Anyone remember this series? One? Two of you? I scarcely remember it myself. It was a syndicated show with an odd airing schedule, at least in my neck of the woods. It ran for a little over two seasons, totaling 28 episodes, starting back in 2000. The majority of them half hour episodes, but a handful at the end stepped into the hour range. Now is your chance to reminisce over those days gone by, the entire series is here. But is it really worth revisiting? So long as you can cut through the cheese, maybe. I found myself enjoying it much more than I had any right to.
I remember seeing a few episodes during it's original run. I never thought much of it, I mean it was a light and fluffy sci-fi actioner toplined by three scantily clad women and layered with weak effects and liberal doses of comedy. Watching it now, I really got hooked on the over the top corniness.
The high concept of the show is very similar to The Matrix. Machines have taken over the surface of the Earth, forcing the surviving human population underground. Human civilization is fractured off amongst a myriad of different levels and sectors, each one seeming to have it's own rulers. Amongst the insanity our stars fight to reclaim the surface from the machines, called Bailies.
Our star, the Cleopatra of the title, is an exotic dancer from the year 2001, who went in to get a boob job, and ended up getting frozen. She is thawed over 500 years later and is paired with Hel and Sarge, a pair of freedom fighters following the mysterious Voice, who communicates through Hel.
Each episode has this trio going on missions by directive of Voice. Sometimes it is to acquire some piece of hardware needed for the fight, or to rendezvous with someone who may have some information. Other episodes they are enjoying some downtime and are just having some fun.
The series is very tongue in cheek. There is plenty of fish out of water type of scenes with Cleo not understanding things in the future world, or her using some archaic expression which her friends don't understand.
The stars are Jennifer Sky as our title character, she brings a sweet innocence to her role, goofy, yet oddly endearing. Gina Torres is Hel (short for Helen), she is the most serious member of the group, playing team leader. Gina would go on to stints on Angel and Firefly after the demise of this show. Victoria Pratt rounds out our heroic trio as Sarge, the "shoot first ask questions later" member of the group, always ready to jump into a fight.
There is one recurring bad guy in Kreegan, played by Joel Tobeck, who looks like a reject from the Insane Clown Posse with his red hair and black and white make up. He pops up from time to time, and you just know there is more to him than meets the eye.
As I was watching the series, I found I couldn't stop. For all of the bad acting, effects, sets, and writing, I still found myself eagerly looking forward to the next episode. When I got to the final episode, all sorts of new information is revealed which was set to thrust the show in a new direction. But alas, it was not to be. Another case of a show getting the ax just when it was catching a good stride. I guess wee should be happy to have gotten it at all. You are glad, aren't you?
The video quality looks good, probably better than it ever did when it was being broadcast. This is an alternatingly colorful and dark world, and both sides are presented well here. Despite it looking very good, it does also expose more of the effects. But I wouldn't have it any other way.
The audio is presented in Dolby Digital 2.0 and it does the job. Nothing spectacular, but certainly does the job.
We even get a few extras, nothing terribly in depth, but it is definitely better than nothing. There is a brief 2 minute look at the special effects which shows the effect and the finished product. There are 4 minutes of bloopers and outtakes, which are uncensored and peppered with some bad language, it is pretty amusing. Finally, there are 10 minutes of deleted scenes covering all of the seasons, again nothing special, but it is interesting to see what was cut. It would have been nice to maybe have some commentary tracks, or interviews, or something to give some more incite. Oh yeah, almost forgot, there is an episode of Earth2 on the last disk, a nice way to cross promote that set which was also recently released.
Recommended.
Also at Blogcritics.
0 comments:
Post a Comment