Cleopatra 2525-Volume 1 (2000)

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General		Extras
Category	Science Fiction	Main Menu Audio & Animation Trailer-Season 1 Biographies-Cast & Crew Gallery-Photo-Slideshow
Rating
Year Of Production	2000
Running Time	87:44 (Case: 86)
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Rick Jacobson John Laing Greg Yaitanes
Studio Distributor	Beyond Home Entertainment	Starring	Gina Torres Victoria Pratt Jennifer Sky Patrick Kake
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	?	Music	Joseph LoDuca

    Renaissance Pictures, the same people who brought us Xena and Hercules, now bring us Cleopatra 2525. There is a common theme to these productions; beautiful men and especially women, dressed in skimpy costumes and kicking ass big time. Instead of the past, this series is set in the future, in 2525 to be precise.

    The basic premise is that a rather dim blonde exotic dancer goes into hospital sometime in the near future for a breast enlargement. Unfortunately, something goes wrong (thankfully not with the boob job) with the anaesthetic and they cannot wake her up. So they decide to freeze her and place her in storage until someone finds a way of waking her up.

    She seems to have been forgotten for the next five hundred or so years. While she is happily sleeping, the Earth has been invaded by very large bio-mechanical robots that have driven man (and woman) off the surface of the Earth into large underground complexes. Complexes with inexplicably empty shafts running down into the earth, but more on that later. There is an entire dystopia in these underground complexes, but there is hope. A group led by someone who is just a voice on the other end of an embedded transceiver is organising a resistance to the robots. Their goal is to reclaim the surface. The embedded transceiver is implanted in the leader of a two woman team. This team consists of Helen and Rose and both come equipped with a nice range of futuristic toys mostly attached to their wrists. These toys include a device that shoots a sticky bungie cord that they use to navigate at speed up and down the aforementioned shafts.

    On their first mission they discover and rescue our blonde who introduces herself as Cleopatra. Thus we have the three musketeers who spend each twenty minute episode fighting the good fight. Of each twenty minute episode, eight minutes is spent setting up the premise for the episode, two on flying up and down shafts, eight more in a blaster/martial arts fight scene and two on character development. To be fair, you can't do much in half and hour with room for the ads (count that up and it means that 33% of your time is spent watching ads), I believe that the second and final series (the show only went that long) contains one hour episodes.

    There are so many influences in this show it would be impossible to list them all. The overall feel is of an updated version of the old Flash Gordon (Flash not Flesh though there are parallels there as well). Pure camp fun with nice scenery - what more were you expecting?

1.1: Quest For Firepower (21:59)

    The girls head out onto the surface to test a new shield against the weapons of the invading robots and to attempt to shoot off a piece for later analysis. They achieve their mission but Rose is injured and requires a new kidney, so a quick trip to the local body shop soon turns one up. While there they discover the newly awakened Cleo and end up rescuing her from being used as spare parts. The remainder of the episode is spent in a battle with a betrayer. This is a bad robot from the surface that infiltrates and kills and looks exactly like a terminator (the second one).

1.2: Creegan (21:43)

    The girls' research android (male) is stolen by a character named Creegan, a 2525 version of the Joker. In the android's head is all the weapons research that the team has been doing. This information cannot be allowed to fall into the wrong hands so the team is on a search and rescue mission. They locate the hiding spot of the bad guys but Creegan has managed to tap into the radio network that Voice uses and is giving Helen a real headache. Can the team survive another laser battle dressed like that? Tune in and find out.

1.3: Flying Lessons (22:01)

    Up until this episode, Helen and Rose have been carrying Cleo up and down the shafts. It is now time to teach Cleo how to fly. While practising they discover a kidnap in progress. Helen and Rose don't want to get involved when a young girl is dragged off to the slave markets but Cleo, using one of the twentieth century expressions that are her trademark in this show, talks them into a rescue mission. They end up in a seedy bar where there is a strange gambling game played for slaves. Cleo shows her worth in this market with a quick exotic dance and the game is on with her as the collateral.

1.4: Mind Games (22:01)

    A very dangerous, but beautiful, criminal is in gaol with a mind inhibitor helmet on. The authorities placed this helmet on her because she can control the thoughts of others. A rather silly doctor ends up releasing her and she targets the team. They are sent to a disco by Voice who then disappears off air as the mind bender tries to turn the team against each other. It is up to Cleo in this one to try and save the day.

Video

    The transfer is presented at 1.33:1 and not 16x9 enhanced.

    Stationary objects are reasonably sharp but any movement of either the character or the camera reduces the object to little more than a pixelated blur. Shadow detail is alright but there is abundant low level noise.

    Colours are quite bright and the saturation is good but again the MPEG compression has had a deleterious effect on the colours.

    Just about every frame has blocking to one extent or another. The worst is present when there is lots of movement and flashes of light such as when the laser battles are happening. Screens that are completely reduced to blocking are many with clear examples at 1:30 and 6:05 in the first episode and 4:37 in the fourth. There is a lot of aliasing present such as the shaved head at 0:57 in the first episode. Film artefacts are rare and not distracting.

    There are no subtitles on this single layered disc.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    There is a single Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack on this disc.

    The entire soundtrack sounds somewhat distorted, as if it is being overdriven. This can be very distracting, particularly with the voices.

    Dialogue quality is understandable for the most part. Occasionally, a word or two is obscured by the number of explosions and other effects. There is no problem with the audio sync.

    The music has also been borrowed from the various genres that the ideas for the show have come from. It ranges from rock to Star Wars marches and works quite well.

    The decoded surrounds are pretty good for the most part but there were a couple of occasions where it appeared that something went wrong and the surrounds collapsed or sounded wrong. Still, very good for matrixed material.

    The subwoofer could have been a little better but again, not a bad effort overall.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

    I like this menu. Our three main characters appear one after the other as if beamed in and then the menu appears. The background is a computer generated wave effect distorting a strange backdrop. It is presented at 1.33:1 and accompanied by a Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack.

Trailer : Season One Trailer (1:38)

    With phrases like 'girl power' and 'kick butt' included in the voice over you can get a feel for the target market for this show. Independent of the content it is a good trailer as it presents the show as it is. Presented at 1.33:1 and accompanied by a Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack.

Biographies: Cast and Crew

    Biographies for Sam Raimi, Victoria Pratt, Gina Torres and Jennifer Sky. There are a couple of pages on each of these people presented at 1.33:1 and with no audio.

Slide Show

    Presented at 1.33:1, this is a series of seven screens with various shots of the cast. Some are studio shots and some are from the episodes. You navigate with the chapter forward and back buttons. There is no audio.

    This disc is disc one of a three disc box set. The box set has twelve episodes, four on each disc. There is no R1 release of this series at the moment but there is an R2 release. The R2 release appears to be two discs holding fourteen episodes. The missing episodes are a double episode, Hell and Highwater, Part One and Part Two. These are the season finale for season one. I don't know if these episodes are to be included in the next box set. I have not personally seen the R2 set so do not know if it suffers from the same MPEG problems as we have on our discs. On the above and depending on transfer quality and the fate of the missing episodes we have a provisional R2 win.

    It is a shame that this transfer is so bad because this show is a lot of fun. The special effects are very good for a series and the storylines so far have been enjoyable. This is probably one of those shows that everyone will condemn in public so they won't be embarrassed, and then rush home to watch. All this assumes that you take the show as it is and are not expecting too much.

    The video is atrocious.

    The audio is constantly distorted.

    The extras are limited but OK.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall