of time between the commencement and conclusion of my task. Would it have been quicker had you bothered to learn how to type with more than two fingers? Writing balls to the walls horror is extremely physical. Typing with more than two fingers is counterproductive for any horror writer. You need to concentrate your strength on two fingers alone. I get quite hard when I write, so the best way to channel the energy is by banging, bang, bang, bang. If you type with your hands dancing all over the keyboard, you're essentially rubbing without release. It's far more potent to jab. It goes on to say, what's your writing process? Get up, eat, consider the news, reject it, the news, not my breakfast, lunch, nap, have a hot chocolate, then I'm hard at it for a solid hour or two before either pointless or tipping point, which I think are British news magazine shows. Is your lead character, horror novelist Nick Stein, based on you at all? I'd say I'm less of a deviant than Nick Steen. In one of the stories, Terotome is a triumvirant of three mini stories that form one epic portent. He develops the questionable psychosexual relationship with his typewriter. I've only done it once with a typewriter, and that was for research for this book. I listened to at least two hours of Terror Tome this morning on Audible. The whole book is about him fucking this typewriter. It becomes conscious and some sort of weird, Lovecraftian old god's mind thing that wants to drag him into another realm. And it definitely fucks him. A bunch. One time he refuses the typewriter, so it turns into this Hellraiser thing where it shoots out hooks and chains and bounds him down and then rapes him. I mean, the thing about Matthew Hollands is he's going for it. This isn't just surface like six episodes and this thing. No, no, no. This has been going for over 20 years. And it's intricate. It has a bunch of iterations and a bunch of versions, and the lore still continues. I'd also like to mention that in 2025, Garth Morengi launched a podcast, because of course he did, called Garth Morengi's Skull Flusher. Okay. And in the first episode, where he interviews, quote, terror titans, which means other horror writers, and his first interview, he interviews horror director Mike Flanagan. If you don't know who Mike Flanagan is, he actually is relatively prolific. He did films like Hush and the Ouija prequel that people seem to like, but also Midnight Mass, Fall of the House of Usher, Haunting of Hill House. Yeah, The Hill House, obviously.
SPEAKER_01Doctor's Sleep, Gerald's game.
SPEAKER_07I like in a respect Mike Flanagan. I just don't like Stephen King, so it's like hard for me to like get on board with that. But he's a prolific horror guy, and also landed a wife that he is definitely punching over his way to land, if you know who she is.
SPEAKER_01About to find out.
SPEAKER_07She's in Hush. Oh, okay. They wrote that together.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I mean if you said Mike Flanagan was a 40-year-old Wisconsin programmer for an agricultural firm. He does the books, and uh he's proliferate in mini golf on the weekends. Not a suave Fabio looking gentleman here.
SPEAKER_07No, he reminds me of that other guy in What We Do in the Shadows, the energy vampire. Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_01I think that guy might be more attractive.
SPEAKER_07Funny enough, interesting, interstitial, Jonah Ray.
SPEAKER_00This next guest is someone that I ran into at the Saturn Awards, uh, which is a you know sci-fi genre uh award show that happens every year. Uh I was presenting at it with uh Alex Winter, and um a guy runs up to me and he goes, Oh, oh wow, you're Jona Ray. And this guy was wearing a uh Garth Morangi's Dark Place shirt, and uh like over that he was wearing a button-up shirt that was open that was actually uh from this old movie theater called the Arclight Theater, which I used to work at. It was a shirt that I used to wear when I worked there, and I was like, Oh my god, you're you're Mike Flanagan, and he was uh he was like, I'm a big fan of yours. I was like, I'm a huge fan of yours.
