Category: TV Series

A season whose production was revealed to the cast and crew at the same time as the general public – i.e. during the end credits of the last episode of the third season – this final baker’s dozen of Blake’s 7 episodes marks a radical shift in the series’ direction, at least on par with Babylon 5’s crew abandoning their Earthforce allegiance to join the “army of light.” The finale of the previous season had dispensed with Blake, the all-powerful starship Liberator (and its ever-helpful computer, Zen), and any hope of the surviving Liberator crew escaping the hellish artificial planet appropriately named Terminal. The bad guys had won, it seemed – but surely that couldn’t stand as the end of the series, though the BBC’s battle for ratings had more to do with the final season’s existence than the battle between good and evil.

All 13 episodes are included here, including the shockingly doom-laden series finale, Blake, which proceeded to make the third season’s finale look like light comedy. As shock endings go, Blake’s 7 still ranks as one of the all time greats. Does it leave things open-ended for a continuation? Depends on how you interpret it. Does it give the show closure? Yes, and violently so.

Blake, as it so happens, is one of only two episodes with a commentary for this season, the other being Assassin. Paul “Avon” Darrow and Jacqueline “Servalan” Pearce ham it up during Assassin, gleefully reminiscing about the show and even riffing mercilessly on one of the guest stars’ performance (!!). Darrow joins writer/script editor Chris Boucher and Blake himself, Gareth Thomas, for the final episode, which becomes rather amusing when one realizes that Thomas hasn’t seen the show in ages and has forgotten what happens in it!

There are also, at last, some other substantial extras in this set, directed by Kevin Davies. Davies had originally devised an affectionate four-part “making of” special for the Blake’s 7 DVDs, only to run afoul of B7E, the outfit that bought the Blake’s 7 rights from the estate of the show’s late creator, Terry Nation. Davies’ original documentary would have affectionately addressed the many charges over the years that Blake’s 7 had become more than a little campy, which reportedly was an aspect that B7E wished to bury as they tried to launch a gritty, modern-day revival of the series (in any case, that attempt has been stalled indefinitely since the departure of Paul Darrow from the B7E project). As the new rights holders, however, B7E had – and used – the power to veto Davies’ documentary in its entirety, which held up the release of the first season DVDs for a year.

In any case, some of the material gathered by Davies finally sees the light of day here in a handful of new documentary pieces which apparently did pass muster with B7E; “Special Sounds: Radiophonics” focuses on the creation of Blake’s 7’s unique sound effects by, initially, Richard Yeoman-Clark and eventually Liz Parker of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Workshop archivist Mark Ayres also appears to discuss the preservation of the material in question. Actually, having recently seen a similar documentary about the Workshop’s 1960s era in the Doctor Who: The Beginning box set, it has to be said that this is a nice companion piece. “Ken Ledsham’s Blake’s 7 Designs” focuses on the enormous problems encountered by the set designer who took over early in the series – only to find that his budget had already been blown on the elaborate Liberator standing sets. And “Forever Avon” accompanies Paul Darrow on a vist to a space exhibit at the London Science Museum to discuss the legacy of his most famous role. The Davies documentaries are, as always, great fun, though I did find some of the editing in the first half of “Forever Avon” to be ponderously slow in places.

Other period Blake’s 7-related clips are included from the usual suspects – Pebble Mill At One and Blue Peter – along with the very amusing fourth season edition of “Blake’s Bloops,” replete with gun prop miscues, stumbles, and Jackie Pearce and guest star Betty Marsden infamously fluffing a scene from Assassin repeatedly. More bloopers and misfires can be found in a section of exceedingly rare raw studio recording tape, including the infamous Gold blooper in which Darrow, as Avon, is meant to fail to reach an airlock door in time, but due to a problem with the door prop, he instead quite casually walks into the airlock in question and laughs “Well, that’d solve a lot of problems then, wouldn’t it?” The studio session tape is accompanied by an informative series of subtitles, which reveal that the raw tape had been recorded over with a live political event – except for the last half hour of the tape, which revealed these gems.

