highlander dvd question

[rusty_halo]

Um, question for any Highlander people out there. I'm trying to figure out which DVDs to buy. There's seasons 1 - 3 released by Anchor Bay, and there's all seasons at highlandercatalog.com. Are they different? Which is better? Is it safe to buy seasons four and five from highlandercatalog.com now or should I wait for the Anchor Bay releases? Which version of season three should I buy? I can't find any info as to whether these are all the same or different or what--I want whichever is best.

Comments

[jmtorres.livejournal.com]

The main difference is that the HL catalog ones cost more.

I heard something about the Best Buy store ones having some extra featurette? Not sure. But those are cheaper than the HL catalog, and apparently in no way inferior.

[rusty_halo.livejournal.com]

Oh, that icon is so cute!

Thanks for the info. :)

Season 3 is my favourite

[aexia.livejournal.com]

Introduction of Methos, got some Amanda, there's continuity and it's got the best villain the series ever had: Kalas.

Season 5 was really the beginning of the end. The 'evil quickening' stuff was kind of rediculousness. And then there was that First Evil like entity that plagued an already shortened season 6. Plus all the female guest-stars who were really trying out for the lead role on the Raven.

Adrian Paul really screwed the series over; he should've stuck with it a full seven years. But he had that 'movie career' he wanted to persue. Where *is* that 'movie career' anyways? Hell, where's his 'career'? Plus the good writers were jumping ship...

As a result, we ended up getting:
Highlander: The Raven (season's worth of crap)
and
Highlander: Endgame (craptastic)

It's really too bad they had to have the franchise go out on such a low note.

My mom's a huuuuge Methos fan. Member of the fan club, used to go to cons. So when I started going to Buffy gettogethers, she was really in no position to stop or criticize me. ;-)

I just asked her about the DVDs, she doesn't know. But the Season 6 set sound dodgy. I *know* season 6 wasn't 22 episodes. Maybe it's the truncated season 6 plus 13 episodes of the Raven or something?

Re: Season 3 is my favourite

[rusty_halo.livejournal.com]

I did like S3, but there's not enough Methos in it for me. Before he showed up, I found the show entertaining, but I didn't think about it more than the hour it took to watch. Methos got inside my head and made me a fan, not just a viewer.

I also really loved when the series started to get into the big themes of moral ambiguity in seasons four and five. The Kalas story was a bit too black and white for me (even though he was a great villain). My favorite episodes are stuff like The Valkyrie, where there are no easy answers. (And of course, Comes a Horseman/Revelation 6:8, where Methos gets to be so delightfully ambiguous.)

I agree with all your criticisms of five and six, though. It got cheesier and cheesier (and it was even more disappointing because we knew it could do better). S6 is just unspeakable--I'm glad I missed most of those eps.

I watched about five minutes of The Raven once and wanted to gag. And Endgame--ugh. It's really too bad.

Also

[aexia.livejournal.com]

My mom's heard horror stories about ordering from highlandercatalog.com. Like it taking months for orders to arrive, tapes arriving broken or missing, etc.

[dorothy1901]

I believe that the Anchor Bay version and the Highlander Store version are identical.

The Best Buy version includes a bit of extra material, such as actor interviews. The only place to get the Best Buy version is at a Best Buy store. Best Buy also sells by mail order, but the Best Buy mail order version is identical to the Anchor Bay/Highlander Store version (it doesn't include the extra material). Unfortunately, there's no guarantee that the Best Buy version is still available, even at the Best Buy stores.

The Highlander Store sells the sets at full retail price, while Best Buy, Amazon, DeepDiscountDVD etc. sell the sets at a substantial discount. The Highlander Store has all the seasons now, the other places sell them as they become generally available. Currently, seasons 1, 2 and 3 are generally available, and season 4 is coming out soon (next week, I think). You can get all the sets now from the Highlander store, or you can wait and get them for less.

Over the years, the Highlander Store has gotten a reputation for poor service. Caveat emptor.

[rusty_halo.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much for the info. I've heard a lot of bad things about the Highlander store.

The Best Buy website claims that the version of S4 it's selling has "exclusive features." I'm not sure how real that claim is, but I decided to buy that one just in case.