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Disc
One: Episodes 1-3: “Designate This”,
“Bag ‘Em”, “Proof Of Purchase”
Disc
Two: Episodes 4-7: “Radar Love”, “Boo”, “Two”, “Some Assembly Required”
Disc
Three: Episodes 8-11: “Gill Girl”, “Medium Is The Message”, “Brainiac”, “The
Berrisford Agenda”
Disc
Four: Episodes 12-15: Borrowed Time”, “Harbor Lights”, “Love In Vein”,
“Fuhgeddaboudit”
Disc
Five: Episodes 16-19: “Exposure”, “Hello, Goodbye”, “Dawg Day Afternoon”, “She
Ain’t Heavy”
Disc
Six: Episodes 20-21: “Love Among The Runes”, “Freak Nation”
Stars:
Jessica Alba, Michael Weatherly, Kevin Durand, Ashley Scott, John Mann, Jensen
Ackles, Martin Cummins, Richard Gunn, J.C. Mackenzie, and Valerie Rae Miller
Guest
Stars: John Savage, Nana Visitor, Lita, and Rick Worthy
Writers:
Moira Kirland Dekker, Marjorie David, Tommy Thompson, Michael Angeli, Charles H.
Eglee, Jose Molina, Robert Doherty, Michael Angeli, Chip Johansson, Julie Hess,
Cindi Grossenbacher, Ira Steven Behr, Renee Echevarria, and James Cameron
Directors:
Jeff Woolnough, Verne Gillum, Thomas J. Wright, Les Landau, Allan Kroeker, Nick
March, Brian Spicer, Stephen Williams, David Straiton, Kenneth Biller, David
Grossman, Morgan James Beggs, James Whitmore, Jr., and James Cameron
Created
By: James Cameron and Charles Eglee
Executive
Producers: James Cameron, Charles Eglee, and Renee Echevarria
Feature
length: 943 minutes
Extras:
Select Episode Commentaries, Behind
The Scenes Featurettes: “Max Resurrected”, “Making The Manticore
Monsters”, “Manticore On The Loose”, “Blooper Reel”
Languages:
English, Spanish, and French Language Dolby Surround Sound
Subtitles:
English Captions and Closed Captions and Spanish Language Subtitles
Packaging:
Six-Disc Digipack Gatefold Within A Cardboard Slipcase
Chapter
Stops: 15 Per Episode
Sound:
Dolby Surround Sound
Year
of Television Broadcast: 2001-2002/DVD Release: 2003
Home
Video Distributor: Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment
MPAA
Rating: Not Rated
Reviewer:
Mark A. Rivera
The
year is 2020. Max (Jessica Alba) is now a prisoner within Manticore. Her love
interest (Michael Weatherly) thinks she is dead, but through an unlikely
alliance with a fellow Transgenic M5 like herself and a host of various half
human and half beast genetic experiments, Max leads an exodus that finds her
back in Seattle while the majority of Manticore’s mutant creations have
created a secret community in the ecologically devastated Terminal City. However
Max’s freedom does not come without a price. She has been infected with a
virus genetically engineered to kill her love interest and thus they cannot have
any sort of direct physical contact.
To
make things worse, the appearance and sightings of mutants has created
anti-transgenic demonstrations and mobs while others literally attempt to modify
themselves with machinery to appear transgenic as if it were the next step in
human evolution or something. These social problems that effect Max and her
friends and allies occur in the growing shadow of Manticore’s attempts to
cover-up and eradicate their creations while a secret society targets Max as
both a harbinger of doom and humanity’s last hope for salvation.
Season
two of “James Cameron’s Dark Angel” is more sci-fi oriented and features
more action as the show’s producers attempted to reach a larger audience.
