For fans of the 1991 series-- this message was sent to me from a friend who has been digitizing his MPI videotapes (I think he is mainly focusing on the "extended" material, but he may be doing all of it--not sure). He writes:
While I was tinkering with the MPI Home Video extended cut of the DS ’91 pilot, I noticed a small blooper I had never spotted before. Was particularly amused, because it actually occurs while the opening credits are rolling. The credits are displayed across several shots, including Juliana McCarthy’s first appearance on the show. She walks down a hallway in Collinwood, then enters a room and speaks to Elizabeth. Seconds before Juliana utters her first line in the entire series, a boom mike very clearly passes through the shot at the top of the screen. Seems almost appropriate that a reboot of DS would include this sort of gaffe within its first 90 seconds!
Out of curiosity, I viewed the same sequence in the DVD release of the episode, and the gaffe is not there. Even though I have the DVD set which presents the series in the correct aspect ratio, they cropped the image in that shot just slightly to excise the errant microphone. And, honestly, I don’t blame them. While I’m a big proponent of presenting programs exactly as they aired, one of the goals in preparing prints for DVD release is to give them the best presentation possible. When possible, this would include removing any editing errors (provided doing so doesn’t substantially impact the presentation of the episode). So, the folks behind this DVD release actually did a very good job. Still, I wish they had left the gaffe in, as it’s almost an homage to the original DS (unintentional as it may have been).
G.
