Posted by Marc Martin on
URL: https://www.shado-forum.com/A-E-UFO-DVD-Set-2-Arrives-tp1498952p1498955.html

Hi all,

Okay, I've had a chance to listen to the commentary tracks. The Ed
Bishop track is the same one that's on the UK DVD's. I never much
liked this commentary, because he says very little and doesn't supply
much information. Due to the speed differences between the US and
UK versions of the episode, it sounds like they slowed down Ed's
commentary, which makes him sound a bit drugged. (this also happened
with Gerry Anderson's IDENTIFIED commentary).

The other two commentary tracks were produced specifically for A&E by
Jeff Smart, and don't sound slowed down at all. The KILL STRAKER
commentary is certainly the funniest of all the UFO commentaries --
Mike Billington and Alan Perry have a great time making fun of the
episode, and I laughed out loud on several occasions. Also, unlike
the Ed Bishop commentary, there are very few pauses in this
commentary -- I think that both of these guys each say more than Ed
does in his solo commentary!

The TIMELASH commentary is actually the best in terms of information
from when the series was made. Perhaps the women have better
memories. :-) It also sounded like they occasionally referred to
the list of questions I thought people would be interested in,
addressing the possible romance between Lake and Straker, addressing
what happened to Freeman, how Wanda got the job on UFO, etc. There
are lot's of stories about what happened at the time, and them both
pointing out interesting details about the Pinewood backlot. It has
a gossipy flavor to it, but it's still quite good. I think this is
my favorite of all the UFO commentaries, but I think this might be
because it's Sylvia and Wanda (I suspect some people will like the Ed
Bishop commentary just because it's Ed). Again, this commentary is
quite full -- there are very few pauses and lots of talking.

While I was watching the episodes during the commentary, and also
doing spot-checks of the other episodes, I was dumbfounded by the
spectacular video quality. Of course, we've all come to expect that
the quality is perfect on these UFO DVDs, but I guess it never ceases
to amaze me how good these look and sound! Also, on my setup, the
A&E DVDs look better than the Carlton DVD's (due to my Region 1
player being much higher quality than my multiregion player), so in a
sense this *is* the very best I've ever seen these episodes look.
There even were a few scenes where I noticed things that I had never
noticed before (even though I've watched the Carlton versions and the
Japanese laserdiscs several times)

Marc