The Universe in 3D: A Whole New Dimension Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		1.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		2.0

The Universe in 3D: A Whole New Dimension Blu-ray Movie Review

Two out of three are indeed bad.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman January 18, 2014

Will someone at The History Channel please finally face facts and rebrand their network, a la the (incredibly stupid) reboot of Sci-Fi to Syfy a few years ago? (What was up with that change, anyway? Were people pronouncing “Sci” with a hard “c” or short “i” or something?) But it’s been patently obvious now for years that History (as it tends to refer to itself now) is less concerned with recounting events of yesterday and/or yesteryear than it is in repeatedly dealing with disaster, destruction and death, subjects it rather ironically often deals with not in looking backward to events that have already happened (though of course it does do that), but instead positing completely hypothetical events that might occur in the future. Nowhere is this tendency more in evidence than in History’s long running (too long running, some might argue) series The Universe. With a subject as seemingly infinite as The Universe has at its beck and call, the series has been mind numbingly repetitive over its several seasons, again and again dealing with supposed threats like killer asteroids and the like while less and less concerned with items like our neighboring planets (unless those planets can be framed in some sort of doomsday scenario). And so I’d like to offer a few suggestions for History to consider going forward. They could be called Apocalypse, or D&D (Death and Destruction) or perhaps simply SS (Sixth Sense, since all they seem to do is see dead people). As if to ostensibly distracts viewers’ attention from these ridiculous approaches, History has been returning to its Universe well to re-release various episodes in 3D. That’s the case again here, with a trio of two pretty silly and one actually decent episode from years past. For those who are interested in the entire oeuvre of this increasingly tiresome series, you can catch up with various seasons (and 3D releases) here:

The Universe: The Complete Season One Blu-ray review

The Universe: The Complete Season Two Blu-ray review

The Universe: The Complete Season Three Blu-ray review

The Universe: The Complete Season Four Blu-ray review

The Universe: The Complete Season Five Blu-ray review

The Universe: The Complete Season Six Blu-ray review

The Universe in 3D Blu-ray review

The Universe: 7 Wonders of the Solar System 3D Blu-ray review

The three episodes on this disc are:

Crash Landing on Mars. I was hoping time might have mellowed my almost angry response to this episode, which was first aired as part of The Universe: The Complete Season Six. If anything, going back and revisiting it now only makes The Universe’s desperate attempts to frame virtually everything in the guise of some sort of disaster positively maddening. Instead of simply offering a straightforward episode about what we’ll encounter should we send a manned mission to Mars, Crash Landing on Mars lives up to its ridiculous title and views everything through the lens of a mission gone horribly, horribly awry. As I mentioned in my review of the sixth season, the best thing about this episode is its use (brief though it may be) of clips from old sci-fi (ha!) movies dealing with this very subject.

Worst Days on Planet Earth. It would be tempting to surmise that the title of this episode might refer to any given day spent watching The Universe on History, but, no, this is yet another doomsday laden episode from the series’ almost über-apocalyptic sixth season. This episode actually combines two (count ‘em) of this series’ most annoying tendencies: its obsession with horrific cataclysms and its love of “countdowns”. While this episode at least deals with some actual historical calamities (like the Ice Age), it does so in its typically hyperbolic style that makes everything seem (ironically again) completely trivial. That’s one of the salient issues facing The Universe (not to mention other similarly focused History shows): when all you do is deal in doomsday scenarios, the audience become desensitized to the point of apathy.

God and the Universe. Proving that even increasingly lame brained enterprises like The Universe can occasionally recapture a level of interest, this episode is actually one of the better ones (a relative term, to be sure) from the sixth season. Once again, though, the creative staff behind this series can’t quite keep themselves from starting out the episode with a (forgive me) big bang—contrasting the cataclysmic explosive force which ostensibly began everything with the seemingly endless array of life on our lonely little planet. Most of the rest of this episode is a rather interesting look at various emerging cosmological hypotheses (like string theory), which in turn are contrasted with atavistic beliefs in a Divine presence. As I mentioned in the review of the 2D version, this episode takes a pretty bad misstep in its closing moments by getting into Ancient Aliens territory, positing spacemen of yore populating the Earth.

The Universe in 3D: A Whole New Dimension Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Universe in 3D: A Whole New Dimension is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films and A&E Networks Home Entertainment with MVC (3D) and AVC (2D) encoded transfers in 1.78:1. For the record, this particular release loads differently on 3D enabled equipment than on 2D equipment. 2D equipment will actually get an "error" message for moment, indicating the disc has been unable to find a 3D display. Don't panic—after a moment, the 2D version of the disc will simply load automatically. On the other hand, the 3D version loads and then offers options for either 3D or 2D playback within the Play menu. As with previous Universe 3D releases, there are some surprising situations with regard to dimensionality (or the lack thereof). A series this rife with CGI renderings would seem to be a perfect fit for a 3D conversion, and in fact some of the CGI elements look superb here, especially things like massive planets in space exploding or having a series of asteroids or other interstellar material circling them. Some more graphically oriented material also looks fine, as in the Crash Landing on Mars episode, where a sort of "data screen" showing a Mars Rover has a lot of depth, or in the God and the Universe episode, where a brief rendering of a kind of snow globe with the planet inside it also has excellent dimensionality. However, perhaps a surprisingly large amount of the time, the CGI renderings are curiously flat. A lot of the Mars landscapes bear virtually no depth whatsoever, other than the explanatory titles, which are clearly placed in the foreground of the image. The Worst Days on Earth is probably the overall flattest looking of the three episodes. On the plus side (and perhaps just as surprisingly in a positive way), almost all of the talking heads segments look fantastic, with excellent depth of field and clear planes of visual information being very nicely presented. As with previous 3D conversions of The Universe, colors remain bold and lushly saturated.

The Universe in 3D: A Whole New Dimension Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

As with previous re-releases, The Universe in 3D: A Whole New Dimension is offered a nice audio upgrade from the original broadcast versions' LPCM 2.0 to very nicely articulated DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mixes. Since virtually every episode of the series (let alone the three on this compilation) feature ubiquitous explosions and other sonic mayhem, the 5.1's added lower depths are given nice workouts here. There's also decent discrete channelization given to several effects laden sequences in all three episodes. All of this said, The Universe tends to be largely a narrated and/or first person talking head spoken series, which doesn't provide much opportunity for sonic "wow". Fidelity is excellent throughout all three episodes, and dynamic range is very wide.

The Universe in 3D: A Whole New Dimension Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The only so-called "supplements" on this disc are Bookmarks (wow!) and Lionsgate trailers, both of which I refuse to include as scorable material.

The Universe in 3D: A Whole New Dimension Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Someone at History is probably giggling silently to themselves over the soubriquet A Whole New Dimension, for it's become sadly obvious that The Universe has next to no interest in offering much of anything that could remotely be called "new". This is yet another craven attempt to cash in on an increasingly repetitive series. Only the most diehard 3D aficionados should consider getting this, especially if they already own the 2D version of the series' sixth season.