Customer Reviews

Dark Angel:S1

5 star:		(109)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

The first season of Dark Angel was great. I liked the cat and mouse game between Max and Lydecker. The second season is where the problems started. It was more about Max chasing down the freaks she let out of Manicore than anything else. It got old watching her chase down a different hybrid each week. I'm probably not the only that feels this way: as ratings diminished during the second season, it was moved from it's nice Tuesday spot to Friday (the touch of death), and eventially cancelled.

Overall, this was still a solid series, but it's ashame the storyline didn't continue on the path it was on during the first season.

My first exposure to Dark Angel was the episode entitled Blah, Blah, Woof Woof. From then on, Dark Angel night was a must with no interruptions allowed. The premise of this show, creating genetically altered human beings, is a controversial topic. The illegally diverted government funds that paid for the experiment added to the story's vitality. The characters were complex and dynamic: a heroine in search of her humanity and how she fit into a society that was not ready for her altered state; a hero driven to confront and expose the injustices of a "third-world" United States and the business corruption that exploited the down-trodden while benefitting from that same corruption; a cold-blooded villain whose dedication to and protection of the genetically enhanced humans made him feared and heralded simultaneously. Both the friends and enemies of these characters kept the action suspenseful and well paced.

The characters dealt with the world we face and its problems. Their motives and actions were as complex as humans can be with no easy answers. The plot and characters interweaved well and kept the audience intrigued. The actors kept getting better as their characters developed. I still miss this show. I'm hoping that a movie or another "series" or "special" will continue the story. The book Before the Dawn, published after cancellation, was a welcome addition to the background story.

Dark Angel brings you to new levels of understanding of the "what could be out there".

The show is about test tube babies that have mixed DNA in them to be the Superman soldiers of our time BUT 12 of the children escape to find themselves in a world where they know nothing and definitely do not belong.

The show forces on the life of one girl who never knew what it was like to risk her life for anyone but herself but does little by little. This all takes place in a future (in like 20 years) right after a pulse hits and makes the USA the new 3rd world country of the world.

Yes agreed the whole action scenes could have been more Hollywood BUT anyone who understands anything would know that it is placed in a 3rd world country would know there would NOT be all the hype. The show is excellent and worth the 2 seasons that were made and much more. Buffy and Angel (no worries much love for these shows) were on the air much longer and the main idea of the show was fight this and save the world yet again. Darn shame I say. Dark Angel is worth the money and the time of watch each and every episode.

I never got around to watch Dark Angel on TV because of lack of time and the way the series was not marketed properly in the UK, so by the time I started to watch them, it was well into the first series and I had never seen the pilot episode.

I was glad when the DVD came out so I bought and immediately got hooked. It's one of the best TV series on current TV and makes Buffy the Vampire slayer look like pre-teen pap or a cheap horror version of Dawson's creek. As soon as I finished watching the first box set I went out and bought the next one. I thought that I would be disappointed at first but I was wrong, it only got better.

Both series are fantastic! But I like the way the plot becomes darker in Series II. The Character development is brilliant in Series I, it is also there in Series II but some of the characters have been neglected like Logan. It's nice to see Jessica growing up as an actor, her performance gets much better in Series II as she becomes more comfortable in the role of MAX.

In the last episode of Series II we get a glimpse of the beginning of another chapter in Max's journey as a Manticore transgenic. But we won't see it because THEY'VE CANCELLED THE THIRD SERIES!! I was gutted by the news! Why do they always cancel the best series on TV? The good series that remain survive because they become "mainstream" or get "simplified" to reach a larger audience like Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Dark Angel was too sophisticated for your average person, so they've probably decided that there wasn't enough money to make out of it. The world is not ready for Dark Angel yet and the fans have to suffer for it.

Anyway, if you haven't seen Dark Angel yet, I would advise you to buy both box sets. It's definitely something to watch over and over again. The characters are beautifully developed. The attraction between Max and Logan was not as intense at the beginning of the second series (probably because they were already dating in real life by then) and Logan became a little tedious, especially with the arrival of the new character "Alec" who's adorable looks, humour and cheekiness make his presence surpass that of Logans in many episodes. I would add Joshua, Original Cindy and Normal to my list of favourite characters. Unfortunately the best bad guy, Lydecker is replaced by White, but he does a good job in the bad guy role in his own way.

Dark Angel is definitely a worthwhile purchase, but I wasn't very impressed with the extra features especially the poorly edited interviews, which is why I've given it 4 stars instead of 5. How is the American Version? At least we got a nice little featurette in the second box set.

One in a very, very small list of shows that showed some originality and stamina based on its own merits. Besides an intricate ongoing plot based on issues starting to face our world even today, the show was not afraid to push the envelope.
The real tragedy is not that the show was cancelled but that it represented a new breed of programming that did not patronize its mostly youth audience. Youth reality is rarely treated in any kind of genuine manner but instead insults with condescension and preaching. With the cancellation of the show, a signal was sent out across the Network spectrum that TV is simply not ready for youth to think for themselves.

Evidenced by Fox's decision to dull the edges of Season 2 after September 11th, Dark Angel fell into a confused entanglement of tangents which led only to happy places. Of course, the show failed. Youth shown an open door in Season 1 were not ready to shut it so fast in Season 2 and so suffer again with mainstream sensationalism promising empty fullfillment.

