UK Get Shafted Re DVDs AGAIN!

[DGTWoodward]

Regarding the B5 Movie DVDs, I see that the R2 users over here in the UK will be getting a much less impressive set than our R1 cousins. I don't really know why this still suprises me. It happened with GATHERING/IN THE BEGINNING, which I bought as a 2 movie single disk from US DIRECT for ú13. If UK fans want JMS' commentary on the GATHERING, they will have to fork out extra moolah to buy it as a seperate - if it is even going to be made available as such (Well, Warner Brothers?). Also, has anybody noticed the printing error on the R2 Season 4 Booklet? On the back page, "In The Beginning" is described as the season premiere and "The Gathering" is described as the prequel adventure. Nice to see that they had real fans of the show working on that one!
I have just bought Season 5 from the USA and the box is all nice and glossy, were all the R1 releases like this?

[Wintermute]

Re: UK Get Shafted Re DVDs AGAIN!

Originally posted by LightStorm
Also, has anybody noticed the printing error on the R2 Season 4 Booklet? On the back page, "In The Beginning" is described as the season premiere and "The Gathering" is described as the prequel adventure. Nice to see that they had real fans of the show working on that one!

Its not an error.

When B5 was screened on TNT in the US In the Begining was screened before The Gathering (Special Edition) which was followed by Season 1 etc.

[DGTWoodward]

Re: Re: UK Get Shafted Re DVDs AGAIN!

Originally posted by Wintermute
Its not an error.

When B5 was screened on TNT in the US In the Begining was screened before The Gathering (Special Edition) which was followed by Season 1 etc.

Sorry WM but you are incorrect in your reasoning. Regardless of which order in which TNT decided to show B5...THE GATHERING was, is and always shall be the season premiere, by mere virtue of the fact that it was out there first - it was the 90minutes on which the whole show was OKed. Despite the fact that IN THE BEGINNING details events that happened before the events in TG, it was filmed/made well after it (something like 3ish years in fact!). Its very prequelness (made up word?) is indicated in the title anyway.

In exactly the same way that the three, newest STAR WARS movies are prequels. They chronicle events that have occured before the events described in the first film.

Your theory only applies correctly if we are talkng about strict, within-the-actual-timeframe-of-the-show, continuity...which is not what the WB marketing department had inmind, I am failry sure. Hope this clears up my original post.

Thanks for the reply though!

[DGTWoodward]

BY GAD! I really must learn to type!!!

[Joseph DeMartino]

Neither TV movie is a "season premiere" since neither is a regular episode and neither aired (originally) as "part" of a season. The Gathering aired nearly a year before the first season made its debut. ItB was a TV movie pure and simple, produced in between S4 and S5, part of neither. Since you really can't add a TV movie to a season retroactively, the fact that it aired on a Sunday night and the reruns started with S1 episode 1 the following day on TNT means nothing. (Nor does the U.S. Sci-Fi Channel's later descision to cut TG into a two part episode to air with S1.)

So yes, the DVD packaging unquestionably contains a mistake. (Not to be outdone the U.S. DVD, LD and VHS releases of TG all omit the credits for the re-edit and continue to credit Stewart Copeland with the score.)


Regards,

Joe

[Dr Maturin]

<<ItB was a TV movie pure and simple, produced in between S4 and S5, part of neither.>>

Interesting how Star Trek movies were considered parts of the season, usually packaged as "two hour premieres."

[DGTWoodward]

The Gathering[/i] aired nearly a year before the first season made its debut.

the DVD packaging unquestionably contains a mistake. (Not to be outdone the U.S. DVD, LD and VHS releases of TG all omit the credits for the re-edit and continue to credit Stewart Copeland with the score.)

Hello Joe,

Whilst I know that TG was filmed a year before S1 and so, not actually be a season premiere in the truest sense, It DID give WB enough confidence to go on with the rest of the show. In THAT sense...it was the premiere because it opened the story. What I was trying to point out was that WB marketing seem to treat B5 in much the sane way WB in general have treated it over the years - ie; shoddily.

By the way, when you say LD, do you mean 'Laser Disc' ? The foot-wide-neat-piece-of-silver-kit, no one seems to make them anymore, Granddaddy of DVD? It was available on that too? Cool!

[Joseph DeMartino]

It DID give WB enough confidence to go on with the rest of the show. In THAT sense...it was the premiere because it opened the story.

No, in that sense it was a "pilot". The show's premiere episode was "Midnight on the Firing Line" (So much had changed between pilot and series that TG wasn't even rebroadcast immediately before the series premiere IIRC.)

And yes, Babylon 5 was licensed to Image entertainment for laserdisc release shortly before that marvelous format went into an irreversible tail-spin leading to virtual extinction. (I think there may still be something of a market in Japan, but LD never became a mass-market product in the States and the small niche market it held during the VHS years evaporated with amazing suddeness when DVD took hold. It was mostly industry people in Los Angeles who kept LD going for as loing as it did. As recently as November 2000 Dave's Video in Hollywood still advertised itself as "the laser place" and still devoted shelf space to the big discs. Now both Dave's the the LD have gone the way of the dodo.)

Warner Home Video (WHV) tried releasing the show in the States on VHS and LD not long after the introduction of DVD - a format the Warner Bros. Studio had been a big booster of for theatrical productions, but they were convinced that there was no market for TV product on the new medium (based on how poorly most TV shows had done on tape in the U.S.) Also because they frankly looked down on TV shows and didn't want to "waste" production capacity that could otherwise be devoted to movies on any TV series, much less an obscure SF show that even people at the studio had never head of.

The tapes and LDs initially sold pretty well, but part way through the dual release they let word leak out that they had preliminary plans for a DVD release in place. Sales for the tapes and discs immediately went into the toilet - which led panicked WHV staffers to conclued that there really was no market for the show, and cancel the DVD release plans, too.

(This, on the whole, may have been a blessing. All indications are that the proposed 1999 release would have been like Paramount's Star Trek: TOS release, and like every VHS or LD TV series release ever attempted - 2 episodes per disc, each disc sold separately, no extras, almost certainly 4:3 only. Because they scrapped the 1999 release and retreated to their previous position of "TV won't sell on DVD", WB remained on the sidelines while Fox and other studios proved that there was a market for a TV series on DVD - if it were done right. So by the time they were finally ready to consider doing B5 on DVD they were also ready to give the fans what they wanted.)

Regards,

Joe

[Dr Maturin]

Not only that, JDM, but the prices were outrageous. I remember seeing TNG for like $19.95 per tape, two eps a tape. But the first tape is only $7.95! Woo hoo!

Do the math on something like that and you're going into the beaucoup range. Something like $3500 for the whole series.