Review for Space: Above and Beyond - Complete Series Collector's Edition

Introduction

I never liked nu-Battlestar Galactica. That's an odd way to start a review for Space Above and Beyond, but bear with me. You see, of late I have had the chance to re-evaluate some of my past entertainment choices, and have found new understanding of why I went the way that I did. At the time, I thought nu-Battlestar was a pale shadow of the original late-seventies shiny adventure series. I hated the post 9/11 angst that infused the show. I didn't think much of the gung-ho characters and I dropped nu-Battlestar after one season. Then the other day, I started reviewing Space Above and Beyond, and I realised the true reason why I had disliked nu-Battlestar. It was because Space Above and Beyond had done it first. I loved Space Above and Beyond when it was on television, tuned in religiously each week as it was aired, and I felt betrayed when it was cancelled after just one season. I now realise that some of that lingering resentment bled through to nu-Battlestar, and I may have done that show a disservice as a result. It even preceded Starship Troopers, another creation that I disliked for similar reasons.


Enough of my own idiosyncrasies, as Space Above and Beyond finally comes to the UK on DVD, courtesy of MediumRare Entertainment, and I get to indulge in one of my cult sci-fi favourites after some seventeen years. Space Above and Beyond comes from that brief period when the X-Files ruled the airwaves, and had brought with it a new, gritty, realistic approach to genre television that was quickly leaving the old, Star Trek way of doing things behind in its wake. For a short period of time, it seemed that the schedule was filled with X-Files spin-offs and sister shows. The thing is that in the end, none of them enjoyed the same success as the original. Chris Carter's Millennium managed three seasons, but The Lone Gunmen vanished after just thirteen episodes. Space Above and Beyond was created by X-Files alumni Glen Morgan and James Wong and would suffer a similar ignominious fate. But while it was on, for that one year back in 1996, the face of space opera sci-fi would be irrevocably altered.


It's 2063, and humanity is secure, proud, and arrogant in the firm knowledge that it is alone in the universe. The AI war is over, the in-vitro army flash-grown to fight it is well on its way to achieving equal rights, and man's first extra-solar colonies are being established. That complacency is cruelly shattered when the Vesta and Tellus colonies are attacked and destroyed without warning by previously unknown aliens. Quickly dubbed the Chig, against them the forces of Earth are initially on the back foot. It's up to the brave pilots of the Marine Corps to make a stand, and begin the fight back. Space Above and Beyond follows the Wild Cards squadron through this war. Among them are three soldiers with very different backgrounds. Nathan West was meant to be on the Tellus colony with his girlfriend Kylen, but was summarily removed from the mission to make space for a group of in-vitroes in order to promote public relations.


With a new found resentment of in-vitroes, or Tanks, West joins the Marine Corps in the rare hope that he'll one day get a mission to Tellus, only for the Chigs to attack, and Kylen to wind up unaccounted for. Shane Vansen joins the Marines to carry on the family tradition, but there is a dark past and a need for revenge driving her too. As a child, she and her sisters witnessed the murder of their parents by a group of AIs. Finally there is Cooper Hawkes, an in-vitro who was grown for the AI war, but was decanted after it ended. He's been a delinquent, thumbing his nose at authority and a victim of anti-Tank prejudice ever since. Now he's been arrested and dumped on the Marine Corps, and he finds that he's just as welcome there as he is in the outside world. When they enlist, they meet fellow marines Paul Wang, and Vanessa Damphousse, and when the war starts they are assigned to the 58th Squadron, the Wild Cards, under the command of T.C. McQueen, flying from the carrier Saratoga.


MediumRare Entertainment presents the pilot movie, and 22 episodes of Space Above and Beyond across six discs, along with some very appealing extra features.

