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Farscape Season 1, Vol. 1 - Premiere/I, E.T.

Farscape Season 1, Vol. 1 - Premiere/I, E.T.

List Price: $24.98
Your Price: $22.48
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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: More fun than a pile of dren!!!!!
Review: Finally, after a long wait, Farscape comes to DVD. With loads of special features like audio commentary from actors and producers, how can you go wrong??? This DVD also includes extended scenes not shown on the Sci-Fi channel broadcasts. The company releasing Farscape on DVD, ADV Films, has a reputation for late releases and it's unfortunate that Farscape is not being released on a season by season basis but hopefully all the extra special features will make up for it. It's unknown whether or not Farscape was filmed in the 1:85 aspect ratio for HDTV, but the DVD has the full frame version.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: SciFi for the New Millineum
Review: This is the premiere episode into the new series on the SciFi channel.We see an astronaut jettison into a new era of scifi and into another galaxy far far away.Some have said this is a rehash of Buck Rogers,BULL! The only thing this show and that one is the fact that there both astronauts and from earth and thats it.This show has colorfull characters literally and three dimensional,instead of the same old rubberstamp of aliens. This show blends humans and animatronics that blend well together and after you've seen the rest of the series you look at them as real-life characters.Jim Henson company has done an excellent job of creating these wonderfull characters.The premiere episode sets up who and why these characters came to be with one another and become one dysfuntional family.The special effects is done by the same people who gave us the Matrix and once you get into the series you become hooked.So come along on a ride with Moya (name of the ship, a living ship)and join in on the adventures with John, Aeryn Sun, Zhaan,D'Argo,Pilot and Rygel.If you don't get the scifi channel and you love scifi I highly recommend getting the channel you'll be glad you did.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A great show makes its debut
Review: "Farscape" is one of my favorite TV shows, and it certainly got off to a strong start with the episode "Pilot." The series has a terrific cast, with Ben Browder, Claudia Black, Virginia Hey, and Anthony Simcoe sharing the spotlight with creatures constructed by Jim Henson's company. The writing is sharp and there is plenty of conflict to drive the story; the characters are all escaped prisoners with their own agendas. One of the pleasures of watching these early episodes is watching how they gradually build trust and anticipating the addition of the many interesting characters that will be added to the show later to keep things from getting too comfortable.

"Farscape" deserved a two-hour premiere, but the cast and crew do an excellent job of constructing a lean, efficient story to introduce the Farscape universe within the one-hour format. "I, E.T." is a pretty middling episode as far as this show goes, but it does provide an interesting twist on the idea of the visitor from space.


Rating: 4 stars
Summary: What the Frell?
Review: A wormhole--something unproven--not anymore it isn't. Astronaut John Crichton quickly realizes this when he's sucked down one, and spit out into the middle of an intergalactic space battle between escaping prisoners and the Peacekeepers. John's module incidentally collides with a Peacekeeper Prowler, whcih turns out to be Bialar Crais' brother, who becomes John's enemy for the rest of season one. The first episode quickly introduces the characters, and puts a slight emphasis on how that character is going to act through the series. The premiere definitely should of been made into a two hour to allow for more characterization and more time to do everything.
The second episode I still wonder why it is episode one. Not much of anything happens in it. There's good acting, and Rygel gets a chunk out of Aeryn's arm. Wasn't a bad episode compared to most series, but for farscape, it's below average.
The DVD features are descent, with footage not seen in the U.S. and with commentarys on both of the episodes. A great collection.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Best show I've seen in years, by "far"
Review: In my continuing quest to catch up with all the shows I have managed to miss in the past couple of years I am now working my way through Season 1 of "Farscape." This first DVD offers up the first two episodes, including the pilot, "Premiere." Basically, creator Rockne S. O'Bannon takes the old Buck Rodgers in the 25th Century idea and gives it a few significant twists. As we are reminded each week in the title sequence, Commander John Crichton (Ben Browder) is sent through a wormhole during an experimental test flight into a galaxy far, far away where he ends up on Moya, a living spaceship with aliens on it.

The aliens in question are escaped prisoners fleeing from the fascist Peacekeepers. Of course, as far as they are concerned, it is Crichton that is the alien. Because of one of those accidents that tend to happen when a spacecraft is hurtled through a wormhole into a galaxy far, far away, Crichton is also a fugitive from the Peacekeepers, as is one of their number, Officer Aeryn Sun (Claudia Black). When you toss into this mix the hulking warrior D'Argo (Anthony Simcoe), the bombastic Rygel (Henson puppet voiced by Jonathan Hardy), and the exotic blue skinned priestess Zhaan (Virginia Hey), you have the potential for extended interpersonal conflict in each and every episode. These crewmates might not kill each other, but they are not averse to punching each other out. The pilot episode is certainly functional in terms of laying out the possibilities, but obviously what is going to make this series is how well future episodes work off of these premises. At this point it is clearly the aliens that are more interesting to us than Crichton's situation, but it is clear as soon as you see her that Zhaan is going to be a fascinating character.

"I, E.T." is a great idea for an episode considering Crichton's plight, but having it be the second episode in the series is way too early as far as I am concerned. With all of his science fiction/pop culture references, there should be an episode where Crichton realizes he is in caught in a classic science fiction film plot. However, flipping his own first contact experience from "Premiere" is something I would have saved for the second half of the season and not the second episode. Having it this early makes the story lose a lot of its potential poignancy. Besides, at this point we are really more interested in learning more about Zhaan and D'Argo than in the fact that Crichton wants to go home.

I especially appreciated the involvement of the cast and crew in doing commentary tracks on (apparently) all of the episodes on these DVDs. Having two people talking per episode works well, as they engage in dialogue and talk about not just the particular episode but the characters and the series overall. My only serious complaint about the DVDs of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" have been the approach of letting each writer comment on one show per season. My current line of thought is that cast and crew commentary on all episodes is as fan friendly as a cult television show can get. There is also a video profile for the character of John Crichton and a 22-minute documentary on the making of the series, along with an image gallery, conceptual gallery, and web-links. As I said, this is a high end fan friendly DVD.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great feature. DVD a little unfulfilled.
Review: I gave this DVD 4-stars, but that's only because the disc contains just 2 episodes. As with just about all TV series DVD presentations, it's under-utilized, to collect greater revenues, I can only conclude. The storage capacity of the DVD is so great, there's really no fair reason for not including more of the series on each DVD. (This is a fair grievance with most film DVD's as well. A double-sided, dual-layer DVD can hold up to 8 hours of high-quality video, or 30 hours of VHS quality video. I've seen very few double-sided DVD's, most giving up capacity for artwork. !?!)

That issue aside, the Farscape episodes are great. I don't believe I ever saw the beginning of the series on the air, so it was great to be taken back to the start. The series is one of the most inventive and engaging Sci-Fi sagas I've ever been sucked into.

I only hope all the seasons make it to DVD.


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