Compared to previous seasons of Blake’s 7 on DVD, there’s a wealth of material here, and while everything covered there is fascinating, it really just amounts to a bittersweet reminder that a more extensive documentary covering the series as a whole exists somewhere. Still, it makes for a nice DVD package, and hopefully, somewhere down the road, that documentary can still be released, even if it winds up being of the “uncensored! unauthorized!” variety.… Read more

Fresh from having Battlestar Galactica wrested from his grip by ABC, producer Glen Larson high-tailed it to another SF dream project of his, NBC’s revival of the comic strip/old-time-radio classic Buck Rogers In The 25th Century. Based on Robert C. Dille’s seminal 1930s space hero, this updated version of the legend was being retooled for a 20th century audience – a little more enlightened, one might think, but only a little.

The first season of Buck Rogers opens with the two-hour debut movie, setting the stage for the show and populating it with heroes and villains. In some ways, the tone of the premiere is different, but in other ways it sets the template for the entire first year: Gil Gerard is clearly The Hero, but sometimes that means he’s The Hero on a Shatneriffic scale – he’s in almost every scene, and a healthy share of the scenes he’s not in involve his friends back on Earth worrying about him. Still, Gerard’s performance is worthy of praise here – he can milk the wink-and-a-nudge punch line, but he does find some of the gravity of Buck’s situation, being stranded out of time with no hope of returning to the time and the people he remembers. (If this show were done today, there’s a very good chance that this gravity would be played as overwrought pathos, so it’s actually a nice balance.)

The supporting cast is solid and talented across the board, though their characters aren’t always as good as their performances. There are many instances where Erin Gray gives Colonel Wilma Deering the kind of steely determination that one would expect of someone who holds such a high rank in the Earth Defense Directorate, but just as often she’s reduced to doe-eyed half-whispers of “Oh Buck!” – partly a product of the charcter’s 1930s origins, but also partly a product of the show’s 1970s pedigree. She seems to be at the mercy of the script and whoever happens to be the director of that week’s episode. With small actor Felix Silla in the suit and cartoon voice veteran Mel Blanc providing the voice, Twiki, of course, steals the show at every opportunity, and shamelessly so. I had forgotten how steady, unflappable and yet funny Tim O’Connor was as Dr. Elias Huer; sadly the writers couldn’t decide between Huer as level-headed genius and Huer as impossibly clueless comic straight-man.

The first season is quite a mix storywise; some of its stories are hackneyed holdovers from 1950s sci-fi B flicks, some are episodes of the Love Boat transposed into space, and a few are interesting. With writers like Alan Brennert (Twilight Zone, Star Trek: Enterprise) and Jaron Summers (Star Trek) on board, you might kid yourself momentarily about finding some serious SF, but don’t fool yourself too much – Buck Rogers’ millieu isn’t hard science fiction, but spandex, lip gloss, and as much special effects spectacle and big-name guest star power as the show could squeeze out of its budget. The guest star aspect of the show can’t be played down – getting Jerry Orbach, Michael Ansara, Richard Moll, Frank Gorshin, Jack Palance, Ray Walston, Peter Graves, Jamie Lee Curtis, Cesar Romero, Roddy McDowell, Buster Crabbe (the original silver screen Buck Rogers himself!) and even a decent guest turn out of Gary Coleman, all in one season, was, if not one coup, then a whole series of them. (But just as often, the guest casting coups were undermined by putting these legends from the silver age of Hollywood on the screen next to models-turned-actresses who, despite being easy on the eyes, could barely act.) This may well be the cause of the many reports that Gil Gerard and the show’s producers and writing staff threw more sparks than a malfunctioning spaceship control console in clashes over story content and the direction of the series as a whole.

This, of course, led to yet another show being yanked out of Glen Larson’s hands, and the very noticeable change of tone between seasons. Incoming producer John Mantley had been the showrunner for much of Gunsmoke’s time on the air, and he was given a half-season order and instructions to redirect the show in a much more Star Trek-influenced, action-adventure-with-a-brain direction. Gone were Dr. Huer, Dr. Theopolis, Princess Ardala, Killer Kane, and indeed the entire Earth-under-siege element of the show, and the characters who were retained – basically Buck, Wilma and Twiki – were now assigned to the starship Searcher, seeking out lost human colonies, new life, new civilizations and, on a whole, a little less lip gloss. Universal and NBC made it known very forcefully that this would be a whole new show: Mantley proposed a transitional episode to see off the departing characters and introduce the Searcher/colony plotline, and was turned down.