SPEAKER_07This is the kind of nerd underground shit that we're dealing with here. And I thought it would be fun to go down just some selective, just some selects, some fun, fun um highlights of Garth Merengi's bibliography, his uh starting with his short stories, his first one being Garth C Dog, Car Hit Dog, Garth Poke Dog, Stakeout, Gobble Gobble, The Streaming Face, some of his early novels, Hives, The Itching, Sunburner, The Shingler, Knight of the X-Men, but spelled like Eczema Easy X-Men 2, Dermadis Rosacea's baby The Swelling, the Burning, the Flaking, the Crusting, A Scab in the Dark, parentheses Scabman, Scabman 2, Return of the Scabman, Scabman 3, No Pickin', with an apostrophe, Psychosoriasis, in parentheses the bleeder, Psychoriasis 2, The Bleeder 2, Psychoriasis III, Revenge of the Fleshheads, in parentheses aka Bleeder vs. Scabman and then some of his some of his bigger novels Afterbirth, Eyesore, The Ooze, The Ooze 2, Return of the Ooze, which is spelled O U Z Z E, and then Ooze 2, not the Ooze, but Ooze 2, Squit Rising, Black Fang, Quivers, Crab with two exclamation marks, Bitch Killer, Flaybell's Sting, Are You Glistening? I.e. Having Just Been Flayed, Brain Jerk, Wrench, The Premonitioner, which is funny, Tomb Without a View, Bitch Finder General, Knight of the Haddock, Haddock 2, More Killer Haddock, Haddock 5, the Haddocking, these are all things that he's actually mentioned out loud. And then Afternoon of the Haddock. Those are some of my favorites. Not to mention the Krilling, then the Kriller Killer, and then Killer Kriller, and then the Krills have eyes. And then Locust Rex, which I'm pretty sure they do in the first episode of Man to Man, where he's fighting the giant killer wasps. Oh yeah. Not to mention his collections, a little bite of what you fancy, Dead Center, The Ouvre, which they do show in some of the online stuff. It's a book that is, if you laid it down, it would be like six and a half foot tall. And so then they sell you this thing where you can put it on your wall and add to it as new books come out.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. It's classic. I hate the pompousness of uh referring to your work as your oeuvre.
SPEAKER_07But he hates the Scottish, though.
SPEAKER_01Remember, he says he doesn't hate the Scotch. He's not racist.
SPEAKER_07I'll just sum it up with a quote from Garth Morengi from The Guardian. Okay. Quote Many writers cite me as an influence, and I will be suing them all. That's pretty good. Tremendous. If you haven't seen Garth Morengi, do yourself a favor and at least just watch Darkplace. It's a fantastic little
How Darkplace Fits The Zeitgeist
SPEAKER_07six-episode jaunt episodes like 22 minutes long. Got a bunch of people you'd recognize. It's extremely funny. It'll somehow ring true to you even if you've never seen any of the shows that they're lampooning or parodying. Matthew Berry alone has a great musical number that will stick in your mind forever. It's an absolute delight, especially if you happen to be a Doctor Who fan. And also, I was thinking this earlier. There has to be something in the collective unconscious, or like the Zeitgeist that was going on at this time, because this comes out in 2004. Doctor Who is rebooted in 2005. While not directly related, obviously, in any way, shape, or form. I feel like this has to be something that was in the Zeitgeist. The people of a certain age recalling these things from the past, whether they saw them firsthand or they saw them secondhand or their dad showed them or whatever. There was this thing in culture at that time that really hearkened back to the pure innocence of the schlocky sci-fi of the past. Going through the 90s and the early to mid-2000s, especially, there was this tendency to reboot old properties that were considered kind of schlocky into serious versions. You know, like the Mod Squad and Mission Impossible, you know, things like that. And I feel like the fact that these came out a year apart, and then right after that Dean Lerner comes out with his show, I feel like there was something going on then that we all kind of embraced the irony. Certain people became a certain age and started watching this stuff. I don't think that's coincidental. Doctor Who, by the time you get to the 50th anniversary, was literally the biggest show in the world. There must have been something in the air at that point.
SPEAKER_01I think you're right on there. I do think it is part of a generational thing, going back to what you loved as a kid, doing it bigger and better, or, you know, uh really doubling down on the silliness of the whole thing.
SPEAKER_07And without things like Garth Marigi, I don't think you'd have a lot of stuff that came out on Adult Swim later. I think there's a lot of parody stuff that wouldn't have happened. I think it really helped set the stage for that and open this avenue for lampooning the ridiculousness of that era of television while still paying homage to it at the same time. And I think that's a big part of it. It's not cynical. It's poking fun while being reverential, and that's different than being cynical. And I I think that's one of the things that the show really pioneers.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And there's a sincerity to the whole thing.