Unfortunately changes like this even early in a show’s programming run can
ultimately alienate viewers who no longer know what to expect or preferred the
more serious tone of the first season that did not have as much latex creature
characters. It is hard not to draw comparisons with “Buffy The Vampire
Slayer” if only for the fact that both shows featured a strong female hero and
lots of latex humanoid creature creations. However Joss Whedon’s vision grew
progressively as the series developed so viewers knew what to expect and become
interested in that series’ mix of action, humor, and the macabre. In James
Cameron’s “Dark Angel” we go from one season that is more science fiction
in nature to a second season that seems more fantasy in nature. Suddenly instead
of covert intrigue in a depressed America we have characters like Joshua, who is
a big huggable canine-human hybrid that looks as though he could be the younger
brother of Ron Perlman’s Beast character from the 1980s TV series “Beauty
And The Beast.” When something like this occurs it can do more harm than good
because people begin to feel what they are watching is just an imitation of
something else on TV or a show that can’t seem to find it’s own voice.
A
perfect example of this is the mid 1990s TV series “Seaquest DSV” where
season one seemed to focus on the more reality based wonders of the last
frontier on Earth. Then season two went for a complete fantasy approach with
monsters and aliens. Finally they tried to make the show all serious and dark by
bringing Michael Ironside for the third season and the show was cancelled or as
some might say, “Dead in the water…”
Twentieth
Century Fox Home Entertainment’s season two box set presents all 21 episodes
in their (1.33:1) analogue broadcast aspect ratio and I have to admit the
picture quality looks great with hardly any noticeable anomalies whatsoever.
However as we all know the series was shot in widescreen and for whatever
reasons he may have, Cameron prefers the Region One DVD releases to be full
framed. Now what really adds insult to injury is that the featurettes show
letterboxed scenes from the second season episodes and those letterboxed scenes
all look better than the (1.33:1) episode presentations, which I have already
noted above look very good to begin with. So why not have 16 by 9 enhanced
widescreen presentations for “Dark Angel” Mr. Cameron? The English Dolby
Surround Soundtrack is clear and well rounded, but not very discrete or
aggressive in nature at all. French and Spanish Language Dolby Surround
Soundtracks are encoded onto all six discs with English Captions and Closed
Captions for the hearing impaired and Spanish Language Subtitles encoded as
options too.
There
are three episode length audio commentaries that include one for the second
season premiere episode “Designate This” with Co-Executive Producer Kenneth
Biller, Executive Producer and Writer Renee Echevarria, Co-Producer and Writer
Moira Kirland Dekker and Director Jeff Woolnough. This commentary is very
interesting and somewhat screen specific as the various participants discuss the
challenges of shooting the season opener in a short amount of screen time and on
a TV budget. Co-Producer and Writer Moira Kirland Dekker and Producer Janace
Tashjian participate in a screen specific audio commentary for the episode
“The Berrisford Agenda” while Actor Richard Gunn, Executive Producer and
Writer Renee Echevarria, Executive Producer and Writer Charles H. Eglee,
Co-Executive Producer Kenneth Biller, and Co-Producer and Writer Moira Kirland
Dekker provide an episode length audio commentary for the second season and
ultimately the series finale of “James Cameron’s Dark Angel” entitled
“Freak Nation.” Among the topics discussed are the plans for what was to
occur in season three, which is now being concluded in a series of novels,
working with James Cameron, who made his first fiction directing effort since
“Titanic” with this finale episode, and the subsequent cancellation of the
series.
A
short season two featurette with select cast and crew interviews entitled “Max
Resurrected” (14:53), a creature makeup featurette entitled “Making
Manticore’s Monsters” (5:54), a montage of the creatures in action from
season two entitled “Manticore On The Loose” (1:45) and a blooper reel
(3:55) wrap up the extra features included in this six-disc set.
“James
Cameron’s Dark Angel: The Complete Second Season On DVD” box set will debut
on DVD-Video on Tuesday, October 21, 2003 at retailers on and offline from
Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment.
©
Copyright 2003 By Mark A. Rivera
All Rights Reserved.
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