Stargate SG-1: Season 1, Vol. 1

"Stargate SG-1 is a successful television spin-off of the movie, and is now wrapping up its fourth season with new episodes on the Showtime channel. This first entry in MGM-UA's planned series of Stargate SG-1 discs offers an animated opening, anamorphic menus, and anamorphic widescreen transfers (16 x 9 ratio) of the two-hour pilot and the first two episodes of the series. The budget limitations of the television show are apparent in the DVD transfers -- the production has a definite lack of gloss, to the point of looking a bit dull overall, particularly in the exterior sequences (no matter where they are supposed to be, everything looks like the Canadian forests). The transfer itself is good, with no apparent artifacts, though the lack of contrast and really solid blacks (stemming from the production) is sometimes a bit distracting. Fortunately, there are places where widescreen is used to advantage. Sound throughout the disc is excellent, with Joel Goldsmith's orchestral score (which utilizes some of David Arnold's themes from the original movie) sounding full-bodied and muscular when called upon to accent action and melodrama. The Dolby Surround tracks are clear, with good voice separation and good use of the surround channel to provide spatial illusions and ambience -- various scenes at Stargate Command benefit from this, as does a banquet sequence in ""Children of the Gods"" (where voices and effects are moved around in the surround soundstage) and much of ""Emancipation,"" which is set mainly in a forest and a pair of Mongol camps. Usage is subtle, rather than showy, but worth paying attention to. The only extras on this volume come in the form of language choices -- Spanish and French audio tracks are included, as are Spanish and French (but no English) subtitles. Curiously, while the voice dubbing is good on both Spanish and French tracks, and the music is more or less at the same level, it sounds as though elements of the sound effects were left out (and different elements in the French and Spanish, to boot), something of a rarity in the assembly of music and effects tracks that are created for foreign-language dubs."