SPEAKER_07Absolutely. Even though it's tongue-in-cheek comedy and poking fun, it is still, you're right, sincere. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And having the layer upon layer. Mm-hmm. Comedians pretending to be writers, directors, pretending to be actors in the show, and then discussing those elements outside of the show, but within the other show.
SPEAKER_07Yes. The layers upon layers is brilliant. It's so funny. There's only six episodes, but I could watch them all the time. I mean, they're still very funny. I think it's uh one of the best things sci-fi channel ever put on, to be honest. It's like that in Battlestar Galactica are probably my top two.
Sci-Fi Channel Strategy And Decline
SPEAKER_07Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Speaking of this, this is the end of our looking at shows on the sci-fi channel, what they meant when they came out, how they represented what was happening with the sci-fi channel in and of itself throughout its creation, maturation, and decline. And I think that's a pinpoint for what sci-fi channel was doing at the time. Again, this is the early 2000s, right?
SPEAKER_07So 2006 is when they put it out. Yes.
SPEAKER_01So about this time in the 2000s, they started trying to do some more original programming, some new things. This is when they started do a lot of the uh investigational shows and some of the reality stuff. You get investigations, 2000s. You get Joe Rogan questions. This was long before he had the podcast. You get crossing over, the uh the psychic who is reading the audience's dead relatives. In 2004, you get Ghost Hunters, which would go on to last forever and have so many spinoff shows. They're trying to get stars along with some injection of new ideas. So you get Dan Aykroyd's failed and unmade supernatural talk show, which could probably be an episode in and of itself if it had actually come out. The time that most people turned against Sci-Fi was in 2003 when they canceled Farscape. This was a time when the sci-fi truly didn't seem to care about its hardcore fans. The ratings and the cost given as reasons for the cancellation came across quite bad, especially with some of the comments from the higher up sci fi. Bonnie Hammer herself said if only fans had watched, then maybe they would have kept the show going. That was a horrible thing to say, really cut fans deeply and You know, being one of the most popular and fun shows on sci-fi channel, one of the best things they ever did. Their cancellation and how the sci-fi saw it really alienated a lot of fans. If you get into the details of Farscape, which someday we'll do a Farscape episode, it wasn't as much their fault, but since it was shrouded in such mystery and the way it was explained from the higher-ups at sci-fi, it really left a sour taste in a lot of fans' mouth. And Stargate was from 2002 to 2004, which was essentially that's when sci-fi became the Stargate channel. Now this is before Battlestar Galactica took over. But there were five seasons of Stargate on Showtime before moving to Sci-Fi. And this is much more of military sci-fi. So as opposed to you know Star Trek, let's meet aliens, let's talk through our differences, let's resolve, push forward to a new understanding of science fiction and getting along. Stargate was let's have guns, let's constantly be shooting at everything all the time.
SPEAKER_07There are aliens possessing our people and we don't know who they are. Uh yeah, this paranoid like militaristic bullshit.
SPEAKER_01I wouldn't say it was brain dead, but it was definitely for me a lower tier of thought being put into a sci-fi show. But it did super well. People loved it. Two spin offs. I think a lot of people, tons of spin-offs. Eventually, after Farscape ended, it took Ben Browder and Claudia Black, which I think really also put salt in the Farscape fans' wound. They had Stargate Atlantis up until 2009, and then State Universe began in 2009 and lasted two years.
SPEAKER_07They also absorbed Call Meanie from Star Trek and what's her name? Played DePaul in Enterprise as well, into Stargate Atlantis. And then Stargate Universe had um Richard Carlisle, which is crazy and weird. Or Robert Carlisle. I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah. It was the Stargate channel there for a while. At least until perhaps one of its best things came on. That would have been Battlestar Galactica 2004, co-financed by Sky TV, which allowed it to come on to the sci-fi channel with like not putting as much money into it, which I think helped get it made and put on there. And it was by far their best programming. And even though it premiered days before in the UK on Sky, this was pre-social media and widespread use of BitTorrent. And it was so good that no one was really willing to pirate lower quality copies. You just wait and see it on your TVs. Something that just wouldn't happen nowadays. Battlestar was by far its best show and probably in some ways the peak of the sci-fi network.
