So THE OUTER LIMITS Season Two has dropped, and it's magnificent.* Don't believe me? Just ask Glenn Erickson, the esteemed CineSavant himself:
CineSavant Review
Yours truly recorded four, count 'em, FOUR commentary tracks this time around (after contributing three for the Season One set earlier this year). You'll hear my annoying voice droning on incessantly on the following episodes:
Cold Hands, Warm Heart
Demon with a Glass Hand
The Invisible Enemy
Wolf 359
I dunno, maybe these are a bit better than my season one offerings...? I dunno, I'm way too close to these things to possess any semblance of an impartial view.
Longtime readers of the blog will recall my frequent MGM-bashing over the lack of a Blu-ray release for the series, especially when the show turned 50. The series turns 55 this year (actually, it already did, back on September 15th), so I guess the additional five years didn't kill me. My ire is still as strong as ever toward MGM, though, since they aren't even the ones releasing these sets.... we can all thank Kino Lorber for that.
* There's a bit of an audio problem on the episode "Soldier." The entirety of act two is marred by bad audio. I mean, like, REALLY bad. It starts out okay, then gradually blooms into full-on obnoxious-as-hell warbling. Check it out:
Kino will be offering replacement discs in early 2019, so don't let this gaff stop you from purchasing.
Hello Craig.
ReplyDeleteIt's great to have you back again.
I really enjoyed your analysis of "Demon With a Glass Hand."
That episode is a classic from the beginning till the end.
Anyway, thank you for all you do and keep up the great work.
Regards,
Scott.
Craig,
ReplyDeleteThank you for all you've done with this blog, which has been very fun to read as I re-watch the series on the new blu-ray sets. Thank you also for letting us know that the audio on the Series Two discs is off--I was afraid there was something wrong with my player! Do you have any information on how Kino Lorber will be offering replacement discs, or when? I sent them an e-mail, but got no answer. Any light you could shed would be much appreciated.
Thanks again,
CJ Beiting
All I know is that we're supposed to email them our information, and replacement discs are coming.... um, soonish. Honestly, I have no idea.
DeleteAs for the audio on these discs, we've all had to accept the sad reality where whatever reason (s) there was most likely equal blame to be shared during the original on-set live miking scenes (which suffered from frequent if brief overload distortion) and excessive compression added during dialogue and music mixing sessions. What's uncanny is that few, if any of those horribly irrevocable blunders happened with the audio in Stoney Burke, which was likely recorded by the same crew hired by Leslie Stevens. Indeed, Frontiere's music in Stoney Burke enjoys way more dynamic and frequency response range. And I've also never noticed any clipping distortion of dialogue.
DeleteAt least with the lossy dynamic range problem, I first thought the cause was more likely due to cheapo MGM issuing the DVDs with content placed on both sides of the discs, which therefore requires more resolution killing compression. But assuming the original digitized transfers themselves were not hit with that compression prior to issuing the DVDs, the Kino Blu-ray discs should have sounded at least as good as the Stoney Burke DVDs. Sadly, no.
As for the audio in "Soldier", at least it was never a favorite episode, though Ansara's Quarlo is awesome. The one thing I always loathed about David Schow's otherwise superb "Outer Limits Companion" was its total lack of coverage of anything and everyone to do with technicalities of audio production for either season. If that were otherwise perhaps Schow could have solved the mystery of the almost night and day difference of audio quality between Daystar's Stoney Burke and first season Outer Limits-that must have begun production immediately afterwards.
At least I will always have my Dom Frontiere La La Land 3 CD set and lots of Lubin downloads to keep me warm!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24Cfgnm4dWQ
It's great to have the second season, and I look forward to listening to your commentary, after I rewatch the episodes. (Too bad about the audio problem on Soldier; I was saving it as one of my last rewatches.) In his booklet essay, I understand why David Schow goes through all the production troubles the second season had. But I don't think he is entirely fair about the quality of the outcome. Many of the season two episodes have a strange charm to them, sometimes for the very reasons that Schow says they are a failure. I'll just give one example: I still enjoy the quirky Behold Eck! (partly because of a great job by Lind Hayes).
ReplyDeleteI was looking for photos of David McCallum for the #1stTVCrush and found your blog! I was ten years old when Outer Limits was originally broadcast and I loved it. Great blog!
ReplyDeleteI stumbled across your Outer Limits blog while doing some late-night web surfing to combat insomnia, and all I can say is bravo! Well-done. A very informative and entertaining read. I will make a point of going through all of it. The Outer Limits is perhaps the most underrated science fiction series ever. It's like hard science meets gothic horror meets cold war paranoia, and something we will likely never see again. It makes me long for the days when scifi was heady and had something meaningful to say, rather than the CGI fests, woke lectures, and comic book drivel we mostly get these days. I say half-joking and half-seriously that the Outer Limits warped me when I was very young. lol But seriously, it was uber dark and intense, and on hindsight I'm surprised my parents let me watch it. I would also add that as many times as I've seen Demon with the Glass Hand and Amok Time, I never recognized T'Pren/Consuela as the same actress. And yeah, Joanna Frank was beyond sexy, and Don't Open till Domesday was over the top strange.
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