animated – Memphis Flyer

Looking for a gift for the cinephile in your life? Tired of your Blu Ray player sitting alone on the shelf? Need more stuff to binge watch? Three new releases of classic TV shows will fill stockings to satisfaction this season.

Twin Peaks: The Original Series, Fire Walk With Me, and The Missing Pieces

You may have heard that David Lynch and Mark Frost’s groundbreaking series will be getting a long-overdue sequel in 2017, so now’s the time to remember what went on with a total rewatch. This 9-disk set collects the whole donut: All 30 episodes of the original series, complete with introductions by The Log Lady; Fire Walk With Me, the 1993 film that explored the surreal backstory behind Laura Palmer’s last night on Earth, and more deleted scenes and alternate takes than anyone but the most devoted fans—and there are many of them—want to watch.

The original series was shot on film, so the HD remastering looks pristine. And when you revisit the show, or visit for the first time, you’ll be amazed at how many of the innovations attributed to the current “Golden Age of Television” came from the mind of Lynch: persistent season-long storylines, haunting “true crime” narratives, and cinematic visuals just to name a few. Your rewatch may also reveal just how good the whole package was. If you remember that the quality of the show dropped off after the premature revelation of Laura Palmer’s murderer midway through season two, you’ll be pleasantly surprised. And the final episode, which Lynch returned to personally direct, is among the most amazing hours of television ever created.

Star Trek: The Animated Series

2016 marked the 50th anniversary of the most beloved American sci fi series of all time. Star Trek ran for three seasons from 1966-69, ironically leaving the air shortly after the first moon landing. Trek’s devoted fans laid the groundwork for modern fandom, and the show got a brief second life in 1973 from Filmation, an animation company that got its start making cheap Bozo and Popeye cartoons. The animated series featured all of the original cast except for Chekov, who was replaced by a sexy feline humanoid named M’ress and a bizarre alien named Arex.

Filmation pioneered the limited animation style used by current cartoons such as Archer, and the remastered Trek visuals look both beautiful and clunky—often at the same time. Gene Roddenberry realized that the flexibility of the animated format would allow for much more creative visuals, including stranger aliens and elaborate, exotic planets. He brought back many of the writers from the Original Series, including legendary show runner Dorothy “D. C.” Fontana, whose episode “Yesteryear” fills in Spock’s backstory and set Vulcan lore that would remain in place for four more TV series and ten movies. David Gerold, the sci fi writer whose very first script was “The Trouble With Tribbles”, returned with “More Tribbles, More Trouble”. New Wave sci fi standout Larry Niven, hot off his hit novel Ringworld, wrote the episode “The Slaver Weapon”.

Filmation and Paramount might have had a more kid-focused series in mind, but the results are more in line with a straight up continuation of the Star Trek universe, keeping the dreams of spaceflight, discovery, and a tolerant, multicultural future alive.

The Twilight Zone: The Complete Series

Rod Serling is, without a doubt, one of the best screenwriters America has ever produced. Before the debut of “Where Is Everybody?”, the 1959 pilot of what would become The Twilight Zone, there was a legacy of horror and sci fi shows on radio and television, but Serling’s penetrating gaze into the human condition and his often gleefully perverse instinct for throwing his audience cognitive curveballs raised the bar for both the genre and the medium.

The complete Blu Ray collects all 126 episodes of the five seasons of the original Twilight Zone run from 1959-1964 on a whopping 24 discs. Serling had a good eye for talent, and he employed writers such as Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, and adopted stories from the likes of Ambrose Bierce. Guest stars in the ever-changing anthology cast include future space captain William Shatner, who was memorably terified by an airplane destroying gremlin in “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”; Burgess Meredith as a bookish survivor of nuclear holocaust in “Time Enough At Last”; and Dennis Hopper as a neo-Nazi haunted by the ghost of Hitler in the chillingly prescient “He’s Alive”. The set also includes interviews with cast and crew and extensive commentary by the author of The Twilight Zone Companion Marc Scott Zicree.