SPEAKER_07Even though that's when it was starting to collapse, when it was just showing blood surf.
SPEAKER_01Well, so along with Battlestar in the 2000s, they also try to put money into mini-series, a way to not shell out as much for a long ongoing thing. Try to condense the quality into like more event programming. This the biggest one being Steven Spielberg's Taken, which we spoke about in at the beginning of our sci-fi primer bit, but also Battlestar Galactica. That's how they premiered the show with a two-hour premiere. And then let's let's see if this does well. You know, later you have Caprica as a series spin-off thing. Similar was Farscape's Peacekeeper Wars, when they killed Farscape without an ending, they ended up doing a miniseries to try to throw a bone to the fans and condense what would have been the last season into a few hours into a mini-series. Put that out there. But you also had stuff like Earthsea, Tin Man, The Phantom, which was another failed comic book adaptation. But also you had Dune and Children of Dune, which did super well. Uh they got some Emmys for those. Put a pin in those if you're a Dune fan. Yeah. Because we will be coming back to those in the future.
SPEAKER_07There's something else I thought they did.
SPEAKER_01Oh, I'm sure they did a bunch of stuff. I just can't name everything, and I'm not going to try.
SPEAKER_07No, that's fair.
SPEAKER_01This is covering like the gist of what sci-fi was doing in this latter half. Now, again, as you had spoken before, in the late 90s, they started making movies. Now, some of those would be stuff that other production companies had made and they would bring over, but they also had uh sci-fi originals that they would uh invest in, do the production, do the distribution of for themselves. As cheaply as possible. Yes, as cheaply as ninety uh as possible, and really ramped up in the 2000s with these really poor sci-fi originals, but you had some decent ones. You know, a Mansquito per se.
SPEAKER_07I knew you were gonna go with Mansquito.
SPEAKER_01I sung. I say tongue in cheek. Their best one was probably Dog Soldiers.
SPEAKER_07Um, yeah. No, not Neil.
SPEAKER_01Um Neil Marshall.
SPEAKER_07That's who you're Neil Marshall.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. He did do some Game of Thrones. You also might recognize The Descent.
SPEAKER_07His best movie.
SPEAKER_01It's one of the better horror films to come out in the 2000s, I would say.
SPEAKER_07But the British version, don't watch the American version, it sucks. And the sequel or sucks just as equally as bad.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. But them putting out these things, doubling down on the worst elements of Sharktopus and then Sharktopus 2, the Dead Reckoning, and Sharktopus versus Gatorbot, you know, these it became just schlock, and it gave them a poor representation of what the channel was and could be. Also, you get a lot of would have been, could have been once upon a time actors from things in the past that were shoved into these. Uh a lot of time it wasn't as uh much about the money, but it was about these shows were still popular in European countries. So they were maybe Dean Kane shows up in one of these sci-fi features. That's because Adventures of Lois and Clark is doing well in Bulgaria, so they can go shoot in Bulgaria, get some money from there, and still market this to other European markets where some of these stars are still stars. You would get that a lot with no name or lower tier actors in these features.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, you know what? I think the original sin in here is it was sort of originally obviously paired with the USA network, you know, the same parent company owned USA and Ty-Fi Channel. And if you remember, before the sci-fi channel got big, USA was doing the same kind of thing, but with action, where it was like already at the tail end of the big action thing from the 80s. And so they started doing TV shows and made for TV movies that were USA originals that were basically the same thing that the sci-fi channel would go on to do, but with action stars. And so you can see the sort of like corporate mindset that was going into the making of these things.
