Roswell The Complete Third Season (The Final Chapter)
October 2005 Reviewed by: Rad Bennett Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

Roswell. The name conjures up images of aliens and government cover-up. Were the original sightings merely weather balloons? Or some dark secret that the government covers up on the grounds that the public could not handle it?

This popular television series started out taking a rather lighthearted look at the possibility of aliens living among us. It all begins like this: during an altercation, Liz Parker (Shiri Appleby), a high school student working at her dad’s restaurant, is shot. Max Evans, a fellow student and customer, uses his powers to restore her life, revealing to Liz that he is not of this earth. It turns out that he has a sister, Isabel (Katherine Heigl), and a friend, Michael Guerin (Brendan Fehr), who are also aliens. The three have been sent down to earth in a spaceship that has crashed outside Roswell. Sometime after the accident, they were spotted as three young children wandering in the desert and were adopted by local citizens. Things are never completely clear, but it seems that the kids were cloned and are half alien, half human.

The circle of humans that "know" is gradually enlarged, but for the most part, the first season chills out as a teen romance on steroids, due to the trio’s superpowers. The main story is that of Max and Liz. But events take surprising turns, especially in the second season. A fourth alien, Tess, appears, and it turns out that she and Max were an item back on their home planet, or was it the people they were cloned from? No matter, things get even more confusing than that, as the alien kids, helped by human friends, try to outrun the FBI and various baddies that would do them harm. Somehow, they find time for school and homework. The third and final season brings back the romance and ties up most of the loose ends.

This show is a guilty pleasure for me. You see, I really wish there were benign aliens among us, but I am sure if there were, the government would try to cover it up and its agents would become the bad guys. The cast is attractive, the acting good, the special effects more than adequate. And the high school coming-of-age situations feel quite real. As the show moves from episode to episode, you start caring for the characters and become very involved in their complicated lives.

Moreover, Roswell looks drop-dead gorgeous. It was one of the first shows to be shot in high definition, and the DVDs are sumptuous widescreen efforts. The picture has deep color and sharp contrast. Most TV shows are filmed to be overly bright, but not this one. The sets look like those for a town you’d love to live in. The Dolby Digital 5.1 sound is used intelligently, sometimes to create atmosphere, sometimes a particular effect. In short, this show had some of the highest production values on network television, and the DVD box set conveys them in a splendid way.

There are not too many extras, but several shows have some entertaining and informative commentary from Jonathan Frakes (yes, that Frakes. He was an executive producer on this show after Star Trek: The Next Generation stopped filming) and various cast and crew members. There’s also a retrospective featurette and a dumb special that puts Shiri Appleby on display getting interviewed by fans in Japan.

As with most shows of this nature, start with the first season or you are going to be lost. The first two seasons are available on DVD just as technically fine as the ones in this set. And you can usually pick them up on eBay or Amazon.com shops for half the list price.

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