It’s been 15 years since George Lucas’ Star Wars: The Phantom Menace brought back the beloved franchise that changed the face of film, both for good and bad. The three prequels, including Attack of the Clones (2002) and Revenge of the Sith (2005) continued the Star Wars tradition of impeccable production design, layered references to classic films, and groundbreaking special effects. They also continued the traditions of wooden acting, and introduced twisty, incomprehensible plots to a franchise that even its detractors would admit had been models of clear storytelling. Lucas, the man with the golden touch in the 1970s and ’80s, had seemingly lost it, and was producing films only a slavering fanboy could love. They kept showing up, but they vented their increasing frustration and derision online.

The nadir of the franchise (not counting the 1978 Holiday Special) was the 2008 animated movie Star Wars: The Clone Wars, which was then spun off into a weekly TV series that appeared to be set up to be just as dismal. But a funny thing happened over the show’s six year run. As Lucas slowly lost interest and turned the show over to show runner Dave Filoni, it got better. Perhaps this should not have been a surprise, because Lucas has always been a better producer and world builder than director. The best film in the franchise, The Empire Strikes Back, was written by Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan and directed by Irvin Kershner, a journeyman director whom Lucas met in film school. Lucas’ original intent had been to turn over the universe he created for other directors and writers to play with, something he had forgotten when he was filming his first drafts at the turn of the century. Star Wars‘ DNA is rooted in Flash Gordon serials, 30-minute long cliffhangers that played to preteens in the movie theaters of the 1930s and 1940s. So the serialized format of The Clone Wars, complete with Tom Kane’s booming “In our last episode…” voiceover, turned out to be a perfect fit for Star Wars.

Star Wars Rebels

The voice work of Matt Lanter turned out to make for a more compelling characterization of Anakin Skywalker than either Jake Lloyd or Hayden Christensen had managed in the prequels. And most importantly, Anakin’s apprentice Ahsoka Tano (voiced by Ashley Eckstein), a character who had started as a badly written audience surrogate, evolved into Star Wars‘ best female character since Princess Leia. The prequel’s Padmé Amidala was just a damsel in distress, wasting Natalie Portman’s talent. But Ahsoka was a capable, intelligent, rounded character who became the only one to see through Palpatine’s deceptions and walk away from the corrupt Republic before the Jedi Purge.

But then, in 2012, Disney bought Lucasfilm for $4 billion, and the first thing they did was cancel The Clone Wars. Fans were torn. On the one hand, they had lost confidence in Lucas. On the other, it’s Disney. Boba Fett is not Bambi. But now, with the news filtering out of the ongoing,
J. J. Abrams-helmed Episode VII taking on a generally positive slant, we have the first concrete evidence of how the future of Star Wars‘ universe will unfold: The premiere of the new Star Wars animated series Rebels.

Set 15 years after the Jedi Purge, Rebels‘ pilot is centered around Ezra Bridger, a 14-year-old street urchin from the Outer Rim planet Lothol. Trying to rip off the Stormtroopers who are occupying his planet, he inadvertently ends up in the middle of another, bigger heist by a pirate named Kanan Jarrus and his crew of misfits. Eventually, Ezra realizes that the crew of the starship Ghost are not mere criminals, but nascent guerillas. In a climactic fight, Jarrus is revealed to be a surviving Jedi. He recognizes Ezra’s wild Force talents and offers him an opportunity to become something greater.

Rebels borrows heavily from Joss Whedon’s series Firefly, which is kind of fitting since it borrowed heavily from the Han Solo mythology. Under the direction of Filoni, the characters, who include two prominent female roles, are encouragingly Jar Jar free. The animation is evolved from The Clone Wars‘ 3D computer rendering, which is frequently gorgeous, even as it works to stay out of the uncanny valley. And best of all, future episodes promise a return of Billy Dee Williams as Lando Calrissian. Count me among the cautiously optimistic.