SPEAKER_01It didn't it's it's cheap uh low-rent uh fodder. You know, it's it's it's content that they think will do well enough, but when you don't put any effort in and people just turn on your channel and see this stuff, they're not seeing Star Trek Next Generation, they're not seeing Battlestar Galactica, they're coming on to see what's on this channel, and it's Bruce Fox Lightner fighting a robot invasion, but it's 1995 graphics, a portable script, the dialogue's awful, the acting's bad, and it's set in some middle European no-name set. It just comes across poorly, and they're not gonna come back to your channel unless you can give them something else that maybe is a little more popular at the time. Maybe that might be reality TV. Because in the 2000s, reality TV really started taking over the sci-fi network. You had Chase, CHA, $E. This was an adaptation of the Japanese Run for Money, what they labeled as the first live-action video game where people would run away from from quote unquote hunters for money. That was that was on there. It did decently well, but I would not say was high quality programming, uh similar to the Estate of Panic, possible culmination of the failed Disney project that sci-fi worked on at its inception, but essentially, like people would come into a spooky mansion and survive the scares, as it were. You all said, Who wants to be a superhero? Let's crank Stanley out there.
SPEAKER_07Wind him up and stand him in front of a camera.
SPEAKER_01Yep. And the people that would win this game show would then get small bit parts and some of the sci-fi made-for-tv features that would come on later. Great. Just what we always wanted. Scare tactics might have been their biggest one, but this was low-quality jump scares, sometimes very mean-spirited.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, yeah, I hated that show.
SPEAKER_01Hosted by uh, you know, a B to C level actor. Tracy Morgan at one point. I think Tracy Morgan ended the run. I believe there was a Baldwin on there for a bit. I wouldn't be surprised. And I think there was a maybe a 90210 alum who did one.
SPEAKER_07Would not be surprised at that either.
SPEAKER_01Also at this time, another big domino that fell in a lot of people's minds against the sci-fi network was the inclusion of professional wrestling. Not only does it have the problem of being professional wrestling, seen as one of the lowest forms of art by a lot of uh American viewers, but in 2006 it was very much not sci-fi. So why is it on the sci-fi network? Well, the reason for this is because Bonnie Hammer, which we spoke about previously, was the president of sci-fi, USA, and Bravo. And in 2005, when WWE's Braw came back to USA, she would let ECW go on any channel, but not on the USA. And so it was either Bravo, which is essentially for women at the time, or ECW. So, or sci-fi network, sorry. So on sci-fi it went, and of course, on the first episode of the show,
The Channel’s Programming Identity Crisis
SPEAKER_01the ECW, which was run at this time by WWE, decided to troll the fans of the sci-fi network and put on a wrestler, a new wrestler called the zombie, who just uh uh yeah, cool, great, good move. Totally get it, don't you guys? Now, now the ECW fans hate you and the sci-fi network fans hate you. Cool. You're really touching all your bases there.
SPEAKER_07Nailing it. You can't do the heel thing in real life.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, uh, you can try. I mean, uh Vince certainly puts the work in.
SPEAKER_07He sure does, and I'm sure he'll be in prison for it later.
SPEAKER_01Well, no, he's never getting that's never gonna happen. Come on. He's in bed with with Trump, so I don't think uh the justice system will never touch Vincent McMahon. It hasn't for all these decades, and it never will.
SPEAKER_07Considering he's a rapist and a drug pusher and uh human trafficker.
SPEAKER_01Most likely covered up at least one murder, if not more.
SPEAKER_07Definitely at least one.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, nothing's ever going to happen to him or his family. Yay, the world is great. So in 2000, Vivendi owned parts of Universal, the Stiller, who we talked about, the Wonder Kind, who made the Made for TV movie, the parts that he didn't own, and in 2001 purchased the USA Entertainment Assets and then made Diller the head. But in 2002, they suffered massive losses, and by 2004, 80% of Universal was sold to GE that then created NBC Universal. At this point in time, Bonnie Hammer was made president, and in 2008, made president of the USA production, and David Howe was made sci-fi president. Now David Howe had worked for the BBC, and he was part of a new global brand strategy to make sci-fi network mainstream. So in 2008, Sci-Fi Network changed its name one last time into SYFY, which I think for many people truly was the nail in the coffin for respectability and for acceptance of the sci-fi network as a home for its desired entertainment.
SPEAKER_07But boy, they plugged the shit out of it. They certainly did.
