I got the Universe Season 1 DVD boxset (all 20 episodes) recently and have been steadily ploughing through it. I’m a bit disappointed by the extras, because there aren’t as many as I expected. Somehow I got the impression that there was going to be a huge amount of documentary-style moments on set and interviews with the cast, but that’s not true, at least in the Region 2 version. (I don’t know whether the two boxsets that comprise Season 1 in Region 1 contain any additional or different material.) The ‘interviews’ with the cast, despite being titled “Chatting with the Cast” are incredibly brief, feature just the actor talking a bit about his/her character and how they got the role and so aren’t a ‘chat’ at all, and they don’t tell you anything startling, and it’s only in the latter DVDs that we get some further material and some behind-the-scenes footage.

Air is only available as a single combined version of all three parts. Most of the time this is absolutely fine but there are surely going to be times when you can’t watch all three episodes at once, and therefore have to chapter-jump all the way through to where you left off. Also, there’s no warning on the front menu that Air is a single episode, so I pressed “Play all” assuming that I would get the much-heralded extended versions of the three episodes. It soon became clear that there was no extra footage, so I assumed that the additional footage would be on a ‘Deleted scenes’ extra. It was only because I had to stop towards the end of part 2 that I later went into “Episode selection” to find that there are only two options: Air (transmitted version) and Air (extended version) and pressing “Play all” starts the transmitted version. This was particularly annoying, cos I had to go back and start all over again and, much as I enjoy watching Universe, there’s a limit to how soon I want to watch an episode a second time! Also, I can’t see why anyone would want to watch the transmitted version in preference to the extended version, so why is the former even on there?!

I will happily admit that I have quite frequently gone back to the front menu and left it playing for a couple of minutes just to listen to the music playing in the background. It’s frustrating that it doesn’t go on for longer before looping back to the beginning, but the opening few chords on the piano still bring tears to my eyes every time.

There’s a commentary for each episode and I was glad to see that they’d persuaded the actors to do many of them like they did in the first two seasons of Atlantis. David Blue, Brian Smith and Elyse Levesque make quite a good team on several episodes. When Louis Ferreira also joins the group he is a bit loud and too fond of forcing a joke through a far more interesting comment, and he manages to appear both sexist and homophobic with his suggestive comments to Ming-Na about her shower scenes and her kisses with Reiko Aylesworth. Cackling loudly with laughter after saying things doesn’t make them more tolerable, Louis. I would also suggest that doing some of the commentaries while lounging around at Louis’ house and drinking beer made the crew a little too relaxed, and on occasion everyone talking over each other and laughing raucously got a bit annoying.

The commentary for Time (the jungle planet episode) is particularly good because Robert Cooper, the writer and director of the episode, joins David Blue and the two of them give plenty of background information about the development and the filming of the episode.

Unfortunately, the commentaries without either David or Brian but with just other cast members aren’t so good. It quickly becomes clear that the boys are actually interested in the filming process and therefore have talked with the crew and know lots of interesting information, whereas the others apparently just turn up and do the job and therefore know little in the way of background details. There’s no reason why they should learn what goes on behind the scenes, but it does make for rather boring commentaries with a lot of long gaps.

The Kinosodes are shared out amongst the five discs and, on each disc, can be played either as single items or with a Play All option; the first five where Eli is doing a guided tour around various areas of the ship run particularly well as a continuous film. However, if you’re looking for a particular Kinosode it’s impossible to find which one it is simply by looking at the menu because each ‘sode has just a picture which is too small to see and there’s no text to give you a clue. It’s probably quicker to select Play All and then chapter-jump.

There are a few extra Kinosodes which haven’t (yet) been put onto MGM’s website, including interesting ‘vlogs’ from Lieutenant James and from Sergeant Riley. A couple of the others have rather odd topics: for reasons I would never understand if I was on board Destiny, Eli goes round asking people quite uncomfortable questions, like getting people to talk about their favourite meal, often while they’re eating the liquid sludge that forms most of their diet (although it does provoke a hysterically funny response from an annoyed Greer); but even worse he then asks people what their most painful experience was. Admittedly this results in an off-screen moment that was so beautifully emotional that it drove me to tears, but you’d imagine that everyone would just tell him, ”Don’t you think that my most painful experience is being on this bloody ship?!” and that many of them would be clutching him by the throat as they said it!

Also, rather strangely, these new Kinosodes replace some of the ones on the MGM website – numbers 17-20 (What’s That Light?, New Kind of Crazy, Only Run When Chased, and Want Me To Bust Him Up?) are all missing. New Kind of Crazy is the controversial one that says that they found two Kinos on the jungle planet in Time, so maybe TPTB are still arguing about whether that one’s accurate or not, but I can’t imagine there wasn’t room on the DVDs for the other three, so I don’t understand why they’re missing.

The “Hi, I’m Doctor Daniel Jackson” videos from Air part 1 are all on the boxset, together with some extra ones. Some of them are a little over-acted for what they’re supposed to be: a guide to the Stargate programme for new recruits. For new viewers, however, they could be very useful indeed if you can ignore the over-direction of the videos.

The menus are horrific to navigate at times. I like to have the subtitles on but I have to press that option several times before it kicks in, and even then it still shows as “Off” and you can only find out if the subtitles are working by starting the episode (and then have to go back through the menus and try again if they don’t yet work). Trying to use the shortcut of going via the “Display” button on my remote control doesn’t work like it would on many other DVDs. Getting to the “Play all” option on the Kinosodes page is fiddly; and getting to the “Play all” option on the other extras is diabolical, as the items are listed in a circle with the “Play all” option just outside the circle and it’s really hard to persuade the cursor to navigate to it, especially once you’ve entered the circle. Whoever designed the menu layout on this boxset wants thumping.

According to the actors themselves, who were watching the episodes on Blu-ray for the first time while doing the commentaries, that experience is far better than the ordinary DVD ... but then maybe they get extra royalties for every Blu-ray sold!

Oh, and the front cover of the boxset would look a whole lot better if Robert Carlyle’s face hadn’t been airbrushed to death!! He’s wrinkled and craggy, America – deal with it!