Disc 1
01. Pilot (Parts 1 & 2)

Disc 2
02. The Farthest Man From Home
03. The Dark Side of the Sun
04. Mutiny
05. Ray Butts
06. Eyes

Disc 3
07. The Enemy
08. Hostile Visit
09. Choice or Chance
10. Stay With the Dead
11. The River of Stars


Disc 4
12. Who Monitors the Birds?
13. Level of Necessity
14. Never No More
15. The Angriest Angel
16. Toy Soldiers

Disc 5
17. Dear Earth
18. Pearly
19. R & R
20. Stardust
21. Sugar Dirt

Disc 6
22. And if They Lay Us Down to Rest...
23. ...Tell Our Moms We Done Our Best

Picture

Space: Above and Beyond gets a 4:3 transfer reflecting the original broadcast ratio. It's a show dating from the mid-nineties, when the US television broadcasts were still in trusty NTSC SD, and the image reflects that. However, television had thankfully moved on from the dismal days of the late eighties, when poor quality video was the norm, and Space: Above and Beyond has a nice, clean and relatively well defined image, with consistent colours, and good levels of detail. It's similar in that regard to its stable mate The X-Files. As mentioned in the commentary, this was the second generation of CGI to be used to develop effects and spaceships for a sci-fi, following Babylon 5, and the ships and spacecraft that you see here look a tad more realistic and tangible as a result. The effects have stood up surprisingly well over the last 17 years, and I had no problems with suspending my disbelief during the space action sequences.

Sound

The audio for Space: Above and Beyond is a single DD 2.0 English track, but it's an audio track that prologics up a treat. From the first episode, the rear channel was used fully during the action sequences, and the show makes full use of the soundstage to enhance its visuals. It's the best use of a stereo surround track that I've heard since Texhnolyze. The music also suits the show well, with an appropriately militaristic theme, but with a wide variety of music to sell the various storytelling styles at use here. Who Monitors The Birds? is a particularly noteworthy episode in that regard. Unfortunately, subtitles are lacking on this release, but the dialogue is mostly clear throughout.

Extras

The discs get animated menus, and the episodes get synopses.

Disc 1

Here you'll find the Beyond and Back documentary. This lasts 74 minutes, and the cast and crew return to talk about the show. Glen Morgan talks about how the space programme of the sixties inspired him to create the show, and there is also talk about the casting process, the shooting of the episodes, the more memorable stories that were told in the show, and of course the problems that the show had with the network, and the scheduling that proved to be the first nail in the coffin. The documentary takes us all the way from the show's inception to its cancellation, and there are also a few tantalising what ifs explored, had the series got its second season. It's best to save this until after you have seen the show, as there are more than a few spoilers within.

There's also a commentary that accompanies the pilot episode, with creators James Wong and Glen Morgan, VFX supervisors Glenn Campbell and Tim McHugh, and actor Morgan Weisser (Nathan West) commenting. It's a nice, detailed, and light-hearted discussion about the episode and the show in general. There are some interesting recollections of the filming of the pilot, but there are also some comments regarding later episodes, so again it's best to leave this to last if you want to avoid spoilers.


Disc 2

For the later discs, you'll have to go rummaging through the episode select screens to find the commentaries, there's no separate extras menu on all but the final disc, which would have been more convenient.

The commentary on disc 2 accompanies episode 3, The Far Side Of The Sun, and in it Glen Morgan joins Kirsten Cloke (Vansen), and Lanei Chapman (Damphousse) to reminisce about the episode.


Disc 4

There are two commentaries on this disc, the first for episode 12, Who Monitors The Birds? In it, Rodney Rowland (Hawkes) joins Morgan Weisser and Glen Morgan to talk about the Hawkes-centric episode. There are some interesting nuggets of information here; regarding what was at the time the most expensive hour of television made. Also of interest is the revelation that the Space Above and Beyond series was shot in HD and in widescreen, but as it was 1995 and an SD 4:3 world, the show was only ever broadcast in the format presented on these DVDs. Apparently the original masters exist, and all it would take would be a suitable infusion of cash...