The most visible change in season two, however, was the addition of Thom Christopher as Hawk. Even more unflappable than Dr. Huer (no pun intended), Hawk was a further indication of the Star Trek influence, commenting on human foibles and strengths and always remaining the outsider. The character was key to the two-hour relaunch of the series, which also saw the addition of Wilfred Hyde-White as the doddering science Dr. Goodfellow, Jay Garner as Admiral Asimov, and a new robot named Crichton to serve both as a useful tool for dropping exposition into the story and as the straight-man for Twiki’s one-liners. Also worth noting in the second season episodes is a new musical direction courtesy of Bruce Broughton, who has since moved on to much bigger and better projects.

The second season episodes suffer from a strange dichotomy – they’re trying to be smarter, but they’re also trying to maintain the lightheartedness of the first season…and they never quite achieved either extreme successfully. As politically incorrect as the first season may seem now, with its scantily-clad women and wink-wink-nudge-nudge humor, it’s just more fun than season two. Even halfway through what episodes were produced for the second season, one can see a gradual reversal of some of the changes – one episode focuses on a group of telekinetic dwarves’ overtly sexual fixation on Wilma, and the services of Mel Blanc were re-engaged after several episodes with a new and, it must be said, laughably wimpy voice for Twiki. When going through the second season episodes in order, I cheered to hear Blanc return as Twiki’s voice.

Season two isn’t short on familiar names either; Star Trek’s Mark “Sarek” Lenard puts in a headlining appearance in the double-length Journey To Oasis, and frequent-flyer original Trek director Vincent McEveety is behind the camera for several installments as well. But ultimately, it wasn’t enough to save Buck Rogers from cancellation.

The DVDs contain no bonus features, unless one counts the story synopses accompanying each episode. This set also features a bane of my digital video existence – easily-dirtied and easily-damaged double-sided discs – but at the same time, it’s two seasons, the entire run of the show, in a package that costs less than what some SF franchises charge for only one season on DVD. I guess I can’t knock that too much.

What is Buck Rogers’ place in the modern SF TV pantheon, especially when producers of more recent shows have obviously had old favorites like Buck and Battlestar Galactica in their sights when issuing edicts of “No cute kids and robots – EVER!”? It’s hard to say. The first season of Buck Rogers has such a huge quotient of cheesy fun that it’s hard not to crack a grin. I love serious science fiction, but there’s a place for light-hearted stories too, and I don’t mean Tripping The Rift. There’s a kinder, gentler side of SF that shines here, and I enjoyed reacquainting myself with it. There’s also something to be said for the show’s unabashed use of the last gasp of the great Universal Studios contract player system – if you can find me another SF show that had such a consistently star-studded lineup in the space of one year on the air, I’d like to hear about it.

However you slice it, Buck Rogers was a lot of fun. The DVD set could’ve used some extras (and reportedly the cast, including Gray and Gerard, were up for it – but Universal wouldn’t pay to secure their participation), so one point off there. But otherwise…in the words of a certain quad: “Beedy beedy beedy…hey Buck, you’re my kinda show.”… Read more

As Terry Nation’s space opera entered its third season – originally intended to be its last – huge changes were underway in the series’ format. Perhaps the most significant of these was the fact that Blake, played by Gareth Thomas during the first two years, was no longer a regular part of the show, which naturally invited all sorts of questions about how the show could still be called Blake’s 7. But with the first two episodes written by Nation himself almost acting as a pilot for the show’s new direction, there was little doubt that this was the same show, continued, and not a spinoff. Blake’s crew was looking for him – whenever the business of surviving not only the totalitarian Federation, but the season opener’s alien armada, gave them that luxury. As the new leading man of the series, Paul Darrow as Avon came into his own, though the first few episodes handicap him with a kind of curious morality that Avon hadn’t exhibited before, and wouldn’t exhibit again later (due to BBC bosses’ concerns that you couldn’t have such a strongly amoral character as the hero). Jan Chappell and Michael Keating remained as Cally and Vila, respectively, with Jacqueline Pearce also continuing her role as the increasingly vampy villainess Servalan. Departing with Thomas were Sally “Jenna” Knyvette and Brian “Travis” Croucher.

