Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.5

12 Monkeys: Season Three Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman July 27, 2020

In 2015 SyFy launched 12 Monkeys, an exciting new TV show based on a similar concept explored in Terry Gilliam's wonderful 1995 film of the same name. The television medium afforded the show an opportunity to more richly explore the paradoxes of time and the very real consequences of exploiting it. Following seasons one and two, season three pushes the narrative forward with exciting new stories while revealing previously hidden secrets certain to redefine the show's landscape moving forward to its fourth, and final, season.

Official synopsis: In season three, James Cole (Aaron Stanford) and Cassandra Railly (Amanda Schull) embark on a desperate search across time to find the man responsible for the apocalypse, a time traveller who calls himself the Witness. Killing the Witness will mean saving the world. But the journey will come at tremendous personal cost for both Cole and Railly, and call into question new alliances, old bonds, and the virtue of the mission itself.

The show matured on season two and truly finds its place in season three, a season of relentless highlights and unsurpassed story excellence that in some ways -- particularly its grasp of the larger concepts and command of the smaller details -- sees the show exceed even the feature film, though certainly such comparisons are somewhat apples-to-oranges given the different focuses and constraints even with many shared essentials. But season three ups the ante from the previous seasons in every way. The writing is superior, the performances are exceptional, the production values are superb. But it is the expanding mythos that has taken the show from simple (quote-unquote) time travel escapades to complex living organism that has seen it find new layers of subtlety and explosive growth superficially. It's become a living organism of time, blood, love, and loss that few shows can pass for relentless excellence.

This is a show, and a season, that absolutely demands intricate understandings of its previous season stories, beats, and nuances alike. Time travel is never an easy subject, and even the most accessible -- Back to the Future, Star Trek -- demand some understanding of crude mechanics but more importantly the social and, perhaps here in season three more apropos, personal responses and consequences thereof. 12 Monkeys' third season sees the series' key questions answered not with ease but with difficulty, difficulty which is as much inwardly affecting as outwardly surprising. Modern TV show dramas are well capable of the kind of reveals and plot twists and cliffhangers that 12 Monkeys deploys throughout season three, but few are as satisfyingly complex, dramatically rich, and exceedingly consequential as what's found here. It's great stuff.

12 Monkeys: Season Three Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

12 Monkeys: Season Three's 1080p presentation is good, though not quite perfect. Light noise permeates some of the darker scenes and minor, sometimes pushing to modest, compression artifacts are visible. Those who want to scrutinize the picture up close will find the macroblocking a little more distracting, but watching at a normal distance the issue is not seriously pervasive, though still certainly evident to some degree in many lower light scenes. Overall, however, the picture is clear and well defined, yielding firm facial textures and impressively complex props and environments. Certainly the material cannot match the absolute finest major productions for overall visual expressiveness but there's enough general textural complexity to satisfy. The picture is oftentimes bleak and gray, yielding a cold, unwelcoming contrast in many scenes. There are other color grading scenarios in play though. Some scenes push very warm, others decidedly bronze, particularly those which take place in the past. But the palette is at least consistent scene to scene regardless of color timing. Black levels are solid and skin tones are fine within any scene or sequence's parameters. Overall this is good transfer, nothing super high end but it serves the material quite well.

12 Monkeys: Season Three Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack is the only audio option for this set (there are also no subtitle options). The presentation is exceedingly excellent across all elements -- music, action, atmosphere -- offering organic, spacious content with precision fidelity and wonderful front side engagement, supported by balanced back channel output and a healthy, but not overbearing, subwoofer support. Music soars with robust volume and wonderful spacial awareness. Other elements are quite expressive, too, with some wonderfully spacious reverb in some key cavernous locations, such as a crypt at the beginning of the season's final episode. In that same locale in the opening moments, the subwoofer pushes hard with some tight, dense rumbling that's balanced rather than unkempt, deep rather than timid. With some other content nowadays seeming to shy away from extensive subwoofer usage, it's nice to find a track -- and a TV show track at that -- that isn't afraid to push some low end elements for all they're worth. There are some terrific action effects, too. A time jump into World War II in the final episode offers extreme movement as airplanes zip with a tangible feeling of overhead engagement and very obvious surround madness playing out in every direction. Gunfire tears through as well with remarkable impact and clarity. Later in the episode, gunshots rip through the stage in a different place and time, again to superb effect. Additional support elements -- beeping computer consoles and the like -- bring necessary life to several vital locations throughout. Dialogue is clear and exacting, well prioritized and focused in the front-center beyond those surprisingly frequent opportunities for more spacious expansion. This is a wonderful track, one of the best one will find on a TV show.

12 Monkeys: Season Three Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This two-disc Blu-ray release contains several deleted scenes on both Blu-ray discs and trailers on disc two. Unfortunately, the deleted scenes are presented without any titles or other identifying markers other than the episodes to which they belong. Otherwise, it's as bare-bones as a two-disc set can get. There are no DVDs, digital codes, slipcovers, or inner prints. The main menu screen only offers options to select any of the episodes and the deleted scenes included on each disc.

Disc One:

• Deleted Scenes (1080p): Includes scenes from "Guardians" (2:20), "Enemy" (0:50), "Brothers" (3:44), and "Causality" (2:51).

Disc Two:

• Deleted Scenes (1080p): Included are scenes from "Nature" (approximately 1:57), "Nurture" (1:25), "Thief" (1:37), and "Witness" (1:50). Note that there is an encode error on the "Nature" deleted scenes that shows its runtime to be 11:46, but the scene begins at the 9:47 mark. Hitting the chapter skip back button starts the scene at 9:47, but hitting rewind reveals that all of the deleted scenes form disc one are also included here.
• Trailers (1080p): Included are Season 3 Trailer (1:06) and Season 3 Teaser (0:51).

12 Monkeys: Season Three Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

12 Monkeys' third season is in many ways all about the Witness, and particularly the character's identity as much as, if not more so, the character's actions and the wide-ranging consequences thereof. But that character is not the sole focus. Engaging plot arcs and wonderful character beats -- and actor performances -- abound and there's rarely a dull moment or a scene or stretch when the writers were obviously aiming to fill time, so to speak. At 10 episodes, the season is particularly binge-worthy, certainly for length and access but also for the story, the surprises, and the overall quality of the production. Universal's Blu-ray is a very capable, if not overpriced, two-disc set that features a handful of deleted scenes, solid video, and sublime audio presentations. It's clear that the studio decided to cut a few corners between this release and the season two set, but the quality of the program, and the soundtrack, more than makes up for any ancillary shortcomings. Recommended.