Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles Season 1 BluRay DVD Review
Subtle Differences blow the standard DVD set out of the Water.
By Erika Blake
Sarah Connor Society - Admin
Visit our screencaps gallery of the extras on the DVDs
HERE!
I’m a rare oddity; I’m a female who believes that in the terms of Television that bigger IS better (and I don't only mean television size.) Perhaps that’s partly why I was immediately drawn to TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES last year. The show isn’t just big, it’s spectacularly huge. It’s got jaw dropping special FX, a rich mythology, deeply flawed but hopeful characters, and non-stop action. The show possesses the elements that always drew me to Fox in the ‘90s when watching my favorite show of all time, THE X-FILES.
The show at its heart is a family drama that can only exist on FOX. With time-travel mind twisters that will leave your head smarting, the Connors being on the run from the law, and having to live with the very thing that they are trying to destroy, the Connors are the perfect dysfunctional Fox family.
The Season 1 DVD set is best watched in full sequential order in a couple of sittings to best appreciate the beauty of how this new Sci-Fi drama was written. The show suffered slightly in its ratings last season because the first season was deeply mythos-centric in its storytelling. What does that mean? It means that each episode tied to the next one, and so forth. If you missed an episode, you likely might’ve missed a key plot point that helped to make the next episode clearer. The actual writing of season 1 from a pure story-telling angle was brilliant. The short, 9 episode season felt like you were either snuggled under your covers reading a thick sci-fi novel or watching a long, tightly written dramatic play. Each week the story arc built and wove new layers of complexity into the overall story-arc that ultimately culminated to, literally, an explosive end.
Unfortunately, due to the writer’s strike certain story threads were unceremoniously dropped and not revisited, like the high school drama. Executive Producer Josh Friedman takes the blame for this arc being uneven as he was out on the picket line along with his writers and left the job of editing into the capable hands of Consulting Producer James Middleton (who’s responsible not only for TSCC but the new TERMINATOR film franchise.) Luckily for us the strength of the overall storytelling and writing was powerful enough that if you look past a few loose ends, we’re left with a show that continued to just gain momentum with each passing episode, and characters who we sat on the edges of our seats, rooting for their survival and success.
Many people credit the arrival of Brian Austin Green’s character, Derek Reese’s addition to the cast in episode 5 THE QUEEN’S GAMBIT to be the turning point in the series. If you want a comparison think of the original STAR WARS film. In A NEW HOPE the first part of the film with life on the Lars farm, the droid adventures, the space battle, it was all great, but the action and fun didn’t really pick up until Luke, Ben, and the droids met up with Han Solo and Chewie. Derek Reese is rather the Han Solo of the SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES universe he’s a bit roughish, hot-headed, sarcastic, and a wild card. Luckily for us the writers took what could easily have been a 2 dimensional original character and fleshed him out to be emotionally wounded and complicated. The infusion of some much needed alpha male testosterone into the show added that final dynamic that brought the entire cast to life. Also the addition to Derek was critical from a storytelling POV, Derek is a living link to the future that Sarah and John are working to prevent from happening. He’s also a blood relative to John and gave the future leader of mankind a grounded link to the reality of the evil that he is fighting so hard to destroy.
I have a confession to make, other than the unaired, leaked Pilot that I saw online I’ve never watched TSCC without it being in full HD format. With DirectTV our Fox signal comes in at full 1080i so watching the Blu-Rays for the season didn’t make my eyes pop like they might’ve to an HD-neophite. In fact, I’ll go as far as saying that I’m an HD snob. After watching HD satellite cable channels and Blu-Ray/HD disks, I loathe watching anything that’s now considered sub-standard in quality.
So the TSCC season 1 DVDs do not disappoint, they are as gorgeous, vibrantly bright in color, and as densely pixilated as when I watched the series on their original broadcasts. I am fortunate enough to be able to watch my DVDs on a 65” 1080i DLP TV and can assure you that even expanded out to that large of a screen, the clarity of the image on the disks remains pristine and gorgeous. For anyone who didn’t get the chance to see them in their full HD glory in their original broadcast – you can expect your eyes to want to pop out of your skull by the amazing clarity of the picture on the Blu-Rays.
Warner Brothers started off making both HDs and Blu-Rays. IMO HD was the better format the disk load times were always much faster and the menus were always super simple to navigate. One of the great things w/ WB having made disks in both formats is that they’ve incorporated the best of both formats into this set of disks. When you pop the disks into your Blu-Ray player the load time is incredibly fast for a Blu-Ray disk. (Ever bought any from Disney? Pop in a disk and go make a sandwich…it might be loaded by the time that you come back.) Also, WB doesn’t torture you by making you sit through “coming soon” preview promos for more of their products. Instead, after the FBI warning and Warner Brother’s logo pops up – the disk jumps you right into the first episode that’s on the disk. If you leave it alone, it will run one episode after the other without your having to prompt it to do anything.
