As a huge fan of the Terminator film series, I was both thrilled and worried when FOX announced that they were developing a new show based off of James Cameron’s iconic sci-fi characters. My worries quickly disappeared and excitement grew as soon as the first episode premiered.

I enjoyed the show enough to purchase Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles – The Complete First Season on Blu-Ray. Rather than reviewing the show itself (which I believe any Terminator fan will enjoy), I’ll write a bit about the Blu-Ray release itself.

The Show

When you pop in the first disc, the series premiere beings playing immediately. No menus, no fuss. You just sit down and watch. When it ends, the credits roll and it moves right into the next episode. Since the plot line in each episode generally picks up right where the previous episode left off, it’s almost like watching a movie than an episodic TV show. Best of all, it disables the “Previously on Terminator…” recap at the beginning of each episode, so you don’t have to sit through what you’ve just watched (though they have included these snippets if you do want to see them). It’s very easy to sit down to watch one episode and end up watching several, only stopping because you reached the end of a disc.

Bonus Features

Here’s where Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles - The Complete First Season threw me for a loop. I wasn’t expecting much out of the bonus features in this set. I wanted it mainly to re-watch the show and anything else was, well, just a bonus.

While the gag reel, commentary, and other smaller bonus features are mildly entertaining, the best (and strangest) parts lie in the three behind-the-scenes featurettes on disc 1 that give the show’s creators some screen time to discuss how the show was developed, what they’re able to accomplish on a TV budget, and how they’re all huge fans of the original Terminator film series. It’s great to see that the folks behind this show truly want to do justice to the world that James Cameron set up in his ground-breaking movies. Hearing how the terminator endoskeleton visual effects are developed based on what such a creation would need to function and survive in reality is quite interesting and makes it clear that the team working on this show want everything to make sense… or at least as much as it can when dealing with the subject of killer robots taking over the planet.

The parts of these behind-the-scenes featurettes that surprised me were the interview snippets with Thomas Dekker (who plays John Connor) and Lena Headey (who plays Sarah Connor). While Summer Glau (who plays Cameron, the protective terminator) seems like she’s exactly as you expect her to be, the same cannot be said for Dekker and Headey. First, Headey speaks with a British accent. After nearly two seasons of The Sarah Connor Chronicles, I was not expecting her to sound so… formal. While I didn’t exactly expect her to always talk in a whisper or be quite as in-your-face as Sarah Connor, I definitely wasn’t expecting her to be a happy, smiling Brit.

Even more confusing is listening to Thomas Dekker talk about John Connor, as Dekker is about as far removed from his character as you can imagine. While John Connor is an angst-filled teenager yanked from the grunge era of the early ’90s, Dekker seems to be a chipper young actor with a personality more similar to what you’d expect out of the person in this on-set photo where he is clearly not in John Connor-mode. His voice is higher in pitch, not raspy, and he doesn’t always look like his fight-or-flight response is about to kick in. He’s quite the polar opposite from John Connor. The fact that he is completely void of all hair (including a lack of eyebrows) during the interviews also makes for a strange bit to watch (he was prepared for his role as a cancer patient in the upcoming film, My Sister’s Keeper).

Of course, the fact that both Headey and Dekker are absolutely nothing like their Terminator characters speaks volumes about their acting talents. When combined with Glau’s ability to portray a menacing robot while still remaining funny and cute, this trio forms a great cast to lead the show into the future.

Quality

The video and audio quality of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles on Blu-Ray is mostly fantastic. The episodes look great – even better than the compressed version received on FOX while watching via digital cable. No noticeable visual artifacts were present during the many action scenes. The stars, sets, and visual effects all look great in high-definition.

The only problem I ran into was during the bonus features where, for some reason, the audio was completely out of sync with the video. I performed a firmware upgrade on my Blu-Ray player and it seemed to mostly fix it, but not completely. I haven’t been able to find anyone else that experienced the same issue, so please comment on this post if you have.

I definitely recommend picking up the Blu-Ray release of this show over the standard-definition one. After watching the show in HD on television, I couldn’t imagine reverting to SD for the home release. The high-definition, widescreen picture makes for a cinematic experience that doesn’t quite match the original films, but comes close.

Price

Currently on Amazon.com, the entire first season of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles on Blu-Ray is just $19.99. If more feature-length films were priced as affordably as this 3-disc set, I’d be buying a whole lot more movies on Blu-Ray and I suspect the technology would catch on a lot faster than it has.

Overall

If the Blu-Ray release of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is what we can expect out of future home releases of television shows then call me satisfied. The show looks and sounds great and the bonus features are good enough to enjoy once or twice. With season 2 not returning from winter break until February, I think I’ll be going back and re-watching more of season 1 very soon.

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