Righteous Recommendations
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The first season of Batman Beyond has a couple of buying options available mostly depending on which of the other seasons you don't have yet. It's worth noting, though, that there are other releases that include much of the same content. The smaller, older episode collections are obsolete now that the whole season is available, but the “movie” might still be worth a look.
Essentially you have the season by itself, bundled with the rest of the series as individual seasons, and in a series box set. All of them are DVD; there is no high-def release. There are 2 separate “double-feature”releases. Each of those is made of up of 3 episodes which means 6 total per DVD release.
The Season 1 set includes 2 DVD's.
Video:
1.33: This is the TV standard. It's far from perfect, but it's clear and looks good with the exceptions of some noticeable grain and some small flecks of trash.
Audio:
2.0 Dolby: The digital stereo surround sound is clear and strong. There's a bit of bass rumble and enough fill in the back channels to not feel like everything is coming only from the front.
Packaging:
I have a gripe with the packaging. Is there a worse case design than stacking DVD’s on top of each other? No, there is not. It’s a 2 disc set. How hard would it have been to have two trays facing each other? Instead you have to remove disc 1 to get to #2.
The box contains some colorful artwork. It's shiny and full of Batman. What's not to like?
The inside flap offers an episode list with details on the extras.
I do like the interface design. The animation, music, and sound effects are well done.
Extras:
I should point out that an advertisement says this collection has storyboards included. Unless there is an Easter Egg I haven’t found it does not contain any such thing.
-Commentaries: There are 2 episode commentaries which I will detail more in the next section.
-Behind the Scenes: A behind the scenes feature has a panel of the staff talking about the creation of the show. I enjoyed it. It’s well edited with graphics that keep it from being a couple of talking faces the whole time. I was surprised to learn that the concept was originally developed to draw in younger kids. Though Terry is younger than Wayne was in the original series, the dark tone does not strike me as one aimed at 10 year olds. If you think of the levity of Teen Titans and other such shows, that’s obviously for young audiences; Batman Beyond is nothing at all like that. It’s interesting to hear these guys talk about that especially when coupled with the “Rebirth” commentary which gets into other details.
-Score Selections: The music section is good, but could have been great with a slight change. The section has an intro that explains why this feature was included on the DVD. Then a menu appears. Each selection is a few minutes of one of the episodes with nothing but the score playing. Isolated score is one of my favorite DVD features of any release. What would make this truly great would be the scores for the entire episodes rather than small sections. I'll specify which episodes are included in this feature in the list below.
-Previews: Check out some other DVD's you might want to buy. (Also read “please, come spend more money on our products, you know you want to own everything in this list NOW!”)
Easter Eggs:
-Music Video: Perhaps the best extra is the hidden one. On the extras menu highlight Mr. Freeze’s eyes (disc 2). It’s a song Kris Carter made to get the job of composer. This ended up becoming the theme song. It’s not as refined here as the more familiar final version, but I enjoyed it quite a bit. There are Batman visuals behind it though not as impressively cut together as a true music video. There’s also an intro by Bruce Timm.
Other Editions:
Box Set:
If I had known they were going to release the complete series as a box set I would have waited on it rather than buying the seasons individually. The box set has some extra extras with it which appears to be roughly an hour and a half of documentaries, some behind the scenes videos, and an art book. Otherwise you get everything I mentioned above except for different packaging.
Double-Features
The first double-feature is School Dayz & Spellbound. It contains the following episodes: Spellbound, A Touch of Curare, Hooked Up, Golem, The Winning Edge, & Dead Man's Hand (many of these are offered in the “movie” package as extras, one episode is from season 2).
The other one is Tech Wars & Disappearing Inque which contains Heroes, Lost Soul, Splicers, Black Out, Disappearing Inque, & Shriek (some of these are season 2 episodes).
The Movie has its own page, but I'll mention it here for the sake of convenience. You get the 2 part Rebirth pilot presented as one long presentation along with a random assortment of other episodes.
Final Thoughts:
I like having all the Batman Beyond episodes on TVD but had hoped for a little more out of this set. With nearly all of the episode content already available on the “Batman Beyond The Movie” release or the double-feature DVD's if you had a complete Batman Beyond collection up to the point this came out you wouldn't be getting much you didn’t already own (I think “Ascension” is the only episode you would have been missing). Though extras seem a bit slim, you do get something for your money, and they are all enjoyable. If you don't own any of the seasons yet I recommend looking for the series box set. The Movie release has it's merits if you are a die-hard fan, but aside from the formatting of Rebirth on it all previous Batman Beyond releases are obsolete.
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Episodes:
There are 13 episodes clocking in at about 21 minutes or so each. Two of these make up the pilot which is often referred to as the “movie” although they are presented here as individual episodes (check out for my review of “Batman Beyond the Movie” for an alternate presentation).
Each episode is on a single chapter which is annoying. I love the theme song. In fact, I have the whole soundtrack which gets played frequently, but if I’m going to watch several episodes in a row (which I usually do) I don’t want to see the opening every time. Chapter skipping is a lot more convenient than scanning. That's the kind of thing we had to do back in the days of VHS. Isn’t convenience one of the selling points of TVD?
There is a play all option because you deserve it.
1) Rebirth part 1
-Commentary: It’s a shame there aren’t more than two on the set. This one is quite informative and interesting getting into some additional details of topics similar to the behind the scenes feature.
5) Meltdown
-Isolated Score: There is a score selection on disc 2.
7) Shriek
-Commentary: once again it’s good enough to make me wish there were more of them.
8) Dead Man’s Hand
-Isolated Score: There is a score selection on disc 2.
10) Spellbound
-Isolated Score: There is a score selection on disc 2 which I would call my favorite of this group.
11) Disappearing Inque
-Isolated Score: There is a score selection on disc 2