ROSWELL on PLANET-SF

At the end of Roswell's first season, it was clear that things would never be the same again.

Max's healing of Kyle not only brought Liz's ex-boyfriend and his father into the conspiracy, but also meant that Sheriff Valenti had completed the transitition from enemy to friend. Furthermore, the death of FBI Special Agent Pearce meant that the Special Unit was no longer a threat, particularly as Nasedo was now using his shapeshifting abilities to masquerade as Pearce.

Clearly new bad guys would need to be devised in order to provide new threats for our heroes to overcome, and Nasedo's death in the season opener provided the lead-in to the threat from the Skins. Later episodes introduce the Dupes, explore the aliens' hybrid nature, kill off a regular character and turn another completely evil.

Despite the addition of Ronald D. Moore to the production team, the series' science-fiction aspect never seemed to gel quite as much as the relationship side of the show did. The "Royal Four" aspect never really worked for me, and I always had the impression that some of the sci-fi elements were thought up on the hoof rather than being planned from the start - Brody's virtual reality trip in Off The Menu is a particularly woeful example of the writers' general cluelessness about the genre.

That said, there are still some great episodes in the season and, despite The WB's desire for an action-driven science-fiction series, it's the characters that really shine through. Splitting Max and Liz up was never going to be popular with fans, although re-watching the series I found Devon Gummersall's Sean DeLuca a lot more likeable than I thought I would. The Sean/Liz relationship is more believeable than the Max/Tess one, although if they'd developed the character along the lines that we saw in A Roswell Christmas Carol (probably her best episode) then it might have worked. Instead, the producers decided to turn Tess evil, another development which never really worked for me.

Another factor that really hit home was The WB's interference in the series, none of which seemed to benefit the show. This is particularly apparent in the last half a dozen episodes of the season, with Off The Menu being pushed back in the schedule and throwing the series' narrative flow off beam and cutting season finale The Departure from two hours to one hour.

Despite this, the characters still make those episodes with plot convenient (or even completely dodgy) science-fiction concepts more than watchable, while the more character and relationship based ones are even better.

As with the first season, the episodes are presented in 16:9, and once again many of the original music tracks have been replaced. I actually found this more annoying the second time around, as I believe Fox should have delayed the second and third seasons to see if sales of the first justified ponying up more cash to retain more of the original music. Instead, this set was released less than four months after the first, so it's hardly surprising that there are a lot of substitute tracks. Key tracks on episodes such as A Roswell Christmas Carol and Cry Your Name have been replaced by inferior ones.

Three episodes have been chosen for commentaries, a rather low number for a season of 21 episodes. Ron Moore performs the duties on Ask Not and Cry Your Name while Jason Katims and Patrick Norris feature on A Roswell Christmas Carol. The episodes are well chosen, and although the commentaries aren't brilliant, it would still have been nice to have had a couple more of them.

The remaining extras are on disc six, as follows:

Here With Me: The Making of Roswell Season 2 - a bit of a misleading title as it's not really about the making of the season, but there are a few nice quotes and some behind the scenes footage. Shame they didn't bother covering every episode though.

A Little Something Extra For The Fans - one of those "extras" that studios like to bung on discs but which aren't really worth bothering with. A five-and-a-bit minute clipfest of the key relationships (well, Max/Liz, Michael/Maria and then everyone else in the final segment) set to music. Unlikely you'll be returning to this one too much.

The Art of Composing Roswell - composer Joe Williams takes us through a scene and explains how he composed the music for it. It's only four and a half minutes, so it's pretty insubstantial but nonetheless pretty interesting.

The Shiri And Majandra Show - Shiri Appleby and Majandra Delfino chat about the series in this 10min 25sec feature, discussing aspects such as costume, new cast members and character development. A shame that they didn't get an episode commentary as they did on the first season set.

From Storyboard to Scene - just over a minute long, this brief featurette shows how a scene from Wipe Out! developed from its initial storyboard. Interesting, but too brief to make much of an impact.

Season 1 Trailer - an ad for the first season set. What's the point?

Overall, a decent set, but frustrating and annoying at the same time. The music substitutions are still a major bugbear with me, and the episodes are okay rather than impressive. It's also disappointing that there's no attempt to present the original version of The Departure, either by re-editing the shot material to give a longer episode, some sort of storyboard version incut with the completed episode (as with the 28 Days Later DVD) or even just the script.

A good set, but it should have been better. back to the top

ROSWELL
THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON

Starring SHIRI APPLEBY,
JASON BEHR,
MAJANDRA DELFINO, BRENDAN FEHR,
COLIN HANKS, KATHERINE HEIGL,
WILLIAM SADLER,
NICK WECHSLER,
EMILIE DE RAVIN

20TH CENTURY FOX HOME ENTERTAINMENT

REGION 2 DVD (CERTIFICATE 12)

RATING: 7/10

NEXT RELEASE:
THE COMPLETE THIRD SEASON

PREVIOUS RELEASE:
THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON