Customer Reviews

Earth Final Con S.3

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

"No Refuge" is season 3---skip it.

Season 1 was brilliant introduction. Season 4 provided the conclusion. All the other seasons were "lost" and directionless...boring. Buy 1 & 4 and avoid the rest.

Amazing release of EFC tv series. 6 dvd's with full 22 episodes from season 3.As a bonus features you have interviews with the cast , photo gallery and featurette.I'm waiting for season 1 and 2 to be released and i hope to see it as good as seaseon 3-5 are. Highly recommended to all sci-fi fans :) The price is right get it now , you won't regret it !

NO SPOILERS

EFC is a wonderful series - all of the years not just the first season.
It was after all, created by the father of modern sci-fi TV sagas - Gene Roddenberry.
The costumes and acting are excellent with lots of characters that you love, hate, love to hate and just plain loathe.
The character of Da'an, played by the highly acclaimed Ms. Leni Parker, is truly alien and is both a delight and an enigma.
This series is one that proudly takes its place in the archives of timeless sci-fi. It is worthy of your hard earned dollars.
A most enjoyable series with more plots than the local cemetary and a host of unforgettable villians and heros.

My advise is, watch the show on VHS or on TV first and if you find you love it then buy the DVD. The widscreen format gives a more epic feel to the show and gives added dimension. The interviews with the actors are great. If you missed Season 1 and 2 I would recommend that you view them first. Since this is a DVD set of Season 3 and NOT SEASON 1, any discussion of Season 1 here is not very relavent. The fan base is very divided on this show. Some thought Season 3 was the best and others didn't. It all comes down to personal preference. Season 3 is generaly thought of as an attempt to return to a more Season 1 direction after the divergent and poorly recieved Season 2. Liam Kincade seemed to lose his alien side and even lost his Shaqarava which I thought was yet another mistake the show made. Robert Leeshock is younger and perhaps not as experienced as some would have liked. But his saving grace is he is infinitly likable and very believable. As others have stated the acting is good and what little "action" there is wasn't too distracting. I thought the sword fight in "Thicker than Blood" was quiet good. Lots of great episodes and guest characters. More focus on Zo'or and the relationship with Da'an (won't give anything away here). If you liked Season 1 and 2 then theres no reason not to get 3. The price is very affordable. Hopefully at some point Universal will...release Seasons 1 & 2 on DVD soon. It is diffucult to appreciate the show fully without the backstory.

I would also like to add that the comment made about "Canadian-based Sci Fi" by another reviewer is not only misinformed but laughable. Tribune is a US based company and the decisions reguarding the firing of actors and directional changes came directly from them.

I was glad when I heard EFC was finally coming out on DVD, so I could get the incredible first season. But for some reason they started with season three...

Still, season three is very good, in fact, only seasons one and three are worth watching. Robert Leeshock's (Liam Kincaid) acting is kind of strange, like he always keeps staring into the distance when talking to people, but its all good. Rene Palmer (Jayne Heitmeyer) is stunning, and Augur (Richard Chevolleau) is a fascinating character to say the least. The show creates this very believable version of near future. It explores the possibility of first contact very elegantly. The technology in the show is cool as much as it is practical. Globals, teleporters, and the CVI (cyber viral implant that enchances one's brain usage) are some examples. I can go on, but I won't.

I stopped watching the second season after the first few episodes, maybe it improved later on, I don't know. Then I resumed with season three and was pleasantly surpised. As for the last two seasons, you can forget about those.

I THOUGHT THIS DVD SET WAS FANTASTIC I LOVE EARTH FINAL CONFLICT I CAN NEVER MISS AN EPISODE I AM SOOO GLAD THEY COME OUT WITH IT ON DVD NOW NOT ONLY IS IT COMMERCIAL FREE BUT NOW I CAN THROW AWAY ALL MY TAPES ANYWANY THIS DVD SET IS AWESOME I HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT!!!!!!!

First, I will echo the views of the previous reviewers...and also say that I cant wait for Seasons 1 and 2 to come out on DVD.

Now having said that, I want to praise and condemn. This show in its first season was fantastic. Smart, interesting and well acted, it played on a couple of different concepts; that of the relationship between colonist/conqueror and conquered. One could almost see the agony of choosing whether to resist or collaborate and the problems and promises of both- there was no simple solution to that decision, and this was one of the sources of complexity and tension that kept the show going (and it was applicable to both sides); and that of the Platonic view of human nature as the interconnectedness of reason, spirit and appetites. With the Taelons providing the reason and the Juridians the appetites, it was clear that in some way the humans provided spirit, but how this was to manifest itself, and how it would develop in the course of the show was always agonizingly unclear, and a source of debate and discussion in my house after we discovered this show.