SPEAKER_01The the swag bags at Comic Con that year were insane. But again, it was icing on a poisonous cake. A urinal cake. A urinal cake, perfect. The the programming that they were making was generally not super well received. You had a lot of reality programming, you had a lot of bad movies. By this point, you know, a lot of like your best shows were over, Fireskip was gone, Battlestar was was ending. You were just not where a place for the fans that you said that you loved so much, but from the get-go, you never really liked. And since 2008, since the name change, it's pretty much been downhill up until the point now where sci-fi is almost no more. There's not much on sci-fi. There's not a reason to go watch it. If you look at the programming, see what we have currently on the sci-fi network. Today, as we are recording, we have paid by programming, paid programming, Harry Potter Goblet of Fire, Harry Potter Order of Phoenix, Harry Potter Haplet Prince, Harry Potter Deathy Hallows, and Harry Potter Deathy Hallows part two. That is your entire day. For this week, you got Harry Potter, you got NCIS Los Angeles. What the fuck? Uh White House Down. What? Pompey. You get a couple episodes of The Twilight Zone if you are up at 4 30 in the morning on Tuesday. But you're gonna get some more Geostorm and Demolition Man and Imaginary, Five Nights at Freddy's, Insidious, The Exorcist, 2012, Sharknado, Resident Evil, Resident Evil Apocalypse, Megan.
SPEAKER_07I mean, some of those things I get it. Some of those things I get it. Sure.
SPEAKER_01But but essentially it has become what does our studio own? Let's show those films, even if they are not related as much to the sci-fi network anymore. And what we have, where uh we have NCIS Los Angeles, so let's throw that on there. Really? Other than just a place to find uh hop in somewhere in a Harry Potter movie or one of these horror franchises, you get a Twilight episode. That's it. That's the only sci-fi thing there is.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, it feels like AI programmed the sci-fi channel at this point. It's so dumb and so poorly done.
SPEAKER_01It's no longer a venue for truly showing science fiction properties. It is now just a place to farm the content that they have again and again and again.
SPEAKER_07Uh to quote Caprica. Well, no, blood and chrome.
SPEAKER_01This has all happened before, and it will happen again and again and again. Which is why we don't really talk about the sci-fi network.
SPEAKER_07I actually had a listener m reach out to me the other day. They were like, I'm glad you put this out because I didn't know the sci-fi channel still exists. Yeah. There it is, right there.
SPEAKER_01That's the long and short of it. If you look at sci-fi current shows on their website, they have Resident Alien, which I don't believe started on the Sci-Fi Network. Nope. And Revival, that I have never heard of. Maybe it's okay. I don't know. Couldn't tell you. I'd have to watch the sci-fi network to find out. And then you just have reality shows cosplay melee, face off, game face, and then the arc? Astrid and Lily Save the World? Some horror properties, a paranormal witness, or Reginald the Vampire.
SPEAKER_07There is a balance you could strike between showing old sci-fi stuff and maybe reality, maybe that kind of thing. Maybe you could find a balance to where it would still feel like the sci-fi channel. But their priorities are no longer about the spirit of the network as intended. It's not the point anymore. And what they consider to be sci-fi or whatever very obviously doesn't fit into that advisory panel that they created with Asimov and Roddenberry. It's very much The Sci-Fi Channel was always cheap because they started with nothing and showed old sci-fi. So that the show was already in syndication, they just picked it up, they didn't create anything whole cloth. But then when they did, other than a few amazing highlights, it was worthless. And it blurred the lines of what sci-fi fans want. Or at least what they're getting. So I it's a sad devolution of what was once a promising idea. And I think we just kind of wanted to highlight the stuff that was great when it came out.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Or that it provided a vehicle that you weren't gonna get anywhere else. I mean, if it wasn't for the sci-fi network, Lex wouldn't have been on the air.
SPEAKER_07Yeah. Farscape.
SPEAKER_01Garth Merengue, Battlestar, Battlestar, Farscape. Even if you like I'm again, I'm not a Stargate fan, so you know I'm not the person to ask, but I mean, sci-fi was a place for Stargate to have a home and really become a juggernaut in the sci-fi field. Yeah, wasn't it like But it's no longer that?
