DVD Review: The Fugitive - Season 1, Vol. 1

Decades before Harrison Ford was exciting audiences as Dr. Richard Kimble, The Fugitive was a thoughtful, adventurous and very different dramatic series on television. Starring David Janssen in the title role, the show broke new ground on TV by not presenting a sanitized version of life in America - only The Twilight Zone (with which it shares some music) did the same.

Janssen looked part Sean Connery and part John Kennedy as he moved from town to town, trying to escape the lawman intent on tracking him down (Barry Morse, later of Space: 1999 fame) and trying to find the one-armed man whom he believes killed his wife, a crime for which the innocent Dr. Kimble has been sentenced to die. The show visited different places and characters every week, making it nearly as much of an anthology show as The Twilight Zone.

This first volume of the series covers 15 episodes from the initial 1963-1964 season. Many fans dislike these piecemeal releases of their favorite shows, but with so many shows abandoned by studios due to poor sales, whatever works. And as long as the episodes continue to look as good as they do in this set, fans should be pleased. The Fugitive was filmed in glorious black and white (until its fourth season when it switched to color), and the mood it sets helps the storyline. The images are crisp and clear, especially for a program that is nearly 45 years old.

The show had wonderful guest stars, such as Brian Keith and Vera Miles in the first episode and Robert Duvall and Susan Oliver in the two-part "Never Wave Goodbye." Janssen himself won a Golden Globe for his role in the series, and was nominated three times for an Emmy.

The show, with its JFK-inspired hero, premiered a short time before Kennedy's assassination. It was appropriate, however, that The Fugitive showed us the dark side of America, of a place where innocent, good men were kept away from their families, their callings and from the lives they should have been able to lead. In many ways, America is still running to return to that time. For those that haven't forgotten and who hold the promise of what could have been, The Fugitive is a landmark, and a document of the journey.

More info: Homepage of the Hunted: The Unofficial Website of The Fugitive
The David Janssen Archive

High-Definition War Gets Nasty

Today's announcement by Paramount and DreamWorks that they will support the HD-DVD format in the high-def wars means a longer wait for fans who want to adopt one format without another in the market. The superiority of Blu-Ray in the marketplace (and in most critics' opinions) didn't stop Microsoft from throwing around $150 million to Paramount and DreamWorks for "promotional considerations" -- which is just doubletalk for a bribe.

Bill Hunt of The Digital Bits has summed up this development better than we can and we encourage everyone to read Bill's piece from today.

A few months ago, a friend asked me what the deal was with the high-def format war. I did my best to tell him and to explain why I thought Blu-Ray was the better of the two, and why market forces seemed to be favoring Blu-Ray, making HD-DVD the next BetaMax. But my friend said something interesting: He said "Which one does Microsoft support? Because whichever one Microsoft supports will win."

I don't think HD-DVD will end up winning, unless Microsoft can afford to buy off every movie studio in the world. Everyone is in this game to make money, but there's doubt that Microsoft is supporting HD-DVD because they believe in that product. Their interest is in the XBox Live download service, so it's logical that they want to keep the high-def market in flux as long as they can.

Tellingly, the announcement today from Paramount and DreamWorks does not include films by Steven Speilberg, whose film Close Encounters of the Third Kind was recently announced as coming to high-definition DVD -- on Blu-Ray. Perhaps Speilberg is just staying out of this ugly mess, or perhaps he doesn't believe in the format Paramount is adopting. It's entirely possible Paramount doesn't believe in it either, but $150 million is a lot of money to pass up when waved under your nose.

The losers in all this are the fans of movies and high-definition technology. As high-def widescreen televisions keep coming down in price, more and more people are able to enjoy them. But for the time being, it looks like they're going to get their high-def content from HD channels. Could this spell the eventual demise of the DVD format - high-def, standard or otherwise? Time will tell, of course, but killing the most popular consumer product ever is going to end up as blood on someone's shoes - and today Microsoft is holding the smoking gun.

More info: Paramount To Drop Blu-Ray
What is Blu-Ray?
HD-DVD

DVD Review: Babylon 5: The Lost Tales

Babylon 5 is one of the great science-fiction properties ever, right up there with Star Trek, Star Wars, (the new) Battlestar Galactica and others. The five-year run that Babylon 5 had on television is also a singular achievement in TV history - without its 110 episodes of a serialized novel for television, there might be no Lost or other must-tune-in-every-week shows.

A feature film seemed inevitable at some point, and one may yet be in the offing, but now comes what is likely the first in a series of "Lost Tales" DVD releases (in bonus features, reference is made to shooting "these DVDs"; this volume is subtitled "Voices in the Dark"). This one stars Bruce Boxleitner and Tracy Scoggins from the series and Peter Woodward from the spinoff Crusade. It's a mixed bag, really, with the first half of the program being a fairly generic supernatural possession story, and the second half a more satisfying adventure into the character of the show's lead.

Scoggins is back as Lochley, a character we never got to know very well in the show's fifth season, but who acquitted herself well into an already established series. She is thrust into determining a supernatural menace and calling for aid from the Catholic Church, which sends her a priest. Alan Scarfe has some nice moments as a skeptical, realistic man of the cloth. His commanding voice reminds us of appearances he made as a Romulan leader in Star Trek: The Next Generation. But there isn't enough of a personal stake in this part of the story, and Lochley simply shows herself to be the smart leader we already knew she was.

Boxleitner's return as John Sheridan comes off much better. Shown a vision of the future by Woodward's Galen, Sheridan confronts a question that has fascinated men for generations: If you could kill a genocidal maniac before he commits the terrible acts we know he will, would you? Boxleitner appears to relish the role and his time in it. He's the best thing about the entire program.

The show uses a lot of CGI effects, and technology has improved since the days of the show, which makes for some beautiful footage in space. Some of the interior shots fare less well, with the actors appearing to be standing or sitting in empty rooms, but that's a minor quibble and one as much due to a lack of camera movement as anything. But the station and the spacecraft have never looked better.

J. Michael Straczynski, creator of the show, wrote and directed, and his abilities are as strong as ever. Unlike Gene Roddenberry, who had less of a hands-on approach with Star Trek as the years went on, Straczynski has remained the driving force behind the show, and it remains very much his vision.

Hopefully, The Lost Tales will continue, and will explore the other great characters of the show - Londo, Lennier, Garibaldi, Marcus, Ivanova, Delenn and others, including the cast of Crusade, which was cancelled by TNT before it had a chance to develop. If The Lost Tales allows Crusade to wrap up in some fashion, it will make many fans happy. Of course, if a feature film ever happens and Straczynski can take advantage of a bigger budget and tell a more epic story, Babylon 5 may reach an even wider audience.

For now, though, this volume of The Lost Tales is a worthwhile effort, and a welcome visit to one of the great alternative universes of imagination.

More info: Babylon 5: Official Site
The Lurker's Guide To Babylon 5
Crusade: The TNT/JMS Saga