Keep the dream alive! Buy Season 1 because you like it but if you really want to support the show further, you could always buy season 2 when it comes out although make sure you've watched it first.

resonence

I really, really enjoyed the first season of Dark Angel; I never watched the shows while they were on tv, instead, I got the entire season on DVD, and watched them as a whole; I am so glad I did, as having the shows interrupted by commericials would have been rather annoying.

My only complaint, with the DVD's was that you could definitely see they were made for tv viewing.

Dark Angel has been my favorite show ever since it came out on television. I managed to catch most of the episodes, but having the DVD will definitely clue me in on some of the things I missed. Dark Angel perfectly depicted a future America that has been left wrecked by the pulse. For all who have not seen this show you have no idea what you're missing. Why Fox chose to cancel the show after only two seasons is a mystery to me and I am still fuming about it. If you like the show you might also wanna check out the book series that Max Alan Collins started writing after the series was taken off air. The first one is Dark Angel: Before the Dawn. This book sheds some light on some of Max's background that the series didn't go in to. The next book, Dark Ange: Skin Game, skips to continue the series after the last TV Episode, Freak Nation. The third one just came out it's called Dark Angel: After the Dark. I haven't read it yet but I'm sure it'll be great. You might also wanna check out Dark Angel: The Eyes Only Dossier. It gives a lot of background on Logan.(Eyes Only) All together it's an excellent series and Jessica Alba plays her role perfectly.

This first season was great, I stayed glued to it like most of the other reviewers that you have read, but after the first season was over, so was my viewing pleasure. I would say buy this season for sure if you are a die hard sci-fi fan, but be cautious if they release the second season because from there on out, the show went downhill by introducing large amounts of b.s. and re-introducing the same plot twists w/ very little additives.

James Cameron's "Dark Angel," starring Jessica Marie Alba, debuted onto the public television circuit with the glitzy, media-permeating fanfare of a P.T. Barnum exhibit. It was intended to be the Fox Network's answer to "Buffy: The Vampire Slayer," but unlike the latter show, "Dark Angel" never lived up to the glimmers of potential which it displayed in the pilot episode.

The lead character, Max Guevera/X5-452 (Jessica Marie Alba), with enhanced feline abilities was interesting enough despite the all-too-familiar "I just want to be normal" superhero formula lurking underneath. Gratuitous shots of Miss Alba -- dare I say "miss" in our enlightened society? -- in a skin-tight leather outfit was undoubtedly a major selling point with the teenage male audience but often cheapened the series to the level of a D.C. comic book.

The overarching plot involving genetically-engineered super soldiers whose DNA had been artificially created, inserted as fertilized eggs into the wombs of surrogate mothers, born under military supervision, raised in an experimentation compound and then escaped as children was laughably cliché, but still interesting. This was tacked onto a futuristic environmental setting in which a dystopian Seattle has been devastated by an electromagnetic pulse. These two premises were mildly compelling, and the show was at its best when exploring them, but the moment it would veer into alternative plotlines, it would fall from an average weekly thriller to a stinking pile of fungus.

The ensemble cast which populated the show on a weekly basis was by far the worst failing of this short-lived series. The supporting characters were often teenage stereotypes painted in broad, one-dimensional strokes for the sake of political correctness (i.e. Original Cindy) and used the most annoying hip-hop slang. The point of using slang is to make communication quicker, not to use it so much in a sing-song fashion that basic communication itself becomes stupidly incomprehensible. Apparently, middle-aged creators James Cameron and Charles Eglee were trying so hard to make a hip show that appealed to teenie boppers that they didn't realize being too trendy is just as detrimental as being too normal.

Coupled with the annoying overuse of rat-tat-tat Ebonics, a constant "battle of the sexes" theme existed throughout the series which would have been wickedly amusing if it hadn't usually lacked wit and reverted to simplistic invectives. Max saying lines such as, "Girls kick ass, [because] it says so on a T-shirt" was humorous. Max saying lines such as, "Guys are the weaker sex" to a grieving widow who has just lost her beloved husband isn't humorous, even in a morbid sense. A twisted sense of humor can be sickeningly funny, but, if an episode writer is not careful, it often can just be sickening. There is a very fine line to toe. The Dark Angel writers should have remembered Mel Brooks' famous advice, "If I cut my finger, that's tragedy. If a man walks into an open sewer and dies, that's comedy."

For the lackluster action scenes in which Max displayed her "dizzying" superpowers, the Dark Angel crew often utilized a simple fast-forwarding technique. This is an effective trick if executed correctly, but instead it often came across as sped-up footage from a shaky hand-held video camera. In retrospect, far more interesting combat effects could have been created using wire stunts ala the deified choreography of Yuen W. Ping.

Ultimately, the corniness of "Dark Angel" became more and more insufferable; the weekly episode writing didn't improve; the characters became so posh they were borderline snotty. Midway through the first season its Nielsen ratings began to slip. Seeing no quality improvement, viewers abandoned "Dark Angel" like rats from a sinking ship. By the second season, the once-promising series had degraded to having Max slaying Buffy-like monsters and encountering freakish beings that seemed borrowed from the X-Men comics. If only the series writers had aimed for a wider demographic audience other than middle school teenagers and focused less on being devastatingly hip, "Dark Angel" might have lasted a few more seasons.

Tsk! Tsk!

The DVDs got here BEFORE the time it was estimated to get here.

All the dvds work. They are in good condition, and I'm very happy with the purchase.Dark Angel:S1