Doctor
Who: The Tenth Planet
(1966/Story #29)/The
Moonbase (1967/Story
#33)/Inferno
(1970/Story #54)/The Mind
Of Evil (1971/Story
#56/BBC DVDs)/Marine Boy:
The Complete Second Season
(1966 - 1967/Seven Arts/Warner Archive DVD Set)/The
Swan Princess: A Royal Family Tale
(2013/Sony Blu-ray w/DVD)
Picture:
C/C/C+/C+/C+/B- & C Sound: C+/C+/C+/C+/C+/B & B-
Extras: B-/B-/B-/B-/D/C Main Programs: B- (Swan:
C-)
PLEASE
NOTE:
The
Marine Boy: Complete Second Season
set is now only available from Warner Bros. through their Warner
Archive series and can be ordered from the link below.
Here's
a new set of children's programming releases, but most exceed that
idea here...
We
start with four early, even key Doctor
Who
adventures. The
Tenth Planet (1966/Story
#29 with William Hartnell as The Doctor) and The
Moonbase (1967/Story #33
with Patrick Troughton as The Doctor) have our hero in his earliest
battles with The Cybermen, one of the most successful and creepy
nemesis in the entire history of the franchise. Well done and now
classics of the franchise, they were more human-looking in their
debut before going a little more metallic in a look that stuck. I
agree with Anneke Wills that something was lost a bit in that change
and in my opinion, only vaguely returned during Tom Baker's early
encounters with them. Some of the old monochrome videotape was lost
for both sets of episodes, so new black & white animation has
been created to substitute, but I am not a fan that approach.
Jon
Pertwee is The Doctor for Inferno
(1970/Story #54) where our hero lands up traveling into a time warp
where he finds a fascist variant of UNIT compete with strange
doppelganger versions of the regulars and then some as a drilling
project deep into the earth may cause irreparable damage. The
teleplay pulls no punches about the dark side of that ideology and
this includes smart Orwellian references. The
Mind Of Evil (1971/Story
#56) involves a robot machine that has a mind of its own and is
deadlier than anyone might expect, but all is complicated when Who's
nemesis counterpart The Master (Roger Delgado perfect as the best
actor ever in the role) is up to no good as has plans of his own. A
solid story arc that ls worth catching up with.
That
makes all four of these installments worth going out of your way for.
Extras
on all four Who
releases include PDF downloadable article clippings on their
respective episodes (Inferno
has a 1971 Who Annual, while Evil
adds a Sugar Smacks
cereal campaign), Audio Commentary tracks, text fact Production Notes
Subtitle commentary throughout all shows if you choose and Photo
Galleries. Planet
adds a VHS reconstruction of Episode 4 with stills that I prefer over
the monochromatic animation, brief Hartnell interview clip (3
minutes), Anneke Wills featurette (13 minutes), a 10th
Anniversary look at the show on the BBC children's hit Blue
Peter
and three more featurettes, Moonbase
adds a Making Of featurette called Lunar
Landing, Inferno
adds four featurettes including The
UNIT Family - Part One,
Pertwee Years Intro, Deleted Scene that survived in U.S. copies &
a nice 6-minutes-long vintage Visual Effects promo film and Evil
adds a Now
& Then look at the
locations used for this set of episodes, a Making Of featurette
called The Military Mind and a vintage featurette from 1971 with
Norman Tozer called Behind
The Scenes: Television Center
running 24 minutes.
Marine
Boy: The Complete Second Season
(1966 - 1967) concludes the fine basic set of the Seven
Arts/Japanese-produced TV animated series Warner Archive issued the
first season of at this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/12251/Angelina+Ballerina:+Mousical+Medleys+(HIT+DVD
This
series of shows has as much colorful fun and energy as the first and
the with the same voices that dubbed Speed
Racer, but I give the
makers credit for quitting while they were on top. With Gatchaman
and Casshan
arriving on Blu-ray (both reviewed elsewhere on this site) and
looking so good, nice to see the quality of the prints here also
looking good. Like those series, they have hardly been seen by U.S.
viewers and deserve serious rediscovery.
There
are again, sadly, no extras. Maybe if Blu-ray edition(s) arrive,
Warner could add something.
Richard
Rich's The Swan Princess:
A Royal Family Tale
(2013) continues a franchise that is aimed at very young ladies and
is quickly becoming repetitive. We have not covered hardly any of
the releases save one for a holiday release, but this CGI romp is
loud, tired, shrill and not the kind of thing I would show my young
daughter if I had to choose. This one has an adopted child of the
royals being kidnapped and hidden in the forest. Good thing there is
magic and talking animals, but worse, there is no real script with
any point or entertainment to enjoy. Maybe some fans of previous
installments will like this one, but I was surprised how weak and
redundant it was.
Extras
include a soft fuchsia miniature crown in the cellophane our discs
came in, while the discs add 2 Sing-Along Songs and Digital
HD Ultraviolet Copy for PC, PC portable and iTunes capable devices of
the film.
The
1080p 1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on the Swan
Blu-ray is the best presentation here, but by default as the CG can
lack detail and seem stilted, which is worse on the anamorphically
enhanced DVD version also included and lands up as soft and poor as
anything on this list. The
1.33 X 1 color image on Marine
Boy
is actually more colorful if not up to the overall Swan
Blu-ray's definition, but the only other limits are slight flaws in
the film prints used and the limits of the animation used. It really
is no simpler than Swan,
when you think about it and more challenging when all is said and
done.
All
the 1.33 X 1 images on the Who DVDs (save the newly added
monochromatic animation) are all sourced from PAL analog videotape,
with the earlier two shows in black and white, plus Inferno here for
the first time in color, as tapes in color were found since they made
the featurettes for it (see how poor the black and white footage in
all of them are). Even the outdoor 16mm film is from PAL tape
transfers at the time. Tenth Planet and The Moonbase
also show how rough this footage is, tying for last place with the
Swan DVD as the poorest performers here.
The
DTS-HD MA
(Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix on Swan
has the best sound here that can be a little loud at times, but
surprisingly has a consistent soundfield.
The lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 version of the mix on the
DVD version is not as good, but is as good as it will ever bee in
that lesser codec. The
rest of the DVDs are here in lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
presentations and all sound good for their age, even more than I
expected.
You
can order both seasons of Marine
Boy
and much, much more from Warner Archive by going to this link for
them and many more great web-exclusive releases at:
http://www.warnerarchive.com/
-
Nicholas Sheffo
