Stargate SG1-Volume 8 (Season 3) (1999)

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General		Extras
Category	Science Fiction	Menu Animation & Audio Featurette-Gateway To The Edge Of The Universe (7:01) Trailer-Season 3 Trailer (3:16)
Rating
Year Of Production	1999
Running Time	169:40 (Case: 168)
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Language Select Then Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Martin Wood William Corcoran Peter DeLuise
Studio Distributor	Twentieth Century Fox	Starring	Richard Dean Anderson Michael Shanks Amanda Tapping Christopher Judge Don S. Davis
Case	?
RPI	$36.95	Music	Joel Goldsmith Kevin Kiner

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	Auto Pan & Scan Encoded	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) German Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.78:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English for the Hearing Impaired German for the Hearing Impaired Spanish Swedish Finnish Norwegian Danish	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Stargate SG-1 Volume 8 sees us commencing the voyage through Season Three of this great show. As an enticement, let us just say that the new season brings forth gifts that we should all be grateful for!

    So without further ado, let's check out the offerings on Volume 8:

• Into The Fire (Episode 301) - The continuation of Out Of Mind on Volume 7, things have not improved too much. Most of the SG-1 team are stuck on a planet ruled by the seductive Hathor and just about every man and his dog is setting off to rescue them - thanks to the Tok'Ra telling SGC where SG-1 are imprisoned. The slight problem is that Hathor has made SG-1 an offer that is hard to refuse - and one that means one of the team may not be returning home. I guess there are worse things in life than being stuck with Hathor. Of course, when the cavalry arrives in the form of the combined strength of every available SG team, everything is put right, right? Well, maybe the cavalry is actually the Tok'Ra spy on the planet. Meantime, Teal'c has returned to Chulak in order to raise an army to search for SG-1 and to inflict bodily harm upon the System Lords. Guess who one of his recruits is? Nothing quite like a western to get the blood going - even if it is taking place on the other side of the galaxy.
• Seth (Episode 302) - Somewhat unusually, the Tok'Ra, in the form of Sam's Dad Jacob, have arrived at SGC requesting the aid of the humans. Wow, reality check please! Yes, it is true. Seems that the Tok'Ra have been engaged in one of the biggest genealogical investigations of all time and space, in order to come up with the family tree of the System Lords. No big deal, except they have managed to lose track of one. Setesh by name, the elusive System Lord is thought to be hiding out on Earth, hence the reason for the request. So why would a Goa'uld System Lord be hiding out for several millennia on little old Earth? More to the point - how the heck do you find him? Well, the latter is dead easy apparently, and not only is the track of Setesh found, but so is his hideaway. Even the Tok'Ra are staggered. Of course, the reason for sending Jacob was not entirely to do with the mission, and Selmak has another task to attend to. Anyway, SG-1 of course head off in pursuit of Setesh, or Seth as he is now known, where they head straight into a jurisdiction issue with the ATF. Eventually, that little hiccough is rectified and SG-1 are off to face the might of Seth and his devoted followers.
• Fair Game (Episode 303) - Picture the scene - the Gate Room, military types massed in full dress uniforms to listen to the Secretary of Defense make a short speech about how terrific they all are and how important the work they are doing is. Add into the proceedings the promotion of Sam Carter from Captain to Major. We are talking important things here - although the sudden disappearance of Jack O'Neill during his little speech tends to put a dampener on the whole show. Guess who has summoned him? Remember Thor - he lives! Only he is bearing some bad news - seems that the success of the Tauri in eliminating Apophis has made them just a tad too dangerous for the System Lords' liking, and so the question of what to do with Earth is now high on the agenda. Now we all know what that means don't we. Nasty mother ships massing in the heavens over Earth. Not good. The Asgard agree and so agree to sponsor a meeting of the System Lords where they propose to include Earth in the Protected Planets Treaty. Only trouble is, they have decided Jack will speak for Earth and the meeting will take place on Earth with three System Lords in attendance. Now you really don't want to invite your enemy into your own bedroom, but this seems to be the only way to avoid annihilation at the hands of the System Lords. So how confident are we that Jack can negotiate peace with our mortal enemies?
• Legacy (Episode 304) - Remember Ma'chello from the episode Holiday? Well you should do, we actually did get to see that episode on DVD! Remember his little comments about weapons to stop the Goa'uld? Why weren't you paying attention? Well, Daniel is about to discover that perhaps the old man wasn't loopy after all. The SG-1 team find themselves in what appears to be a meeting room where what appears to be the remains of nine Goa'uld hosts are resident. Rather puzzling that Goa'uld hosts should be dead. Whilst investigating the scene, Daniel believes that he is brushed by a presence whilst investigating an unusual type of notebook. Since there is nothing much to be achieved by remaining, SG-1 head back to Earth, which may not be a great thing as Daniel starts a slide into schizophrenia like you would not believe, seeing and hearing all sorts of unusual stuff - including Ma'chello it seems. As he is carted away to the loony bin, the worst looks like happening. However, during a visit by his team mates, he suddenly shows some sort of improvement, whilst Teal'c shows the exact opposite and actually ends up in medical with his Goa'uld larvae dying. Is it possible that we are going to lose Teal'c? Or will the rapidly improving Daniel come up with an answer that does not sound loony that people will actually believe? Gripping stuff as Janet almost takes off her shirt - this is getting too exciting. Cold shower time.

