Xena: Warrior Princess-Orphan of War/Remember Nothing/The Giant Killer (1996)

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General		Extras
Category	Action	Synopsis Biographies-Cast Gallery-Photo
Rating
Year Of Production	1996
Running Time	126:34
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Language Select Then Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Charles Siebert Anson Williams Gary Jones
Studio Distributor	Studios USA Universal Pictures Home Video	Starring	Lucy Lawless Renee O'Connor David Taylor Aaron Devitt Robert Harte Todd Rippon Anthony Starr
Case	Soft Brackley-Transp
RPI	$36.95	Music	Joseph Lo Duca

    What is more surprising is the manner in which Universal have decided to release the Xena series. This disc contains the first thee episodes of Season 2 (also known as Gabrielle in knee length skirt and green midriff top). Why Season 1 (otherwise known as Gabrielle with long skirt and full blouse) has disappeared is somewhat of a mystery. Xena, being a spin-off show, pretty much hit its straps from the get-go and had a very good first season. To complicate matters, it was the first season where recurring characters such as Joxer and Calisto were first introduced. Fortunately, these three episodes stand fairly well as individual stories without the need to know the background story or too much about the world of Xena.

    The episodes are:

    Orphan Of War (42:31) - Xena has to save her (adopted out) son from the evil machinations of a former member of her army, now a warlord with a large lump on his left cheek. This episode is typical of the problems with Xena, as the fight scenes are great, but the attempt to make a serious story falls flat thanks to bad scripting and worse acting.

    Remember Nothing (41:36) - After saving a temple dedicated to the Three Fates from a band of marauders, Xena is offered the chance to change one thing about her past, using the opportunity to revive her long dead brother. Unfortunately, in order to maintain the new reality, Xena must refrain from shedding any blood - something that she finds very hard to do. This is the strongest of the three episodes presented here.

    The Giant Killer (42:27) - A bizarre twist on the story of David and Goliath. I couldn't really work out why Xena was helping David, as I'm fairly sure that Zeus (who is real in the world of Xena) wouldn't have been very happy with one of his people helping to propagate a religion that didn't even acknowledge his existence. This is really a very weak episode that strays too far from the series' strength of Greek mythology and adventure.

    All in all, not the strongest set of three episodes that could have been used to premiere Xena on DVD, but certainly a taste of what is to come.

Video

    The transfers are all full frame (1.33:1), and coming from a TV series shot in 1996, this is no real surprise. They are, of course, not 16x9 enhanced.

    There is a constant low level of grain in the transfer, but again, this is most likely attributable to the source. Despite the grain, the sharpness is at a very good level, and the picture very clear, being slightly better than could be expected from perfect TV reception. There is also a very good amount of shadow detail, although most action takes place during the day.

    The colours are a little muted, taking away some of the visual impact of the stunning terrain, and the interesting costumes. This is largely a problem attributable to the outdoor shooting locations and New Zealand's inordinate number of grey skies during the shoots for these particular episodes. When the sun does come out, the colour returns to a much better level. Indoor scenes are usually darker than outdoor scene, but due to the better lighting look richer and more vivid than the outdoor scenes.

    The continuous grain problem causes some degree of pixelization of background areas, and subtle posterization is visible during most scenes as well, but only if you look very hard. There is only one really noticeable compression artefact however, occurring during Orphan of War at 4:36, where a line of pixelization occurs about a third of the way down the screen - at about roof level in the scene. There is no aliasing present at all in this transfer, probably due to the grain preventing complete clarity and sharpness of the image.

    This is a dual-layered disc, but the layer change occurs between episodes, with two on one layer, and one on the other.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    There are five audio tracks on this disc, all being Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo tracks that are not surround-encoded. The default is the original English track which was also the track that I listened to, but French, German, Italian, and Spanish dubs are also available. All tracks are recorded at a bitrate of 192 Kb/s.

    Dialogue is clear and easy to understand at all times, and there are no problems even when the action gets more intense. As Xena is shot mostly on location, there are times that background noise can be heard at higher-than-usual levels, but that is to be expected.

    Audio sync is for the most part fine, but there are times when it is out by a tiny (but still noticeable) amount. These generally correspond to sequences where it is obvious that there is considerable background noise (such as wind or battle) that may have rendered the original dialogue unusable.

    The musical composition for Xena is handled by Joseph Lo Duca, and is mostly of the heavy classical nature. This format suits the action and setting well and does not at all distract from the events on screen. It is of generally better quality than many TV scores. As an interesting side note, Lo Duca not only composed the music for Hercules as well, but has done the same job for executive producers Sam Raimi and Robert Tapert on many of their projects since the original Evil Dead.

    Being a stereo-only soundtrack, the surround channels were never really exercised, although there was good sound placement across the front speakers.

    There is a nice amount of bass in the soundtrack, and as such, the subwoofer provided a pleasing amount of backbone to the action sequences and theme music.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu

Episode Synopses

Biographies

Photo Gallery

    The Region 4 version of this disc misses out on;

• Nothing

• Everything

    The video quality is very good, especially considering the constraints of the source material.

    The audio track is a very good stereo track, but it is only stereo.

    The extras are not really worthy of the title, describing information that any web-savvy Xena fan could find in a few minutes.
 

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall