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War of the Worlds: The Complete Series
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Genre | Sci-Fi, TV, Drama, Thriller |
Format | Subtitled, NTSC |
Contributor | Philip Akin, Jared Martin, Rachel Blanchard, Lynda Mason Green, Richard Chaves |
Language | English |
Number Of Discs | 11 |
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From the manufacturer
Paramount provides premium content to audiences across worldwide. We connect with billions of people. Our studios create content for all audiences, across every genre and format, while our networks and brands forge deep connections with the world’s one of the most diverse audiences. In streaming, our differentiated strategy is scaling rapidly across free, broad pay, and premium.
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Product Description
Based on the groundbreaking novel by H.G. Wells and the 1953 film of the same name, this classic TV series thrusts sci-fi addicts and action-adventure fans directly into the fiery crucible of two wars that will determine the fate of our world. Decades after it appeared that the ruthless alien invaders were killed off by common bacteria, increased radiation wipes out the Earth-saving organisms. Brought back from suspended animation, the enemy uses their body-snatching ability to adopt human form.
Product details
- MPAA rating : NR (Not Rated)
- Product Dimensions : 0.7 x 7.5 x 5.4 inches; 12.8 ounces
- Media Format : Subtitled, NTSC
- Run time : 33 hours and 25 minutes
- Release date : February 6, 2018
- Actors : Rachel Blanchard, Lynda Mason Green, Philip Akin, Jared Martin, Richard Chaves
- Subtitles: : English
- Studio : Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment
- ASIN : B077GPXN45
- Country of Origin : USA
- Number of discs : 11
- Best Sellers Rank: #18,230 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
- #769 in Mystery & Thrillers (Movies & TV)
- #2,952 in Drama DVDs
- Customer Reviews:
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Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
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FIRST, SOME TECHNICAL STUFF:
Some reviews on Amazon have complained about this box set's quality, some even claiming that this is a bootleg version. It is not. This is an official release from CBS Home Video. Sure, it's a standard definition DVD; don't expect blu-ray quality and it's not "remastered;" there are no frills, no behind-the-scenes videos or interviews. It is what it is. This is not a series CBS is likely to spend a great deal of money releasing--and just the fact that CBS has made it available at all is pretty awesome in my book. All that said, the transfer quality is fine. The picture and sound are reasonably good quality. I do notice that the picture on Season 1, Disk 1 is not quite as sharp as the remaining disks. That's not to say it's a poor quality image; it's more than watchable. But there is a very noticeable improvement in image quality between Disk 1 to Disk 2, and then remains quite good from there on. The image quality for Season 2 is even sharper, quite excellent in fact, almost looking like it actually was remastered. I'm not sure why CBS would do that for Season 2 (the season people tend to hate) and not Season 1. I don't know what, if anything, they did differently with the transfer for Season 2, but it is noticeably better than Season 1. Regardless, the transfer quality for both seasons is fine overall, with Disk 1 being arguably the fuzziest (but not bad)--I suspect because Disk 1 squeezes in the box set's only "special features," which are only a set of trailers for other CBS box sets (i.e. "Star Trek: Enterprise," etc.). Each disk contains four episodes. Disk 1 contains the equivalent of four episodes (a two-hour pilot, plus two regular episodes), plus a long string of needless trailers. Adding that extra string of needless trailers probably required the manufacturer to compress the files more than they would have on the other disks, thus dampening down the image quality just a bit. But only a bit. I watched it on a Sony blu-ray player with HD upscaling, connected to an 1080p HDTV via HDMI and it looked good. I also watched it on my old square SD TV upstairs and it looked great. This is an official CBS box set; it is NOT a bootleg.
Another complaint I've seen is the same complaint I ALWAYS see on "complete series" box sets, where the customer is outraged that the box set material is just a repackaging of the previous individual season box sets. Well...duh. Were you expecting it to change? A new extended “director’s cut,” maybe? It’s a thirty-year old, rather obscure TV series, presented as is. Obviously, if you already own the individual seasons 1 and 2, you don't need to buy this one. Why would you do that? On the other hand, if you don't own it at all, this is the best, most economical way of purchasing it--all in one convenient package. By the way, the durable quality of its hard plastic casing is quite good and compact with nice artwork. It keeps the disks well secured and protected.
