Emergency! Season #6 and beyond

Two of the characters from Emergency! also appeared in the short-lived series Sierra.

I was just checking up on this yesterday. If past patterns are any indication, we should get an announcement in mid October.

I too want to see the crossover episode of Sierra. I've mentioned that here numerous times and have emailed the company several times to get out the wishes of the fans of this series to see that episode. Hopefully they include it in season 6 or the movie collection afterwards.

Would've been nice to of seen Sierra just being included as bonus episodes all along like they're doing with Window on Main Street on the Father Knows Best DVDs. 2 episodes per season (Plus 1 additional one added somewhere in those 6 seasons) would've taken care of all 13 of the regular episodes, and left the tv movie to be added to the Emergency! movies.

Who knows, maybe they will surprise everyone and make a full sized set with Sierra and the Emergency! movies.

The engine and squad also make an appearance on a episode of CHiPs I found out about recently. Would make for a nice bonus if they own that show as well (Never really paid any attention to that series).

I'm sure we'll get Season 6, I had E-mailed Universal asking about the movies and their response to me was something along the lines of they don't know if they'll be released.

If we get season 6, I'm sure we'll get the post season 6 tv movies at some point. 

But it doesn't seem likely we'll see the movies until early 2011 since I'm sure they won't be included in season 6. There were 6 two hour long movies and it's too much content to expect to be included in season 6.

 
But there are no right issues, they were always syndicated with the regular episodes, etc. It's nothing more than a continuation of the television series with the special episodes extended to 2 hours, just like what we see with several other successful tv series when they conclude their runs (Such as Little House on the Prairie).

I think barring extremely poor sales of season 6, if we got this far, we can expect to see it finished. I just hope at least that that 1 episode of Sierra gets included at the very least, since this quality show has no chance of a standalone release of any sort due to being so short lived and killed by The Waltons on a rival network in the same timeslot. Being included as bonuses in other Mark VII shows is the only viable way it will ever see a release.

 Am I remembering correctly? I have the 5 seasons, but haven't watched all of them yet. But I remember an odd or funny thing. I think the pilot had the characters of Reed and Malloy from ADAM-12 as characters in the story and some years later ADAM-12 was playing as a television program in the station house, I think. So. I guess they were both "real" characters and TV characters in EMERGENCY.

What he was talking about though isn't that they crossovered, but that the occurances contradict each other and don't make sense.

In one episode of Emergency!, Jim and Pete play their roles as LAPD cops in "real life" in the Emergency!Dragnet/Adam-12/Sierra universe. But in a later episode of the series, they're turned into fictional characters on Emergency! playing actors on a tv series called Adam-12 that the paramedics are watching at Station 51.

They go from being real life LAPD police officers on the show in their Adam-12 roles, with Adam-12 and Emergency! being set in the same universe, to being tv actors just portraying cops on a tv series they're watching on Emergency!.

I should add that I'm I'm glad they took some liberty with it and did it because it made for an entertaining episode, even though it contradicts the series having all these people set in the same fictional universe.
Edited by LeoAmes - 9/14/09 at 6:10pm

Well I sure hope season six will be released. I have some doubts about it, hopefully we'll find out soon. Seasons 4 and 5 were absolute, bottom of the barrel quality wise with syndicated, unrestored masters of the episodes used for the DVD's. The one positive thing is the episodes are uncut. I know original masters exist for at least some of those episodes, but Universal chose not to use them for the DVD's.

There's nothing to be concerned about as far as I can see just quite yet.

Season 4 was announced on the 16th of October and season 5 on the 22nd of October. We should get word in the next few few days on a season 6 release for early next year. Nothing to indicate it isn't business as usual as far as I can see. If we get to November and haven't heard anything, I'll get concerned.

The worst case as far as I can see is if season 5 sales were that disappointing, Universal will just oursource it somewhere like Shout!, who has made a successful go at series Universal has deemed to be less financially viable in the past than this one.
Edited by LeoAmes - 10/16/09 at 7:01pm

Vol 1 of the Rockford Files movies are coming out and I have already preordered the set.

In the event Universal doesn't issue season 6, I do have the season 6 episodes, copies of the TV Land airings from about 10 years ago. Of course I want to have the official season 6 DVD, but until that happens the airings from TV Land are better than nothing.

I too have recordings off of TVLand of all the season 6 episodes and the post season 6 movies, but I'd love to finish this series up with all official releases.

It's just too bad that the season 1 DVD's of this and Adam-12 will forever be flawed due to manufacturing defects and the style of DVD disc used. Guess we have to hope for a complete series collection if these ever get finished to be able to get quality season 1 releases of each. 

Ashame since the episodes look great on both season 1 releases, unlike more recent releases such as season 5 of Emergency!, which has many visual defects I'm discovering as I've been working through it the past few days (Purchased it at release, just haven't had time to get to it until now).

I have the post series movies also, but those aren't as good as the episodes from the actual series.

