Stargate Atlantis - The Complete Fourth Season
| Stargate Atlantis - The Complete Fourth Season |
Stills from Stargate: Atlantis - Season Four (Click for larger image)
Average Rating:
 Rating:  - dvdThe DVD I purchesed was great just as described will do business with seller again Rating: - the usual high qualityAll SGA seasons have great packaging and tons of nifty features. The highlight of the S4 set is the addition of Amanda Tapping, who gets her own featurette and has commentaries on Lifeline, Tabula Rasa, and Trio. There's also the Stargate Atlantis Bloopers on disc 2. Rating:  - Stargate Atlantis Season FourInitially when I received this set, they would not play on my equiptment at all, Amazon was very good about replacing the set...did so & I recieved new set in a very timely manner however they like the 1st set would not play (sound was ok but picture looked confetti. Further investigation revieled that they would only play on newer equipment (purchased in the last 2 years I think) so I ended up upgrading my equiptment and also an upgrated version DVD Player for my computer. Once this was done, they were viewed and resutlts were excellent. Rating: - My favorite of the first four seasons of ATLANTISI'm currently engaged in a pretty exhaustive TV viewing project, one that will see me watching just about every major Sci-fi series made in the past few decades. Unfortunately I'm at a bad point in my project. I've already seen almost all of the shows that I've had reason to believe are better than average shows. I'm now left with the dregs. Now, STARGATE ATLANTIS is hardly a "dreg" show. I watched the first three seasons as they were coming out, until I became disenchanted with the series, in particular with the increasingly reliance on standalone episodes and on poor character development (i.e., lack of character development). I was also concerned about the show because of the elimination from the show of Paul McGillion, who played Dr. Carson Beckett, one of the more interesting characters on the show. Also, Tori Higginson, who had played head of the Atlantis Project Dr. Elizabeth Weir for three years, was planned to depart the show. Despite the addition of Jewel Staite, who I had loved on FIREFLY, I suddenly found myself uninterested in watching the show any longer. I'm delighted to learn that not only was Season Four not a decline in the quality of STARGATE ATLANTIS, it was actually the most interesting season of the first four of the show. Part of the reason was the replacement of Tori Higginson with Amanda Tapping, who reprised her role from SG-1 of Samantha Carter, sadly available with the ending of that show. I never disliked Higginson, but I never felt that she brought much gravitas to her character (she also bore a disconcerting similarity to an ex-girlfriend of mind, which I personally found oddly distracting). But the main reasons I found myself enjoying Season Four more than the previous seasons were a significant abandonment of the standalone format and the interesting inclusion of a wraith (Todd) as a recurring character. In fact, apart from the third episode of the season, most of the first 13 or 14 episodes of the season were tied to the main overall arc. Only in the final third of the season did a number of standalone episodes creep back into the mix. The overall result was a dramatic improvement in the quality of the show's narrative. Christopher Heyerdahl had played a variety of wraith characters in the first two seasons of ATLANTIS. Then in Season Three came one of the best episodes in the entire series, in which Shepperd is imprisoned with a wraith (whom the Atlanteans later name Todd), who to keep from starving gradually drains Shepperd of life. The two cooperate in escaping from their prison and over the course of the final two seasons Todd would provide an interesting character, often making an odd colleague in advancing causes that were in the interests of both humans and wraiths. In one alternative future, Todd and Ronon even die a heroic death together, teaming up to kill their common enemy. I've always had a love for characters that defy surface expectations. On BUFFY I loved Angelus for being the completely evil doppelganger of the incredibly good Angel, and then later the utterly evil Spike gradually transforming (even before he gains a soul) an increasingly decent character. Almost always Todd's presence in an episode means a good episode. Also in Season Four there was an increase in the quality of the special effects. I'm not terribly conversant on CGI, but I do know that at about the same time the special effects on just about all CGI-heavy shows dramatically improved, led by BATTLESTAR GALACTICA. I'm assuming that there may only be one CGI software package catering to customers at this level. I imagine that the small handful of F/X companies all get the latest upgrade at about the same time. In the 1990s there was a very small market for CGI and you could tell from the way that it was used on TV that it was very pricey. Because much of it was custom, there was a dramatic difference from the way that it was used on one show and on another. There are still differences. Although they are certainly using the same software programs, on STARGATE ATLANTIS the CGI shots are very clear and crisp, featuring panoramic shots fairly distance from the objects of interest. On BATTLESTAR GALACTICA you get very complex shots. In Season Four of BSG, for instance, you might get a super close up of the Galactica, with a large hunk of the fleet in the background, the whole shot not centered from an ideal observer's point of view, but from what you would see if you were in a spaceship very close to Galactica. In ATLANTIS the visual field is uncluttered, with no cosmic dust or anything else to impair perfect clarity of picture. On BSG there are often vast clouds of cosmic dust that causes a complex diffusion of light from a nearby nebula. Both shows feature photo realistic CGI, but the uncluttered clarity of ATLANTIS shows a different set of priorities with the more complex version of BSG (and for the record, I much prefer the ... Read More Rating: - Exceeded ExpectationsAgain I was very pleased with my product and the time to delivery. It was received before the promise date and I will not hesitate to place another order again. Thanks for the great service! 
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