THE SERIES ITSELF:
What makes this series so cool and a bit unexpected is how this 1988-90 television series so faithfully serves as a direct sequel to the famous 1953 Paramount Pictures classic movie from producer George Pal, "The War of The Worlds"--one of the big budget blockbusters of its day. This was no cheesy 50's B-movie. This was a major motion picture in full color and revolutionary special effects which hold up amazingly well to this day. There were few, if any, science fiction films which would equal or surpass its visual sophistication prior to "Star Wars" in 1977. So good was this George Pal masterpiece, "War of the Worlds (The Series)," some thirty-five years later in 1988, was able to seamlessly utilize clips from the movie in flashback and very faithfully recreate the 1950's style flying "Martian" war machines rising again in the 1988 pilot movie, "The Resurrection," firing off the same sparky death rays they did in the 1953 film, recreating the same force fields around the ships, and faithfully using the same chilling sound effects. Series protagonist, Dr. Harrison Blackwood (Jared Martin), is established to be the adopted son of the movie's two original protagonists, Drs. Clayton Forrester (Gene Barry) and Sylvia Van Buren (Ann Robinson). Furthermore, Ann Robinson reprises her 1953 role as a recurring character in the 1988 series.
The aliens in the TV series do get a bit of a retcon. First, they are not actually Martian, as they were "assumed" to have been in the original movie (and the H.G. Wells novel). They actually come from a distant planet named Mor-Tax (or Morthrai, depending on which alien you ask). And, surprise, it turns out that the Earth bacteria, once believed to have killed them, actually lulled them into a protective state of deep hibernation, only to be accidentally revived in the 1980s. Their makeup, although patterned after the original design, is updated with more modern makeup prosthetics and creature effects. Finally, their biggest retcon is their previously unknown ability to possess human host bodies in order to blend into our unsuspecting population.
The first season is a particularly fun romp. Although a "serious" drama, mixing sci-fi, horror, and mystery elements, it has a fun action-adventure spirit with a sense of humor. Indeed, the funniest characters with some of the best one-liners in the series actually tend to be the aliens, who are prone to bickering and bantering amongst themselves, and humorously reacting to human idiosyncrasies which seem baffling to them. Meanwhile, the main hero cast (Harrison, Suzanne, Debi, Ironhorse, and Norton) are all thoroughly likable characters, each with their own unique personality quirks. The show is largely well written, if a bit formulaic at times, despite the struggles plaguing the show's creators (Greg and Sam Strangis), chiefly the 1988 writers’ strike. It also seeks to tie-in into other aspects of the "War of the Worlds" mythology, including the 19th century novel and the revelation that the famous (or infamous?) 1938 Orson Welles radio play was merely a government coverup of an earlier invasion attempt.
There are some areas were the series stumbles a bit, even in season one, which is generally superior to the badly retooled second season. Early in season one, it’s established that the haunting memories of the 1953 alien holocaust are largely lost to the general populous due to some vaguely defined mass amnesia. Uh…what? I don’t think that’s something people would tend to forget. I think a better approach than trying to “explain” why the 1953 invasion doesn’t line up with our own knowledge of real-life history, why most people in the 1980’s don’t believe in aliens, would have simply been to embrace the reality that this story takes place in a fictional universe—because it does. So, in other words, the 1953 invasion happened and everyone remembers it and knows that aliens exist—period. That doesn’t stop the aliens from working covertly, which they do anyway. So, that was a weird approach. There’s also, at times, weird continuity quirks where, for example, our heroes seem to learn some new fact about the aliens, which had already been discussed in a previous episode, as if the episodes were either presented out of order or the writers forgot that the heroes already knew that.