Another enjoyable commentary accompanies episode 15, The Angriest Angel, with Glen Morgan and James Morrison (McQueen) commenting on the episode that focuses on McQueen.


Disc 6

No commentaries here, but plenty of other extra material to appreciate.

Designs For A Future War lasts 21 minutes, and is a featurette that looks at the show's production design, with a mix of recent interviews, and some period behind the scenes footage.

To complement this, you can also find three slideshow stills galleries that look at some concept art for the Earth Forces, the Chigs and some episode specific designs. These run to a total of 10 minutes.

The Cast & Publicity Interviews are some 14 minutes of soundbites grabbed in 1995 with the main cast on location for the Ray Butts episode.

There are some 14½ minutes of deleted and extended scenes from the show, 5 in total.

Finally there are 8½ minutes of TV Spots promoting the various episodes.

Conclusion

After some seventeen years since I last saw it, I had completely forgotten how much I adored Space Above and Beyond. Watching it again now, in essence rediscovering the series, I'm almost surprised to see how well it has held up, astounded at just how quality a show it actually is. In my mind, it had somehow become the gung-ho space marine show and I had forgotten just how sharply it was written, how engaging the characters are, how varied and interesting the stories are. To date, this is still one of the best space operas out there, up there with Star Trek and Babylon 5 in my estimation, and watching these episodes, I found myself cursing its premature cancellation once more, until I remembered that it had aired on the Fox Network, and had been subjected to the same scheduling and pre-empting interference that went on to sabotage Firefly. In that respect, I guess it's fortunate that Space Above and Beyond managed a full season run, and indeed the creators got enough of an inkling before its demise to fashion something of a conclusive finale.


One problem might be that it was ahead of its time. Made in 1995, the world was radically different, and while its stable-mate The X-Files was at the time the most popular genre television show around, the idea of a war show for primetime viewing seemed somewhat outdated and at the same time naive and cynical. Space Above and Beyond was supposed to be World War II in space, with the pilot episode positing a Pearl Harbour analogy on a distant Earth colony the spark that unleashed a devastating war against a superior alien foe. Looking backwards to a warlike state that we were outgrowing may have been seen as naive, while the dark tones and occasionally brutal storylines would have been seen as cynical. Then 2001 happened, and the world changed, and with it so did television. WWII was back under the spotlight, in films like Saving Private Ryan, and shows like Band of Brothers, which purported to portray combat with a greater degree of realism. At the same time, shows like 24 were proving that the good guys could be brutal and nasty too. This is why nu-Battlestar Galactica was a major hit, and why Space Above and Beyond, which did so many of these things first, was cancelled. It's why watching the show now, with the benefit of post 9/11 hindsight, reveals it to be a much more rewarding show, and a far more measured reflection of human nature, than it initially appeared to be in the light of mid-nineties optimism.


With it being a truncated series, prematurely cancelled, there are aspects of the show that fail to ignite over the run, but fortunately the core elements, the character study of five very different people thrown together against adversity in the harshest of circumstances, still holds strong today. Watching the stories of Nathan West, Shane Vansen, Cooper Hawkes, Vanessa Damphousse, and Paul Wang, as they join the Marines for various reasons, only to be drawn into a brutal war, is the whole draw of the show. Watching these characters grow and mature over the series is very appealing. Nathan West is in my view, initially the weak link, the lovesick young boy who joins on a romantic whim, hoping that his duty will mean that he'll be reunited with his girlfriend after they were torn asunder before the Tellus Colony mission departed. He spends the first few episodes mooning after her, and it's hard to really like him. In these episodes, the saving grace is that it was an in-vitro quota that got him kicked off the mission, which results in some friction between him and Hawkes.


