Just let me lie here on the tile

I've been watching Farscape for the first time the last week or so -- I'm still in season 1 and have managed to avoid all spoilers so far, so please DO NOT SPOIL in comments, thank you! But please do join in if you've watched the series.

I never caught this show while it was on the air, and I have been hearing from a lot of people that I missed out. So far, I'm definitely inclined to agree. The show looks amazing, and has a lot of actually alien aliens, which is one of my favorite things in SF. They live on Moya, a ship that is a sentient being, with a pilot who is in a symbiotic relationship with her! J'adooore.

It also doesn't hurt that this isn't a standard Trek-ish story of human explorers with token aliens; the main cast has exactly one human, John Crichton, whom I really like so far. He has Very Nice Arms, and keeps making these completely inappropriate geeky cultural references that nobody else gets, because duh, he's the only human on board. This could be really annoying, but instead it just delights me. In the very first eps he calls a planet Dagobah, and later on he introduces himself and Aeryn to alien bounty hunters as "I'm Butch. This is Sundance. We're the Hole in the Sky Gang."

I also enjoy how everyone else thinks John's kind of a backward species from a primitive planet, and he can't really disagree. "Human. It’s kinda like Sebacean, but we haven’t conquered other worlds yet, so we just kick the crap out of each other." And in the episode I just watched, John tells Aeryn that yes, he does want to go back to Earth even though it's primitive and has wars and disease and no spaceflight -- "but you guys don't have chocolate."

One of the aliens looks human, but she really isn't. That's Aeryn Sun, whom I ADORE. Oh Aeryn. Snarky, gorgeous, stiff-necked and supremely competent. I think she stole my heart first when she got annoyed at John flirting with someone else and expressed her feelings by lifting a massive piece of equipment over her head. She then carried it down the corridor, glaring and yelling something like "Am I the only one around here who gets any work done?". <3

And then there is Zhaan (spelling thanks to flambeau, I sure couldn't tell from the dialogue) -- lovely blue alien priestess who gets orgasms from sunlight and who seems very relaxed and zen at first, right up until she cuts off someone's arm. And D'Argo the Luxan warrior, who has just mournfully said that he and Crichton can never be friends. I bet he is wrong wrong wrongity wrong. At least I hope so, having seen sdwolfpup's adorable Moving Right Along vid. And Rigel, who is a muppet but that is just to fool you -- he is not cute. He is mean, and will sling snot at you if you displease him. Which you will. When you die, he will be first in line to steal your shoes.

I got the complete Farscape dvd set thanks to an Amazon sale that is still ongoing: the Farscape: The Complete Series dvd set for just $50. They last had this sale around Christmas, and I waffled about ordering the set, and then when I finally decided to do it, the price had gone back up again. But it's been $50 now for a while.

Caveat: this dvd set has a lot of commentaries and other extras, but it doesn't have The Peacekeeper Wars, which is a miniseries made after Farscape the series ended. But I figure by the time I've gotten through all the seasons of Farscape, I'll be able to pick it up for cheap; it's less than 10 bucks now.

The British DVD set does have Peacekeeper Wars, but it's also well over 60 pounds, so that doesn't seem like such a great deal in comparison.

I posted this in a comment to cox_and_co and wanted to give the heads-up to my friends as well: Amazon UK is running a very nice sale on DVDs until December 4th, and one of the best bargains is the complete series of Granada TV Sherlock Holmes episodes and movies on DVD for just 29.99 UK pounds. This is the series with Jeremy Brett as Holmes and first David Burke, then Edward Hardwicke as Watson, and I can't recommend it highly enough.

I bought a similar set the last time Amazon UK had a promotion: this one, which was 40 UKP then and is now back to 117 UKP, and am very happy with it. It doesn't have any extras, but it has very good picture quality and sound; I had an earlier DVD set of just The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, where the sound was noticeably off in places and the picture was very dark.

Also, in the newer DVDs the subtitles are actually accurate as opposed to hilarious. (Where Holmes said something like: "We must catch this gang" in that inimitable Brett drawl, the subtitle was "We must catch this guy". Yeah, very Victorian.)

These dvds are region 2, so people not in the UK will need a region free dvd player -- if yours isn't, do google the exact brand and model number along with "region free", because many dvd players can be made region free just by pressing a code with your remote.

DeepDiscountDVD has a buy-one-get-one-free sale until the 21st. (Thanks to elynross for the tip!)

The sale includes all season box sets of Hercules: the Legendary Journeys, which means you can buy two seasons of HtLJ for 18 dollars total.

They've also got all the Xena and Highlander box sets; those are a bit pricier, but 30 dollars for two seasons is still a pretty good deal.

Shipping is free for USians, for the rest of us it's still fairly cheap. Note: I've ordered from DDD before and found their service reliable, but their shipping erratic: one box set never arrived, and they sent me a free replacement that appeared to have traveled via Sweden.

DeepDiscountDVD is holding a 'Buy 1 get 1 free' sale on DVD boxsets.

The DVD sets in the sale include Hercules: the Legendary Journeys season sets (at $17.99 each), Xena season sets ($29.99 each) and Highlander season sets ($29.99 each). Buy two, get the cheapest one free.