However, it’s the baffling second season which turns the series continuity completely on its head. In a bizarre example of studio meddling, Paramount fired the series creators, Greg and Sam Strangis, replacing them with “Friday the 13th: The Series” showrunner, Frank Mancuso, Jr. (even though WOTW was actually doing better in the ratings than “Friday” was). Mancuso’s first act was to kill off two of the series most popular characters, while all but throwing out the entire original series premise in favor of re-setting the series into a vaguely near-future post-apocalypse, in which the United States has rather suddenly devolved into a strange cyberpunk-ish, Mad Max-like nightmare, without any tonal connection to the relatable “current day” setting of the first season, and with the cryptic tagline “Almost Tomorrow.” Without any indication that Mancuso had even watched Season 1, the ill-defined time-jump between seasons one and two could be anywhere between about four months to four years, depending on which dialog you’re referencing from which episode. Four months doesn’t make a lot of sense considering the near-instant transformation of modern civilization into a futuristic dystopia, but four years makes even less sense considering one of the main characters, Debi McCullough (Rachel Blanchard) is a growing young teenager in both seasons, unless we assume that Debi was four years younger than she seemed in season one. I guess it’s up to interpretation.
The aliens, themselves, also receive a somewhat abrupt retooling. In the season two premiere, “The Second Wave,” the body-snatching Mor-Taxans are violently deposed by a second wave of similar, but slightly different aliens called the Morthren, which seem to be part of the same empire (we think), but it’s unclear if they are supposed to be the same species, different species or an off-shoot subspecies from the same planet or maybe a different planet, depending on who’s writing the script. Physically, they look very similar in their natural state, but there are differences; namely, the Morthren appear to have two eyes and two arms, while the Mor-Taxans have one eye and three arms. The Mor-Taxans based their culture and technology on base-three mathematics (as was established in the 1953 film) and are creative engineers of very mechanical technologies. The season-two Morthren, on the other hand, seem to have no ties to the number three and utilize a completely different technological science based on bio-engineering. They also clone human bodies rather than possess them. And yet, the wonky continuity of the second season can’t seem to decide if the Mor-Taxans and Morthren are two different factions within the same empire or have been completely one and the same all along—again, all depending on who is writing the script.
The radical retooling of Season 2 was so bizarre and off-putting to fans of Season 1, its fairly evident that the new producers realized by mid-season that they had vastly overreached. By midseason, they make efforts to pivot back to a format and tone a little bit closer to what fans were accustomed to from Season 1, such as a time-travel episode (set just days after the 1953 invasion) which begins to reinsert the previous mythology back into the series. And, to be honest, season two does have some stand-out episodes, as well as a cool new main hero in the always awesome Adrian Paul (pre-Highlander) as John Kincaid.
It’s a series that was pretty great in season one, bizarre but sometimes interesting in season two. I do recommend it as a very underrated sci-fi series. I would also recommend watching the 1953 classic film first, not only because it’s a great film, but it will add to your understanding of the backstory.
Top reviews from other countries
この作品の見所はファースト・シーズンとファイナル・シーズンの設定の落差がスゴイところです。基本的には映画「宇宙戦争」で描かれた
エイリアンたちの地球侵略は終わっていなかった。エイリアンたちはアメリカの秘密基地の奥深くにに隠された円盤や同朋の奪還と復活を
狙い、新たな侵略を開始したという話です。
ファーストシーズンでは事件は全米を舞台に起こり国家規模で設立されたチームが対応します。そしてシーズン最終話チームの秘密基地
がエイリアンに襲撃されるトコロで終わります。To Be Continued・・・というお決まりのコースです。本来はココで終了していてもおか
しくなかったのでしょう。もともと予算もあまりなかったのか円盤の特撮シーンも昔の映画のシーンを流用していましたし・・・。
ファイナル・シーズンの第1話。チームの大半と基地、指令系統までも失いフリーとなってしまった3人のメンバー。戦いは絶望かに
思えたのだが何故かエイリアン側も大幅なスケールダウン。メンバーのいる街でしかエイリアン絡みの事件が起きなくなってしまいます。
まるで「隣のエイリアン」状態。ココまで来るとエイリアンも映画に登場した奇っ怪な姿ではなく、まるで「てるてる坊主」のような
丸いマスクをかぶりヒラヒラのマント状の衣装を着たヒトになってしまいます。
ここまで設定が変わってしまったドラマを見たことは無かったですがアメリカでは珍しくないのかもしれません。アメリカの人は「宇宙戦争」
が結構好きみたいでトム・クルーズの映画以後、珍品が日本でもリリースされていますが、その先駆け的な作品と言っても良いかと思います。