Video

    Well colour me pink and call me cotton candy - Season Three sees a huge improvement in the quality of the transfers! Always knew that lurking in there somewhere was something that was half way decent to watch. There is a substantial improvement in definition here, and a substantial decline in the grain problem that has plagued the series DVDs thus far. Okay, there is still some grain, but it is almost ignorable in comparison to earlier DVDs in the series.

    The transfers are presented in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 and are 16x9 enhanced. The DVD is also Auto Pan and Scan encoded, for those of you wishing to see the series in that cropped form.

    In just about every respect there is noticeable improvement in the transfers here. Sharpness is much improved, with resulting improvements in definition, to the extent that at times there is a distinct background and foreground feeling to the picture. The big improvement is of course in the clarity of the transfer, as the grain is very much reduced here. Indeed, the only time that the grain approaches the almost diabolical levels of the earlier DVDs is during Legacy, especially between 17:50 and 22:00 during scenes in the padded room. Indeed, at times it looks more like low level noise than grain it is that poor. The fact that the transfer is otherwise so improved in this regard probably serves to highlight this bad sequence. Still, at the end of the day this is a far easier DVD to watch than any of the previous seven volumes.

    As is typical of the series in general on DVD, the colours are just a little underdone in my view and whilst they come up okay, you do wish for a bit more in the way of depth and vibrancy. The transfer remains a little lacking in contrast which serves to emphasise the lack of serious quality in the shadow detail. For once, there is just a hint of oversaturation on the DVD, at around 41:02 in Legacy. It is nothing major and probably only gets noticed because the transfer actually lets you see more. There are no problems with colour bleed.

    There did not appear to be any significant MPEG artefacts in the transfer. There is just the one instance of noticeable aliasing, at 34:42 in Into The Fire on the gate ramp. Otherwise, there is not much in the way of significant film-to-video artefacts. There are no problems with film artefacts.

    This is a Dual Layer formatted DVD, with no layer change during the episodes. It is therefore presumed that the first two episodes are mastered on one layer with the other two mastered on the other.

    There are seven subtitle options on the DVD, significantly up on previous efforts. Nonetheless, I still restricted myself to only the English for the Hearing Impaired effort. Very much in the same mold as the earlier DVDs in the series, they are missing just a little here and there as far as dialogue is concerned.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    If you thought the video transfer was an improvement, wait until you hear the audio transfer! There are the usual three soundtracks available, in the generally consistent English, German and Spanish choices. The difference is that whilst the German and Spanish are Dolby Digital 2.0 surround encoded soundtracks, the English effort is a full-blown, full bit rate Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack! Woohoo!! The difference in body is quite amazing, with loads more presence than hitherto experienced on Stargate SG-1 DVDs.

    The dialogue comes up well and is clear and generally easy to understand throughout the episodes. There did not seem to be any issue with audio sync here at all.

    The original music comes from Joel Goldsmith in general, with Kevin Kiner handling the job on Legacy. Like the usual stuff for the series, the soundtracks lack a lot in the way of distinctiveness but are what we would expect from a television series. They do the job well enough and certainly don't detract from the shows at all.

    The big improvement in the sound is the added presence from the surround channels. This especially is noticeable from the rear channels, which add a fair degree of ambient sound at times. It is by no means a terrific example of six channel sound but within the context of being a television series, it works pretty well. The bass contribution could perhaps have been a little better but overall this is a terrific improvement in the sound and bodes well for the remaining DVDs in Season Three. A welcome improvement.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    The improvements continue! We actually get some extras - not much but certainly a lot better than nothing.

Menu

    The menu style has been improved and is a much cleaner, better looking effort. The audio and animation enhancement extends a little more than usual, too, and overall this is a nice change.

Featurette - Gateway To The Edge Of The Universe (7:01)

    Presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, this is not 16x9 enhanced and comes with Dolby Digital 2.0 sound. The featurette is along the lines of an electronic press kit style presentation with excerpts from the series interspersed with interview material from the cast and some of the crew. Tacked onto the end of the 5 minute EPK-style presentation is 2 minutes of what amounts to a trailer. Not especially wonderful but a welcome enough addition.

Trailer - Season Three Trailer (3:16)

    Presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, this is not 16x9 enhanced and comes with Dolby Digital 2.0 sound. Plenty of excerpts from many episodes of the season as well as from Season Two, typical of the sort of promotional stuff US networks put together for the return of big name series. Welcome too, even though it is a little grainy at times.

    As far as we are aware, this has not been slated for release in Region 1 yet. However, it should be pointed out that Season One in its entirety was released in a box set and it is to be presumed that Season Two will be so released too. That would probably suggest that Season Three will be so released too. Season by season box sets are the go but this is decent enough in quality and available now....

    Well, this was an unexpected improvement in quality across the board. A much improved video transfer and a distinctly better audio transfer highlight a vastly more watchable DVD. About the only way that this could get any better is if it were actually in a season box set. Nonetheless, there is just enough grain present to suggest that large screen owners check the transfer out first, especially the episode Legacy.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall