A few years ago the Sci-Fi Channel underwent one of the most ridiculous rebrandings in television history, becoming Syfy. This prompted me to
joke at the time that it sounded like some of my Jewish New York relatives talking about the Americanized names some of my more assimilated
kin have assumed through the years. If you can muster a good Long Island accent as you say this, it will help: "Yes, I know he was born
Seymour Feinstein, but he thinks Sy Fy is going to get him more work." I've long wondered why History Channel continues to insist on its own
name, when for all intents and purposes it could easily rebrand itself as Doom and Gloom, Impending Death, or (if it didn't bring to mind Mel
Gibson) the perhaps more stylish Apocalypto. History does fantastic work a lot of the time, but some of their regular series focus too often and
too relentlessly on doomsday scenarios that just grow tiresome after a while. (I mean, don't we all have enough to worry about without
getting jittery over asteroids wiping out all life on our planet?) Probably the worst in this regard is The Universe, a series which had a
really strong first (and maybe even second) season, but then has more and more just gone to the well of disaster, over and over again. Now
History is jumping on the 3D bandwagon and releasing three episodes from The Universe: The Complete Season Six, post-converted to 3D with some surprisingly
spectacular results. But guess what: two of the three episodes are fraught with danger, death and destruction, and even the third flirts with
cosmic disaster on an almost unbelievable scale. Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be an extremely bumpy interstellar flight.
The episodes included are (this content is repeated from my review of the 2D release of Season Six):
Catastrophes That Changed the Planets.
Once again it's "Apocalypse Now" on The Universe, only this time on a solar system scale. This episode delves
into how cataclysms in various epochs created and then altered planets and the general "neighborhood" around us.
The chaotic nature of untold eons past is compared to a pinball machine, where planets were formed and destroyed
with seemingly careless abandon. These cosmic disasters created virtually every aspect of our solar system, according
to this episode. One of the more interesting facts that comes out in this outing is how the order of the planets as we
now know it was once different and that at one point Jupiter and Saturn especially kind of "wandered around" before
settling down into their current orbits. This is yet another "countdown" episode, which seeks to present the viewer
with something like a Top 10 of cosmic calamities, counting down to a patently ridiculous Number 1, a potential "duel"
between Jupiter and Mercury that might wreak havoc on Earth. Emphasis on might—this is yet another episode
in this series where disaster is highlighted, and then a scientist comes along to inform us that the chances are
exceedingly remote.
Nemesis: The Sun's Evil Twin. There are some cynics who might be inclined to laugh out loud at the premise of
this episode, a premise which posits a dim red star (which is only suspected of existing) which every, oh, 26
million years or so triggers untold disasters, mostly by flinging comets from the wonderfully named Oort Cloud toward
the Earth. This is another massively hypothetical episode that nonetheless is rather compelling, and which has some
interesting sidebars, such as the development of a cosmic sleuth system known as WIDE (Wide-field Infrared Survey
Explorer), which, if it's ever launched, should be able to find Nemesis since it reads heat rather than light. There's also
a segment on a world that few have probably heard of, an ancient planetoid named Sedna whose radically changing
orbit may hint at the nefarious activity of Nemesis.
How the Solar System Was Made. Haven't we been down this Milky Way before? This is an undeniably
informative episode, but it just smacks of what is so problematic about The Universe, namely, they just keep
covering the same information over and over in slightly repackaged ways. Here we're once again treated to the
development of our solar system, and the "gimmick" this time is that they use a timeline to chart the course of that
development over 700 million years. This episode benefits mightily from some great looking CGI, which is often almost
three dimensional in its effectiveness, especially as it depicts huge floating rocks in space. There's also some
interesting information about the "proto-planet" that trailed Earth in eons past, Thea. But for anyone who's been a fan
of The Universe from its first episode, this is going to seem like awfully stale material for the most part.
The Universe in 3D is presented on 3D Blu-ray with MPEG-4 MVC encoded 1080p transfers in 1.78:1. (For the record, 2D AVC encoded
versions of all three episodes are also included, as is the norm on these History releases.) Fans of The Universe know that great swaths
of the series are built out of CGI, which one assumes is inherently easy to convert to 3D, and in fact a lot of all three episodes look really
excellent, with some impressive depth and really finely gradated fields which allow the viewer to feel at times like they're in between huge
celestial bodies. Perhaps most surprising about these 3D conversions is how good the talking head segments look. Foreground objects (usually
but not always the main speaker) are clearly placed forward and once again excellent depth of field is on display. All of this said, there are some
curiously flat moments as well, including some sequences that would seem to be custom made for the 3D treatment. A look at Saturn's rings, for
example, doesn't really pop out at the viewer the way one would expect it to, and some of the purely graphical elements are pretty much flat as
a pancake, with absolutely no depth added. The general video quality here is quite good, albeit with perhaps a very slight added layer of
softness due to the 3D conversion. Depending on your equipment, you may be prone to some ghosting here and there, most noticeably on
some of the text that accompanies some of the imagery. Colors remain surprisingly robust throughout the 3D presentation, with some really
beautifully lustrous hues adding to the visual allure.
Perhaps surprisingly, the three episodes in The Universe in 3D have been given a surround sound upgrade from their original LPCM 2.0
presentations (and which the specs on the disc inserts state are still being offered) to DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mixes. There's some decent
surround activity in some of the more "likely suspect" sequences, such as huge asteroids hurtling through space, and scenes of the dinosaurs
meeting their fate. As should be expected, talking head segments and narration are still anchored resolutely front and center. This isn't the
most consistently immersive track History has ever done, but it utilizes enough basic discrete channelization to make it interesting most of the
time. One noticeable
improvement here is in the low end, especially with regard to the bombastic LFE that dots all three episodes. Fidelity is excellent and dynamic
range is appealingly wide.
History might also want to rebrand itself as The Repackaging Network, for it has once again gone back and culled a kind of weird selection of
previously released episodes and then "gussied them up" by putting them each on separate discs and sticking them all in a lenticular slipcase.
Is it worth the money? That will be up to the individual consumer, though as this review goes live, the set can be had for 50% its somewhat
exorbitant MSRP, which probably makes it more appealing to many potential customers. The good news here is that the 3D conversion has been
rather artfully handled. The CGI elements look really great, with planets, plumes of gas, exploding boulders and all sorts of celestial phenomena
moving through a beautifully deep visual field. Even more surprising is the amount of depth in the "real life" talking heads sequences, which
generally look excellent. Balancing these positives is the occasional negative of weirdly flat rendering in sequences that really should have
popped more impressively. The lack of supplements is also distressing. 3D-aholics may well want to check this out, but my hunch is History will
be releasing complete seasons of The Universe in 3D, so prudent consumers may well want to wait for a bit to see what happens.
This November, explore the edges of the cosmic unknown with The Universe 3D. Released by A+E Networks the 3-disc set originally aired on the History Channel and has prevously been released, albeit in 2D. Grab The Universe 3D in stores November 13th.
