Farscape: Season 2, Collection 1 (Starburst Edition vol.4)

The original run of Farscape DVDs, released by little-company-that-could ADV, were depressingly pricey and sometimes frustratingly lacking in features. Now that they've (apparently) recouped their initial investment, ADV's finally going back and doing right by this fantastic, funny, cliche-defying series. The Starburst editions boast new features and new additional commentaries by creator Rockne S. O'Bannon, showrunner David Kemper, and stars Ben Browder and Claudia Black.

For those new to the series, Browder plays lost astronaut John Crichton, stranded halfway across the galaxy after a freak accident in orbit. Hunted by the local fascist regime, he takes refuge on a living ship full of surly, fractious escaped prisoners who would probably kill one another if their survival didn't hinge on cooperation. Black is the wildcard of the bunch, an exiled soldier and ace pilot who's as emotionally fragile as she is physically tough. For all Browder's considerable acting chops and terrific comic timing, Black is the show's MVP; she kicks ass like Ellen Ripley and emotes like Emma Thompson.

This set begins Season 2, one of the best of the series' 4-year run. Despite a sometimes painfully slow start, by episode 4 the season is up and flying. As a brilliant and ruthless alien scientist named Scorpius-- one of the most magnificent bastards in TV sci-fi history-- stalks Crichton across the galaxy, our hero slowly begins to lose his mind. It all ends with a dazzlingly staged heist caper and a heartbreaking whopper of a cliffhanger.

If you've already got the old Season 2 DVDs, I'm not sure if the new features are worth shelling out more money for the same show. But for newcomers looking to get into this hugely underrated series, the Starburst Editions offer outstanding quality at an extremely good price.

When I first saw Fascape when it premiered in 1999, I immediately fell in love with the show. It's genuinely original storyline, muppet effects supplied by the Henson Co., and the depth of characters as the show progressed only heightened my affection for this, in my opinion, short lived show. For anyone that is wondering about this show, primarily if they are thinking about starting to collect this very affordable and well done DVD collections, they should know that this show had enough of a fan base to practically unseat a CEO of a company.

From what I have read and heard, when a new female CEO was named for the Sci-fi Channel in 2003/2004, the first thing she did was to cancel Farscape. She thought the show cost too much and that the story was too linear based, meaning that people who had never seen an episode would not be able to understand it because they hadn't see the preceding storylines that progressed the show. Anyways, this was a bad idea. Between 2 and 3 million people boycotted the channel because they cancelled their favorite show. On top of that, it was the Sci Fi channels top rated and most popular television show at the time. Needless to say, the board of executives threatened to releave her of her position with a vote of no confidence, so she allowed the creators and actors to come back and finish the show with a 4 hour miniseries. The reason I mention this is because the show is just that damn good, and if it had the fan base to change a company, then I would have to say that alone is proof of how great this show is and always will be.

I also used to work for a Suncoast store, which is primarily retail priced with the occasional sale in the store. The original retail price for the season box sets of Farscape retailed at $149.99 a piece. Outrageously priced, even for a good show. However, I still sold many, many copies of the Farscape box sets while I worked there, once again showing the show is just that damn good that people would spend that much hard earned money. These Starburst collections are just what the doctor ordered for people in the middle class like myself. You get all the episodes of whatever season you would like in 3 separate box sets that combined still only cost half of the full season box sets price. The Starburst collections also have great quality episodes, lots of documentary info, and cool facts surrounding the creation of the show.

If you like Farscape then I recommend buying these right now. If you have never seen it then buy the first starburst box just to see what you think and it will only cost you $20.00.

This reveiw is more about the quality issues with the disc more so than the content of the disc. For the record ADV has added a lot of extras that is not anywhere else. Albeit many are repeated multible times on different disc of this STARBURST series release that could have been better used reducing the compression ratio. As for the quality issues, these are recorded on dual layer double sided disc and as of this writing I have had to send 3 of the 6 currently released back to be exchanged due to skipping, frame freeze, audio cracking etc. The disc were checked on 3 players and a computer and did the same on all of them. So the issue is with the quality or the lack thereof. I have contacted ADV about the quality issues and they have more the most part said ... 'Oh well.' The more pricey collection did not have these issues, but lacked many of the extras and you get what you pay for. Granted to be fair when the disc work, the video and audio quality is fine, but it is annoying to get to the middle of a show and the disc freezes up and up have to skip over 10 or more minutes to get it to play. ADV simply tried to squeeze to much into to small of a space. This collection really should have been put on 4 disc instead of 2. They did not include scene selection either, you can only choose which episode you want to see then fast forward through the tracks after that. As I said I love the show and it is a healthy 5 but this release's quality is a sickly zero.