Review of Champions, The: Volume 2

Introduction

Endowed with the qualities and skills of superhumans, Craig Sterling (Stuart Damon), Sharron Macready (Alexandra Bastedo) and Richard Barrett (William Gaunt) are ‘The Champions’.
With these gifts given to them by a lost civilisation in Tibet, they are able to use their fantastic powers to their best advantage as the champions of Law, Order and Justice working for W.I Tremayne (Anthony Nicholls) at the secret international agency, Nemesis.

Episodes include:

Episode 3: Reply Box No.666
Craig masquerades as a dead foreign agent in Jamaica. When Craig is given away as a spy, he is shot and dropped into the ocean. Richard and Sharron must search the Caribbean for Craig and the information the group has tried so hard to keep secret.

Episode 4: The Experiment
Mad scientist, Cranmore, tries to recreate super-humans to equal the Nemesis trio. Sharron is tricked into taking part in the experiments while Cranmore waits for the rest of the team to rescue her so he can study the whole of the team. If he can capture them and learn their secrets, the whole world will not be safe and no one will be able to stop him.

Episode 5: Happening
Three men find themselves alone in an atom test area with the bomb due to go off at any moment; if it does, it will devastate much of Australia. One of the men there is Richard Barrett of Nemesis.
The problem is, does he know it?

Episode 6: Operation Deep-Freeze
A tyrannical Central American leader has established a nuclear missile base in Antarctica. The Champions investigate, but will they survive the frosty reception?


The Champions as always use their special powers to fight evil, which of course gets them into all sorts of situations where their superior abilities insure that they will survive and conquer.
The stories are always entertaining well written and are less predictable than other series that have come out of ITC, simply because of the superhuman factor. `The experiment` episode is especially good as the champions finally meet their match with the human guinea pigs of the mad Cranmore. ‘The Happening’ where Richard Barratt looses his memory and must defuse an atomic bomb while under fire is also a highlight of this disc especially for the old drunk in the outback.
Carlton has made a good effort of bringing a classic series to DVD at an attractive price and I hope there are more to come.

Video

The picture quality seems to be at the same standard as the other champion DVD and so although not exactly pristine in the print department, its nevertheless a decent job considering the material. There is a fair amount of grain evident throughout and a little dust (the title and stock footage suffering most).
The colours look a little subdued and the picture remains soft, lacking detail. There was also a little shimmering in the picture although compression artefacts are kept to a minimum.
Maybe not the best picture in the world but considering the age and material it’s a decent job, and so much better than on VHS.

Audio

The audio is presented in standard mono and does its job well. Dialogue remains clear and undistorted with no real problems.

Features

Extras include 4 great promotional trailers that were thought lost before being rediscovered in 1990. These feature each cast member (the last being all three members) asking the audience to tune in and watch the Champions each week.
An ITC publicity card is included with the option to zoom in on the text, as is a small stills gallery.
The menus are themed with the music and suitable background pictures as well as a small animated scene selection section.
And small fold out booklet which includes production and cast information along with chapter details.
There are 8 chapters per episode.

Conclusion

Altogether a decent DVD release for the second Champions DVD. Thankfully Carlton has been wise enough to include four episodes instead of the usual two which gives that extra value and shelf space for anyone collecting the series. Sure the video has a few problems but that’s to do with the original material rather than any compression nastiness. A good solid disc from Carlton with plenty of material for the average fan to get his/her teeth into.