SPEAKER_07Wasn't it like Stargate when it went into 10 seasons that became the longest running consecutive sci-fi show on TV? It was either Stargate or Stargate Lanisp.
SPEAKER_01I believe SG1 holds the record of having broadcast
Final Takeaways And Listener Thanks
SPEAKER_01continuously without a hiatus for 10 seasons. Yeah. 214 episodes.
SPEAKER_07Yeah. And there are fans of Stargate. We're not gonna negate the fans of Stargate. I get it.
SPEAKER_01No, no, and I I I appreciate what it was. Sci-fi channel was a place for it to find a new home and really expand, you know? It gave it runway to really take off from what it had done on Showtime, but it wasn't for me. It didn't push the genre forward as some other of better sci-fi programs did.
SPEAKER_07Like Battlestar.
SPEAKER_01Like Battlestar.
SPEAKER_07But even Battlestar by the end, when they wanted to continue, had to do it as a web series with Blood and Chrome. They didn't even give the cachet enough for the amazing ratings of that to Caprica, and so then it began to become a fucking web series, which is by the way, very good. It's actually probably better than Caprica. But wouldn't even they wouldn't even put it on the network.
SPEAKER_01Again, that's the sci-fi channel for you. You know? Yeah. And then part of the reason we did this. You see the beginnings, you see the evolution, you see the peak, the fall, the de-evolution, it's good, it's bad, it's purpose. It's not over.
SPEAKER_07It just for some reason it's a zombie of its own. It is for me. Yes, fair enough. It is a zombie. Pointlessly going through programming that sometimes tangentially you could consider sci-fi. And oftentimes it's because that's already showed up on one of the parent company's other networks. And now they want to show the reruns in perpetuity. Yep. Fuck it. Throw the episodes on throw it on sci-fi. That's our other thing we own. Let's throw it on there. The pigs lead that slop.
SPEAKER_01If there are any pigs left, which I'm not sure there are.
SPEAKER_07Well, there are. I know some people do.
SPEAKER_01But do you know anybody who's watching the sci-fi channel?
SPEAKER_07No.
SPEAKER_01There we go. It had its time, it had its highlights, but it is not what it was. Spiritually dead. But at least we covered uh essentially what it was about, what it was for, and what it became. And we hope that uh you guys have enjoyed.
SPEAKER_07I think we did a comprehensive smattering of shows. There are a lot of things we could have covered that we excised, had to narrow it down to just a few. But I think we did uh a decent job of showing you the different variety of shows that they would have covered. That was kind of our logic and our reasoning behind it. Now, granted, there are things obviously that we wish we could have included, but this would have been a 40,000 part series that would never have flown with anybody, so I would concur.
SPEAKER_01Well, we'd like to thank you all for coming on this journey through our uh Psy Y F U series. And you see why we named it that way. Yeah, it fits. And we've hoped you enjoyed this episode about Garth. Please come back for next episode when we will be covering something completely different, but hopefully equally as fun and interesting and entertaining and enlightening. If you wouldn't mind reading us, five puddings, on your favorite podcast app of your choice, ideally Apple Podcasts. It's the best way for us to get heard and thus seen. We would greatly appreciate it. Again, we'd like to thank you all. Please follow us on social media and uh reach out. If you have any thoughts, ideas, comments, love, hate, whatevers about what we do. We'd love to hear from you. And as someone who is one of the few people who has recorded more podcasts than I've listened to, we'd like to say come with us on our next journey. But skip, before they become dreamweavers and imagineers themselves, what should they do?
SPEAKER_07Well, fellow Voyagers, exclamation mark out there, we would like to say thank you for coming along, just like Jake said. Please make sure you have paid your tabs, cleaned up after yourselves to some sort of reasonable degree. Make sure you've tipped your weight staff, your bar staff, your DJs, your KJs, anybody to whom that applies. Make sure you support your local comic shops and retailers, and from Jake and I, we would like to say, no matter where you go, there you are. That's it, buddy.
SPEAKER_02Why won't she be mine? I wish I was more attractive like Douglas. Still, one can only dream.
SPEAKER_03I'm a one-track lover. Down a two-way lane. Riding fast down the halfway. Must have been to stay.