I've never noticed any problems with the season one discs, mine seem to play fine. What bugs me the most is that starting with season four Universal went with syndicated, unrestored episode prints for the DVD's. There are a few episodes in the season four set where the audio is so bad, I have to crank up the volume on the TV to hear what the actors are saying. Then when the sirens kick in, it's loud enough to knock you out of your chair. Some of my episodes recorded from TV Land are better in quality than the ones on the discs from Universal. At least the discs from Universal have the uncut episodes, that's the best thing about them.

I see Universal is starting to roll out announcements of early 2010 releases, hope we hear something later today or at least sometime this week about season 6 of Emergency!

 

Hope they toss in the crossover episode of Sierra in there and test the waters to see what fans think of it in preparation of perhaps including that series with the 6 tv movies to form a 5 DVD set in 2011.

Considering the shabby episode quality in the seasons 4 and 5 DVD, I'm concerned that the 6th season won't be issued. Emergency! doesn't seem to be a high priority show for Universal. It would be just like them to abandon the series with one season left to go. Hopefully I am wrong and soon there will be an announcement for season 6. But at this point I'm not very optimistic.

The work has already been done for season 6, they just need to buy materials, press the DVD's, print boxes, etc.

So I think even if Universal decides not to do it in-house, it will at least be licensed out elsewhere, such as to Shout!. It's production ready and just needs to be be manufactured.

Well, that sounds to me like there is still a lot of work left to be done! LOL

Hopefully they will issue the 6th season but I'm glad I already have the season 6 episodes recorded from the TV Land airings. At least I can watch those if all else fails.

What I meant to say if it was unclear is that the masters (Or syndication copies in some cases like we've seen a bit with this series, though always uncut) have already been transferred and the limited restoration undertaken with the past couple season sets has been done to season 6.

In fact, I've been told it's been made available through digital releases (Netflix) and was planned to be made available on Hulu (I suspect that's changed though, season 5 was never uploaded and the entire series is slated for removal now).

My limited understanding of how this stuff works tells me that that is the expensive part of developing a release, not modifying the template they've utilized for menus and artwork for a new season. That's why I said it was production ready and just needed to be manufactured. If Universal doesn't proceed, I think the work that has already been undertaken would make it an attractive licensing opportunity for a company like Shout.

As for season 6 being released, there's still hope I think. Although a announcement is late compared to season's 4 and 5 and they've already announced some releases for next year in the timeslot that Emergency! was being released each year, remember that season 2 and 3 weren't announced until towards the end of November. 

 

And going back to the movies that have seen some discussion here, I revisited 4 of the 6 (I'll watch the other two soon) after seeing people saying they weren't very good. While it's sad to not see Engine 51 anywhere besides the highlight show (Even in the movies that take place in LA) and the doctors and Dixie in just two of the specials besides the highlight show, I enjoy these.

Was cool to see other interesting locations like San Francisco (What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing...? and The Convention) and Puget Sound (Most Deadly Passage) and to see differences in the paramedic program and how it was evolving in other locations. And they did a good job casting interesting characters for the two San Francisco and the Puget Sound episodes.
 
I didn't care much for Survival on Charter 220 though, the two paramedics aren't even in most of it and it doesn't pick up until the last half hour or so when it starts to get interesting. I remember The Steel Inferno and Greatest Rescues of Emergency! being good and think I'll enjoy those when I rewatch them just like I remember doing the first time.

I really hope we get a DVD release of these. I had forgotten how cut they were when aired on TVLand. There's scenes in the part 2 teaser summarizing part 1 in some of them that you don't even see in part 1, and they're missing key scenes that make a few things don't make sense (Such as an individual being trapped in his apartment in Survival on Charter 220, you see the man's dog get the fireman's attention and them start trying to clear debris to rescue him, and then they cut to another scene and the next time you see the man, he's walking into his wife's hospital room to visit her at the end of the episode...).

They seem to have had 15-20 minutes cut when aired on TVLand, though 1 of them (I forget which) ran a bit closer to what it should've been for a 2 hour episode.

I think the original run times of those post series movies is about 96 minutes. When the movies ran on TV Land, they were edited down to about 90 minutes. So only 6 minutes or so is missing. Sometimes TV Land would also speed up or time compress their shows. They applied different methods in the programs to allow for ample advertising time. The TV Land airings of the regular Emergency! episodes also run about 5 minutes short, it looks like most of the scenes they cut was minor stuff, like street scenes while on their way to a rescue, etc.

I watched both of the last two today, and noted that Greatest Rescues of Emergency! ran for approximately 86 minutes without any cuts to things like the end credits to part 1 or introduction for part 2 (In otherwords, I didn't modify it to run as a single seamless movie).

I might be a minute off or so since I was sloppy putting these together years ago with editing the commercial breaks, so I have a few seconds left in many of the commercial breaks.

That's without any cuts to what TVLand broadcast. So I'd say you're probably right, somewhere around 6-10 minutes is missing. I could swear one of the ones I watched earlier only ran around 1:15 with a few seconds of commercials here and there still left, maybe I'll pull them all back out and check.

Have to say though they did a decent job if they had to cut The Steel Inferno and Greatest Rescues down, there weren't any obvious cuts that are immediately obvious. So at least some thought like you said went into it so as to not make it completely obvious. Maybe they're even complete and just time compressed like you said.