This necessitated filling out the Liberator’s crew roster anew, and young newcomers Dayna and Tarrant, played respectively by Josette Simon and Steven Pacey, joined up. One of this DVD set’s most unusual features, and an absolute treasure to see, is Pacey’s screen test, with Darrow feeding him lines from a confrontational scene in Power Play, the episode which really introduced Pacey’s character. Pacey plays the part more aggressively in his screen test, also lowering his voice (something the actor has since said was done to make him appear older than he was at the time for fear of not being believable in the role). In the end, Pacey played the character differently, so not only is the rarity of the footage part of its charm, but you get to see a very different performance than what was seen in the series.

Sadly, Pacey doesn’t appear in any of the commentaries, as I would’ve liked hearing more from him. Not that there’s really anything to complain about in this season: Jacqueline Pearce and Chris Boucher spend at least as much time getting caught up watching the story of Death-Watch as they do commenting on it, and Paul Darrow finally gets in on the DVD commentary action. He’s joined by Boucher and Jan Chappell for Rumours Of Death, and participates in what’s damn near a dream-team commentary on the season/series finale Terminal, along with Pearce, producer David Maloney, and Gareth “Blake” Thomas himself (who made a cameo return to his role in that last episode). Darrow is an absolute joy on these commentaries, delighting in pointing out how Shakespearean the show’s plotlines had become, and talking about his portrayal of Avon in general. Please, all of you, come back for the fourth season commentaries – and bring your castmates. For those of us who aren’t fortunate enough to be able to pop over to the U.K. to witness any of the live cast reunions whenever one of these DVD sets is released, this stuff is manna from heaven.

Makeup artist Sheelagh Wells gets a featurette to herself here, recounting her work on the show’s stars and its alien creations as well (including the alien creation that led her to demand to have her name removed from the credits). She’s already covered some of this ground in her book Blake’s 7: The Inside Story, but as always there’s nothing to compare to hearing the person themselves speak. And while there are no deleted scenes per se here, there are outtakes, in the form of an edited-down version of film editor Sheila Tomlinson’s gag reel, which even includes the infamous “teddy bear” stunt pulled by Gareth Thomas during location filming for Terminal while trying to bust Darrow up in a particularly somber scene.

The “Introducing Dayna” and “Introducing Tarrant” featurettes are simply “best of” compilations of clips featuring those characters and explaining their backgrounds, but in the end it’s just a compressed version of what you’d get if you just watched the episodes yourself. And finally, there’s another Kevin Davies-edited trailer for the next (and final) season, set perfectly to the operatic strains of Mark Ayres’ score for The Innocent Sleep. Sadly, Davies’ full-length documentary, vetoed since the first season box set by B7 Enterprises (the outfit Paul Darrow ended his association with which has still not gotten a Blake’s 7 revival of any kind beyond the drawing board), is still a no-show. Here’s hoping against hope that maybe B7E will come to its senses and finally let that show out of the bag in the upcoming season 4 set.

The third season has the bizarre distinction of containing my all-time favorite episode (the very off-format Sarcophagus, almost the first SF TV musical but not quite) and my least favorite (the utterly insipid Ultraworld), and even more strange than that is the fact that those two episodes ran back-to-back. But the sheer number of all-time classics here (Terminal, City At The Edge Of The World, Rumours Of Death, Aftermath, Death-Watch – funny, all of those episodes spring from the pen of either Terry Nation or script editor Chris Boucher) make this a must-get set. Trust me, Blake’s 7 is a good reason to own a region-free DVD player.

And another good reason to own Blake’s 7’s third year on DVD: the limited edition which contained a perfect replica of the late 70s/early 80s Corgi die-cast Liberator toy. I already had one of the original toys, quite well-worn, but this thing is just beautiful in its little plastic Blake’s 7 bubble – I think I’ll keep it in there.

Man, have I been waiting for this.