This sounds like a good deal if you've been waiting to buy these. I've bought DVDs from DeepDiscount before; their shipping is rather slow, but they replaced a set of mine that got lost at no charge, and their shipping charges to Europe are very reasonable. (Shipping to the US is free, you jammy bastards.)

Please note that the first season of Hercules isn't included in the sale, but they have it at a regular price of $11.99.

[X-posted to hxyh_announce]

I've gotten a couple of questions in email from European Hercules fans about the DVD sets - they aren't easily available over here - and especially about what extras are on them, so I thought I'd expand my answers and put them up here too. Please comment with followups or corrections!

ETA: I've added more details to this post, with many thanks to Sue Sanders and dchan07.

What are the extras on the H:tLJ DVD sets?
TVShowsonDVD has detailed reviews for all five of the Hercules season DVDsets, with a very complete listing of the commentaries, interviews and other tidbits, including time codes so you can see how long they are. *g*

What's this about a special Best Buy version, and should I get it?
The five season sets were produced in two different versions: the normal version sold everywhere and a version sold only at Best Buy, a store that doesn't ship overseas. The Best Buy sets had an 'Exclusive Content' banner on the front and an extra feature inside.

# In the season 1 set, the Best Buy extra was The Men Behind The Myth (60 mn) which is immediately followed by a 30 mn conversation between Kevin Sorbo and director Bill Norton, on disc 3.

# In the season 2 set, the Best Buy extra is 30 minutes of more interviews with Kevin, Michael, and Tapert, similar to the season one interviews ('as a matter of fact, Michael's, at least, is more excerpts from the same interview--you can tell because he still has his dark Hamlet hair'). The exclusive interviews are on disk 6.

Note: Contrary to what I posted earlier, the 'bonus disc' was apparently included in ALL the season 2 sets, Best Buy and normal. It has a 20+ minute blooper reel, hour-long interview with Rob Tapert, Kevin Sorbo on "Regis and Kathy", costume designs and a special effects feature on the making of the Argonauts episode with the animated skeletons. (Thanks, Sue, for clearing this up!)

# In the season 3, 4 and 5 sets, the extras diminished in quality - they were half-hour 'interviews' with cast and crew that were really bits and pieces cut out of the other interviews.

When's the sixth season coming out?
The sixth and last season of Hercules: the Legendary Journeys is coming out on DVD on July 12th this year. There are only eight episodes, and it's reputed to be a five-disc set. According to TVShowsonDVD, it will have the following extras:

# Featurette: "Bringing Monsters To Life At K.N.B. 2FX Group - Part 3"

# Audio Commentaries and Interviews with Kevin Sorbo, Michael Hurst, Paul Robert Coyle and Other Cast and Crew Members

# Final Episode - Behind The Scenes

OK, so the house of ill repute that is the Hercules store (owned by the same people as the equally ill-famed Highlander store) now has something for sale they call the Hercules Action Pack DVD collection, for $39.99.

It's a mishmash - two of the TV movies (Lost Kingdom and Amazon Women), the Xena trilogy (Warrior Princess, The Gauntlet and Unchained Heart), the Young Hercules movie and the animated movie. These are all for sale separately, on DVD and VHS, and the first five are all on the Hercules season 1 DVD set, which would be a much better buy if you ask me.

But what caught my attention is this bit of marketing speak:

"the legendary action comes alive with loads of new features like behind-the-scenes documentaries, deleted scenes and outtakes, alternate endings, and other cool stuff as well."

No details on what any of the cool stuff actually is, of course. Maybe they just stuck some of the DVD season set extras on there? Maybe the extras are entirely legendary, like the famous 'European extended scenes'? Anyway, I just wanted to give you the heads-up - if any of you actually see this in stores, I'd appreciate more details.

The bad news is that my Hercules season 5 DVDs were shipped January 13th and still haven't arrived here. Considering that laurashapiro's gorgeous vid DVD arrived here in four days' time, I think we can consider them lost. Not surprising, actually, once I discovered that the seller made a mistake in my postal code.

The good news is that they are sending me a new set free of charge. Now I do hope that this one will get here in the 10-20 days time range they promised...

In the meantime, does anyone have moments in Hercules season 5 that they would particularly like me to take screencaps of? Take it as read that I will be screencapping the first and the last episode (dying in Herc's arms and welcome back hug, in other words) until my fingers drop off. But in between those two, there are a lot of other episodes that I may or may not get around to - if you let me know you'd love to see a particular moment capped, I will give that first priority. Drop me an email at mcvices at gmail dot com, or comment below. :-)

DigitallyObsessed has a new review of the Hercules: the Legendary Journeys season 5 DVD set, with a good overview of the season and some comments on the extras included:

Many of the comments come from Kevin Sorbo and Michael Hurst, who sometimes have foggy memories about the episodes, but they do exude plenty of enthusiasm for the show. Rob Tapert also appears and delivers his typical autistic diatribe about various things that never happened high level of informative material.*
The best commentary occurs on Faith with Sorbo and Hurst discussing this pivotal episode.

DeepDiscountDVD says that it has the season 5 set in stock and that they will ship it 'in a day or two'. Excuse me? If you've got them in stock today, then you can damn well ship them today. Grrr. Also, today is the official release date, so the set should be in stores everwhere, including Best Buy (where the set should have 30 mins of exclusive interview snippets, but is more expensive than at DDD.)


* OK, that was me, not DigitallyObsessed. But you knew that.