Hawkes is the in-vitro that gets conscripted into the Marines. A sci-fi element familiar to fans of Blade Runner, and indeed Star Wars, he's the life form created just to fight, a clone rapidly grown and programmed to fight in place of humans, he is the most interesting of the characters. He's capable of violence, and recklessness, but he also has the emotional development of a six-year old, a simplistic and wondrous way of looking at things. Vansen on the other hand is the forgotten strong female role model. When you think of strong women in popular cinema, you think of Ripley, and Sarah Connor, but Vansen is up there as well, a strong, independent, and self confident woman, who also happens to be a tough as nails marine, pragmatic, and with the strongest leadership qualities of the group.


Vanessa Damphousse is the heart of the group, a kind and thoughtful person with a lot of technical experience, while Paul Wang is the unlikeliest of marines, initially a little uncertain, he settles into the joker of the group, and the go to guy when it comes to knowledge and exposition. His arc turns out the be the most interesting, when he gets captured by the enemy, subjected to psychological and physical torture, and has to live with the consequences of that thereafter. Their commander is Colonel TC McQueen, also an in-vitro, but one with the experience that Hawkes lacks. A veteran career marine, he becomes something of a father figure for the 58th, although he finds it hard to strike a balance between familiarity and a command distance. Also soon a part of the show is the commander of the Saratoga, Commodore Ross, whose shared history with McQueen introduces a different dynamic to the mix.


Watching these characters grow and change over the series is the strong appeal of the show, while the utter variety of stories makes every episode worth watching in its own right. These are mini-movies, rather than simple television, with high production values, and special effects that still hold up today, and you get your money's worth with each 45-minute instalment. It's hard to pick a favourite, with so many excellent episodes, but for me Who Monitors The Birds?, The Angriest Angel, and Sugar Dirt, all rank as perfect moments of television.


If there are flaws, they are three fold. Space Above and Beyond does have something of a mid season slump, although that amounts to two episodes which are just good, instead of brilliant, and both suffer from the same problem. Pearly, and R & R both have guest stars that seem out of place in the universe, with Martin Jarvis as an eccentric British officer behind enemy lines, with Adam Goldberg displaying a wholly different eccentricity, both in Pearly. In R & R, we have David Duchovny as a Clint- Eastwood impersonating AI, and Coolio being... Coolio. Pearly gets away with it for its storyline and the way it develops Wang, but R & R has no such redeeming value, although it is entertaining in its own way. It just doesn't feel like it belongs in the series. The other is a continuity head scratcher that still confuses me. At the start of the pilot, we are made to believe that Vesta and Tellus are practically Earth's first colonies, and man is still using primitive rockets to get there. By the end of that episode, we already have an advanced space carrier navy, with APCs and Hammerheads that can take off and land, travelling from space to planet surfaces without need of multistage rockets. That gap in technology makes no sense. Also, as the first few episodes unfold, it turns out that humans are all over the local star map, making those Tellus and Vesta colonies seem less like pioneers.


Finally is the problem of early cancellation. As while the character journeys hold the attention, the various plot threads don't always get the development they deserve. At the end of the series, I'm left asking questions about the Chigs and their relationship to humanity, I want to know more about the In Vitroes, more about the AIs, I also especially want to know more about Aero-Tech and the extent of their prior knowledge about the Chigs, as well as see the political situation on Earth, which had some development in Eyes, also resolved. In this respect Space Above and Beyond had much in common with The X Files, setting up various conspiracies and ideas that would have been better developed over a several year run. Unfortunately, the show was cancelled, and in the end, while some effort was made to address these lost plot threads, it does still leave you wanting more, rather than feel satisfied.


In reality these are small, almost insignificant nitpicks, against the backdrop of an amazing, and very engaging sci-fi action show. Space Above and Beyond is one of the better television shows to come from the mid nineties, and if you miss out on this collection, especially with its appealing extra features, then you'll be doing yourself a disservice. If you want a taster, the pilot movie is also available on a single disc release, with the commentary, but minus the featurette. If you need any more convincing, the pilot episode also features the inimitable R. Lee Ermey as a Marine Instructor.