The first season of Babylon 5 can only be described as uneven. Just look at disc 4, where the pivotal Signs And Portents shares space with the much-less-pivotal Grail and TKO. But even while the show was finding its legs, its potential was clear. And when it delivered on that potential, it was something very special.. The five-year-arc for television has been discussed over and over again, but to me that’s not the strength of Babylon 5. Series creator J. Michael Straczynski mentions it repeatedly in his episode commentaries…it’s a series that passionately argues that we all can make a difference in the world, that we all need to believe in ourselves and each other. It’s a show that has something to say, and is willing to take risks in order to say it. And thanks to this DVD set, I get to watch its beginnings over and over again, with a much better picture than the faded videotapes a certain webmaster sent to help me catch up on the show when I first became hooked.

My favorite episode of the season, And The Sky Full Of Stars, is a perfect example of the show clicking. It takes Sinclair’s battles with his survivor’s guilt and missing memories and transforms them into gripping drama, drama that is played out more through words than action. Straczynski doesn’t completely hold back from the action, though – he would wait for season 4’s Intersections In Real Time for that – as we get to see the Battle of the Line for the first time thanks to some terrific CG animation work. (Christopher Franke’s Requiem For The Line is but one reason why I find the sequence here to be vastly superior to its expanded treatment in In The Beginning.) Michael O’Hare’s performance in the episode makes even a fan of Bruce Boxleitner’s Captain Sheridan such as myself wish that Sinclair hadn’t been moved off the chessboard quite so soon.

That move is one of the behind-the-scenes stories Straczynski relates in his episode commentaries for Signs And Portents and Chrysalis. Those fans who have gone through the bulk of Straczynski’s Usenet and GEnie postings over the years probably won’t find much new to chew on (although they will find some), but those who haven’t will likely feel more enlightened when they’re done. And even if the material’s not fresh, Straczynski’s delivery of it is. His combination of wit, pride, and self-deprecation are huge fun to listen to. Although when you are done, two facts will be burned into your mind – he really wanted to create a saga for American television even though no one said it would work, and Ivanova’s Russian pessimism reflects his own heritage.

Other extras include two documentaries, The Making of Babylon 5 and Back to Babylon 5. The former is a 1994 piece hosted by Walter Koenig made to promote the first season, filled with cast/crew interviews and behind-the-scenes footage. The latter is a brand new featurette wholly comprised of interview clips with select cast and crew reflecting on the show and its beginnings. (Among the interviewees: Straczynski, fellow executive producer Douglas Netter, series stars Jerry Doyle, Richard Biggs and Stephen Furst, production designer John Iacovelli, makeup artist John Vulich, and producer John Copeland.) On its own, the new documentary would be rather thin, but it provides a very nice bookend to the old one, since you can see everyone express their hopes and plans for the series and then see them after they know how it all turns out. (Kind of like the virtues of rewatching these early episodes knowing where everyone’s going to wind up, in fact.)

There’s also an interactive guide to the Universe of Babylon 5, which has some brief nuggets of info on the station and characters, an introduction from Straczynski, and biographical info on Straczynski and Netter. My favorite little extra is the previews for each episode, which in a previous life served as the “Next week on Babylon 5…” promos. Watch some of these, and wonder if the people who watched them could have gotten any farther from the actual plotlines of the episodes in question.

The episodes are presented in a widescreen format, which has caused some controversy and confusion within the fan community. The live action footage was shot on Super 35 film, which can then cropped into either full-frame or widescreen ratios. However, all the CG animation and any composite shots were composed exclusively on the full frame versions. So on the DVDs, shots that are completely live action will show more than the old full frame versions, although the new version might still lose some content from the old. CG shots or shots with composited elements are cropped from the original full frame, so these shots are always “missing” something from the top and bottom. Some, like myself, think the widescreen versions generally have an improved composition. Others prefer the original format. You’ll have to come to your own conclusions, but here’s a site that explains the process and shows side by side examples of the difference between full frame and widescreen B5.

Regardless of your stance on the aspect ratio, if you have any fondness at all for Babylon 5, you’ll enjoy having this set. As I said, I’ve been waiting for this for a long time, and I can say the wait was worth it.

Of course, now the wait for season 2 begins…… Read more