So, Prisoners of Gravity on DVD. Most people who send me feedback ask the same thing: “Is PoG out on DVD and if not, when is it coming?”

Short answer: No, it's not out on DVD and there are currently no plans to release it.

Long answer: There were possibly very early plans for a release, but they fell through.

Prisoners of Gravity is in an almost uniquely bad position when it comes to DVD releases. The issue with putting episodes out onto DVD lies in the original releases that the interviewees agreed to, which were limited to broadcast only. There's only one other TV show I can think of that dealt with a situation like this, but I'll get to that in a minute.

According to Mark Askwith, he was renegotiating with people interviewed on the show. This would seems to indicate that there were plans for a release of some sort. Two out of a hundred authors declined, stopping the project Mr. Askwith was planning. He's admitted that he doesn't believe that the show will ever see a DVD release.

This has left many fans wondering where we go from here. Compared to other TVOntario series, Prisoners of Gravity has a bit of an edge; TVOntario has lost the rights to many of their older series and destroyed their copies of the Master Tapes. With PoG, we know that there's at least a complete set of decent quality episodes for seasons 2 - 5 sitting down at The Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation and Fantasy and that some of the Powers That Be for PoG still have an interest in the series.

Now, for an example of how this problem has with interviews been dealt with before, one only needs to look at the DVD releases of Space Ghost Coast to Coast (SGC2C). The series is mostly a talk show parody, but the common problem faced by both Space Ghost Coast to Coast and Prisoners of Gravity is clearances with interview footage. Again, like the PoG project, only a handful of interviewees on SGC2C refused to allow their footage to appear outside of broadcast. This is dealt with in two ways:

The first way was by removing the episodes from the DVD release all together.

The second way was to cut out the footage that the rights couldn't be secured for.

Granted, this isn't a perfect solution by any means; many fans were angry about the missing episodes and clips on the SGC2C releases. Because of Prisoners of Gravity's framework, it might be difficult, if not impossible, to “edit out” interviews that can't be released onto DVD. Subbing in new footage isn't an option. As for leaving out episodes completely, that's usually frowned upon. It could also cause continuity headaches if only one half of a two-parter can be released.

In an ideal world, every DVD release would be uncut. However, it appears that any DVD release for Prisoners of Gravity right now is going to be edited or nonexistent. There's still the option of tape/DVD trading for us fans that have copies of episodes, but otherwise we're out of luck unless we want to start petitioning.

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