Cheap Red Dwarf - Series 3 & 4 (DVD) Price
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By the end of its fourth year, Red Dwarf had completed its metamorphosis from a modest studio-bound sitcom with a futuristic premise to a full-blown science-fiction series, complete with a relatively lavish (by BBC standards) special-effects budget, more impressive sets, and more location shooting. Despite the heavier emphasis on sci-fi, the character-based comedy remained as sharp as ever. Witness the Cat's reaction to Lister's pus-filled exploding head; Kryten's devastatingly sarcastic defense of Rimmer; or the classic scene that opens the series, Lister teaching Kryten to lie. In "Camille," Robert Llewellyn's real-life wife plays a female mechanoid who transforms into something else entirely, as does the episode, which by the end becomes a delightful skit on Casablanca. "DNA" is heavily sci-fi, with lots of techno-speak about a matter transmogrifier and a RoboCop homage--but in typical Dwarf fashion, turns out to be all about curry. "Justice" sees Rimmer on trial for the murder of the entire crew, while Lister attempts to evade a psychotic cyborg. Holly gets her IQ back in "White Hole," but wastes time debating bread products with the toaster. "Dimension Jump" introduces dashing doppelganger Ace Rimmer--he was to return in later series, with diminishingly funny results. Here his appearance is all the better for its apparent improbability. Finally, "Meltdown" goes on location (to a park in North London) where waxdroids of historical characters (played by a miscellaneous selection of cheesy look-alikes) are at war. Only intermittently successful, this episode is really memorable for Chris Barrie's tour-de-force performance as Rimmer becomes a crazed, Patton-esque general. --Mark Walker
| CATEGORY: | DVD |
| MANUFACTURER: | BBC |
| MPAA RATING: | NR (Not Rated) |
| FEATURES: | Color |
| TYPE: | Television |
| MEDIA: | DVD |
| # OF MEDIA: | 4 |
| UPC: | 794051187529 |
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Customer Reviews of Red Dwarf - Series 3 & 4
Not sure on compression, but the extras alone are worth it! Wow, these discs are jam packed - 2 discs per series! Disc 1 contains the episodes, each episode has a commentary. Disc 2 contains the extras.
Indeed, there's more running time for the extras than there are for the episodes!
Being a Red Dwarf fan, I eagarly bought these releases. Warner Bros is WAY TOO SLOW in releasing these discs (that goes for Doctor Who as well, hint hint!)
$28 per series is a decent price, but if it were $28 for only the extra material, it's still worth the price. (that's not a hint, $28 per season is just fine for a 6 episode series.)
The episodes for both seasons are hilarious, the only clunkers being "Marooned" and "Meltdown", though the latter has some nice social commentary but lacks the visual of Winnie the Pooh being shot in front of the firing squad... fans already know this. For newbies, keep in mind the show is a bit raunchy at times, probably TV-14 level for American standards. (And these episodes were made in Britain in 1989 and 1991.) But it's still infinitely less offensve than South Park or most shows that are TV-14.
The only drawback is video quality. Not necessarily the quality of the mastertapes, which is mostly spectacular. (in series 4, I saw some brief edge enhancement and maybe a bit excess color bleed in spots.) It's the DVD compression. Sometimes the scene looks perfect. In others, it's very grainy/fuzzy as if too much compression was used to make the episodes fit on the disc. If I can see it 6 feet away on a standard 27" TV set, you chaps with 42" HDTV sets are bound to have a hissy fit, nor would I blame you. (Bodyswap, in the Lister/Rimmer scene where Rimmer contrived Lister to do a bodyswap so Rimmer will make Lister fit again is a clear example of where the poor compression quality can be seen.) Doctor Who also has the same problem in some of its releases... Is BBC America/Warner Bros using single density discs to fit 3 hours worth of TV show on a medium meant for 2 hours at high quality? They ought to use double density discs. I'll pay the extra money. (Or should I? "I Spy" had fit 4 hour-long episodes onto a double density disc and they look perfect, no compression artifacting that I had seen.) I can still say that the quality is better than VHS, but this is DVD - I've seen plenty of movies where this artifacting is barely visible, if at all. I shouldn't be seeing it here at all. (for the ultimate in bad compression, check out "Three's Company" season 1.)
Don't let bad video compression be a reason not to buy the disc and if you never move to HDTV then you'll never really have to worry (that'll change by 2006 though...). They still look very reasonable, and the compression is usually not as noticable or 'invisible' to the naked eye when the image is moving, as the naked eye is processing all the moving images and doesn't have time to stare at the finer details. And, again, the extras alone are worth the price for these volumes.
Hurry up series 5 and 6!!
And The Hits Just Keep On Coming...
Series 3 & 4 contain most of my favorite Red Dwarf episodes. "Backwards" is brilliant by any standards, and the others such as "Justice" (Lister: "What? Shoot him in the back?" Rimmer: "Of course in the back! It's only a pity he's awake!") and the strangely underrated "Meltdown" really stand out. By the way, in "Meltdown" its NOT seeing Winnie The Pooh get executed that's so funny - showing it would only prove to be very phoney and viewers might get as repelled as poor Lister.
All in all I'd highly recommend this series to anyone who would like a good laugh. The 2 disc sets are priceless for the extras they contain, and the commentary tracks are spot on (at times just as funny as the episode being watched). I agree with others that a year is too long to wait, but I guess it takes time to dig up all that archival material. Still - maybe 3 series per year...?
YEA FINALY!
I've watche Red Dwarf my whole life (literaly since i was 8). And I've always been stuck with my duped from my aunt's recorded off PBS tapes. The diffrence in picture quality is amazing. I especially like the extra features. You can watch everyting from "smeg ups" to documentarys. each dvd has a diffrent documentry. And, if you're a real Red Dwarf freak, you can watch the episodes with comentarys by the actors. One thing I really like is that these DVDs have the option to view the extra features in an animated menu or a text menu. The first two DVDs only had an animated menu, which was quite frustrating to nagivate.