If only the same high level could have been maintained. Season two was good, and Season 3- in this DVD- was decent, but the show was losing its momentum by that point. I suspect that the writers/producers had exhausted the Roddenberry heritage and had little idea how to move the story forward, or what kind of ultimate resolution would appear. There was a marked tendency to replace 'action' with theme and intelligence, and even though there are several notable episodes in the 3 and 4 seasons (the 5th hardly bears watching... though sometimes it could be interesting) the show really ran out of ideas. This is a shame, because the promise that this show had form the beginning was quite marvelous, and is still mesmerizing to watch... so I've bought the Season 3 DVD, and I can sit and watch and wonder how I would have made it come out in the end... which is not an easy or an obvious thing to do.

Actually this is season 3 on, Universal decided not to release the first and second season due to their owning of it, basically they just sit on it. But season three is as good a place to start as any.

Earth: Final Conflict will be a great addition to your scifi collection. It features a deep plot with good quality acting on the part of the main charactors. I am sure you will fall in love with this series as much as i did

The four seasons of Earth: Final Conflict (with the exception of the execrable so-called fifth season) were flawed but intriguing, with a mesmerizingly likable alien race and a sometimes peculiar cast of hackers, freedom fighters, corporate bigwigs and cold FBI agents. The third season is, if not the best, then certainly the best-balanced.

The season reopens with Lili Marquette taken captive by Ronald Sandoval, and sent to a mystery destination for reasons she doesn't know. On Earth, the Resistance is being roundly trounced; Liam and Augur are saved by a mystery woman -- who then turns out to be somehow connected with both the Taelons and the Resistance. One member of the Resistance will be lost, and a new, hard-edged Taelon arrives on the scene.

Like all four seasons (that count) of EFC, the third season started off on wobbly footing and steadied as time went on. Some amazingly memorable episodes are here, coupled with some of the most intriguing scripts that allowed us new insights into the Taelons. Several characters are better fleshed-out here; "Thicker Than Blood" in particular is amazing, in which an enraged Liam (Robert Leeshock) and anguished Augur (Richard Chevolleau) are thrown through the fire, and Liam has to face that he's Sandoval's son. There's even a Taelon-baby cult, and a pair of new recurring Taelon faces: The hard-as-nails T'than, sworn enemy of Zo'or, and the snotty healer Mit'gai.

Da'an (Leni Parker) and Liam go through some tough times after Da'an does something Liam never thought he would, yet helps his protector with the bioengineered Skrill Queen. But the one who really shines is Anita La Selva as Zo'or. Here we see that Zo'or is not the spoiled child emperor he sometimes seems like -- he's young, frustrated by the limitations the Commonality puts on him, frightened of the uncertain future, and his fear makes him ruthless because he doesn't know any other way to make things happen. In this season, he hits Taelon puberty, gets into a bar brawl (in a human body), hides in a basement with a pair of human teens, and has a heart-to-heart with Liam when they're stranded in the wilderness.

Some of the episodes are a bit on the silly side (the rubber skrill-puppet, for example), but when the third season is good, it's very good. Certainly it's worth getting and appreciating.

Can't review the quality of the DVD production yet, and the series didn't have the level of public excitement that would have ensured backing documentaries and other special features - but, as for the content of the series:

As previously noted, the first season of the 5-year run was a high point - engrossing mystery (though not enough resolution), truly delightful portrayals of complex characters (led by Leni Parker's "Da'an"), and credible CGI and makeup effects.

Most engrossing is the alien's "commonality", or awareness of and identification with a "group soul" of a sort - it gives the opportunity to explore the human dichotomy of self-interest versus common weal.

The initial five episodes can be considered back story, and a break-in period for the actors as they get comfortable with their roles and relationships. The season really picks up at epsiode 6 of 22 ("Float Like a Butterfly"), which includes the introduction of a story component that shows there are things out there in the universe that even the Taelons fear; in addition, it is very good episodic TV of any genre.

I would expect the DVD set to portray the first 90 minutes (two episodes) as a pilot show, as the non-US VHS release does; when shown in the US, this was converted to two separate episodes, which worked out well since minor and major multi-episode story arcs are throughout the season (though not as poished as Babylon 5).

Complex philosophy, intelligent future technologies, and an often graceful (though sometimes slow) unfolding of relationships and story are some of what the show offers.

Later seasons devolve into plastic action scenes as every character with even a pretense to integrity gets killed off (perhaps a trend with Canadian-based sci-fi, considering the little-seen in the US "War of the Worlds" series).

But for one brief shining season we had a real Roddenberry production on the air...