A few weeks ago, I found myself reminded of a children's TV show I had, in all honesty, never thought of since at least middle school: The Great Space Coaster. It was a live action syndicated show about three human singers on an asteroid with a bunch of puppets. It ran for five seasons in the early 80's, and I remember at least enjoying it. This led me to looking for episodes on Youtube, reading the wiki, etc. Apparently, the episodes are on tape slowly deteriorating. One of the cast members got some money together to save a few episodes, but the rest will probably be lost.

My first thought, naturally, was "damn, that's a shame. Someone should save them."

My next thought was, "Why?"

We live in a world where most of what humans have created before the 20th Century is lost forever. We also live in a world where everything created NOW can, theoretically, live forever digitally. But, should it? Is there any reason an average children's show shouldn't be lost forever? Or every episode of The Rockford Files or Star Trek? After the "that's a shame" moment, the world will move on. We will create something else. That idea comes to mind when I think of the BBC destroying early Doctor Who episodes. They were created to, literally, be disposable. The royalties contracts for BBC were set up to make it impossible for any given episode to be shown in the UK more than twice, after which a copy was made for overseas and the original tape was wiped. It was, partly I think, to keep everyone involved in making TV projects employed. Everyone from creators to actors to stage hands worked all year long because you couldn't show old episodes.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this, but I'll throw it out there. Is there a value to saving EVERYTHING?