If you want to pick and choose what to do, while the episode is playing, you can open up a pop-up menu that appears at the bottom of the page and scroll over to the extras or if you want to switch to a different episode to watch. This pop-up menu feels more fluid like on HD disks than on many Blu-Rays. You can also pause the episodes by going to the full main menu view and a promo photo will populate your screen while you pick and choose through your viewing options at the bottom of the screen.
The extra features on the Blu-Rays are identical to what you get on the standard DVDs, they are, however clearer to view. The Auditions and Summer’s dance rehearsal were all shot on low quality video but it does appear that they tried to clean them up more for the Blu-Rays. These extra features are still not as crisp as say the 3 studio produced documentaries that contain interviews with the show’s producers and stars. Lena Headey’s audition in particular is very difficult to hear on both sets of disks and at times Thomas Dekker’s audition is muffled.
I love Richard T. Jones’s audition tape the most out of the three. The man came in and played the part so straight that his performance is almost perfectly mirrored in the Pilot. It’s little wonder why he was selected because his auditions were brilliant, he blended that perfect amount of sincerity with sarcastic wit that we all love about Agent Ellison.
The deleted scenes offer a nice variety of clips that were cut from the show including 5 different scenes from the PILOT , 1 from THE TURK, 1 from DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS and 2 from THE DEMON HAND that were incorporated back into the extended cut of the episode that is on the disk. Most of the cut scenes I felt could’ve been left out. The one that tugged at my heart though was Lena’s heart-wrenching monologue from the Pilot where she confides her fears and nightmares about Judgment Day to Cameron. Sarah never opens up to anyone, so the fact that she did so to the thing that she feared the most was emotionally gripping. You could tell that Sarah desperately wanted Cameron to be a real person, to truly understand her misery and torment. Cameron however shot the point home that she is not human by reminding Sarah that she never sleeps she can never have nightmares because she is not human. In a lot of ways the scene helps to explain Sarah’s blatant hostility towards Cameron in later episodes when she often spats how Cameron doesn't sleep - it's a subtle thing that the writer's incorporated into the story to show linear character definition...Sarah hold a grudge and doesn't let go. She dared to bare her soul to someone and ended up getting nothing in return for it.
The extended cut of THE DEMON HAND is pretty cool with the extra scenes however it’s a little jarring to watch since this was the cut before the episode was scored. If you love watching film as a piece in progress, you’ll find the extended cut to be fascinating. There’s one particularly hilarious exchange between Dr. Silberman and Ellison that didn’t make the final episode cut or the deleted scenes that makes watching the extended cut worth the entire experience.
The documentaries are fun and informative additions to the extra features. The ‘DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS’ featurette was particularly informative and entertaining to watch. Brian Austin Green looked like he was going to explode out of his skin because he was beaming so much whenever he offered up commentary on the episode.
I was surprised that they didn’t include the original Pilot that they aired at 2007 Comic Con as an extra on the disk. The only reasons I could come up with for this oversight was that the original Pilot had a different actor as the early version of Charley Dixon and the Pilot used TERMINATOR film score music, not music scored by Bear McCreary which might've caused licensing issues. It’s too bad because many fans who didn’t manage to get their hands on the pre-air version have been dying to see this version for themselves and now they will likely never be able to view it.
My only other nit-picky complaint might be that I felt that the gag reel could’ve used some silly background music to further liven it up. (Blooper reel can be watched
here!)
I haven’t listened to the episode commentaries yet – mostly because I usually don’t pay attention to that particular added feature so at this point I can’t comment on the content on them.
Overall the disks don’t disappoint, the Blu-Rays are user-friendly, crystal clear, and full of entertaining extras. Even though the season was truncated, Warner Brothers didn’t skimp on giving us extra goodies on the disks to help us not feel ripped off from buying the disks. For anyone who missed the series the first time around, if you’re a Blu-Ray fanatic, don’t miss picking up Season 1 of TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES, you get nine episodes of entertainment plus tons of cool extra features for a very attractive price. If sticker prices have prevented you from purchasing TV shows on Blu-Ray, TSCC is a great way to try out a series.
And if you missed the show last winter, there’s no better time than now to get into this series now before the second season begins, the show is available in Blu-Ray and Standard DVD at a retail store near you.
