Time Warp: Season Two Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		2.5
Audio		3.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.0

Time Warp: Season Two Blu-ray Movie Review

Had your daily dose of Mythbusters? Might I suggest this entertaining alternative...

Reviewed by Kenneth Brown July 4, 2010

Ever wonder what happens when an airbag erupts from a car's steering column? When a riled spitting cobra rears back to strike? The sheer damage a high-caliber sniper rifle round is capable of inflicting on a target? The sleight of hand employed by a devious poker player to manipulate a game in his favor? The metal-rending madness that occurs when a car is crushed by a massive hydraulic press? What a ripe watermelon goes through when subjected to a 220-pound Atlas stone? Or, for that matter, what the sturdy tree trunk resting just below the doomed melon is forced to endure? Well then, dear readers, Time Warp is definitely for you. Designed for anyone and everyone who spent their childhood toying with food, scorching ants with a magnifying glass, or shaking their brother's sodas (for science of course), the popular Discovery Channel series features the sort of experiments a kid might dream up (if given thousands of dollars, a vast studio and dutiful staff, high-speed cameras, and all the explosives and combustibles a growing boy could ever need).

Gallagher 2.0

While Time Warp's first season offered budding mad scientists twenty twenty-minute episodes, Season Two arrives with fourteen forty-minute episodes. The trade-off turns out to be a godsend. No longer limited to bite-sized installments, MIT alum Jeff Lieberman and high-speed camera expert Matt Kearney are able to cover more ground, tackle more experiments, and expand the scope of each entry's prevailing themes. What awaits viewers in Time Warp's expansive second season? "Blades and Volts" kicks things off in style with a bevy of blades, skydiving stunts and 200,000-volt jolts of electricity, followed by Filipino fighting techniques and medieval trebuchets in the aptly titled "Slings, Rockets, & Sticks," kitchen mishaps and quick-footed athletes in "Airbags, Sparks, Ropes & Rings," and dirt bikes, chainsaw artists, and a few special guitar-shredding guests in "Metallica." From there, Kearney and Lieberman take on vintage weapons and motorcycle surfing in "Splashes, Guns & Bikes" and daring martial artists and musclebound behemoths in "Arrows, Dogs, Strongmen & Yo-Yos." The episodes are more varied this time around -- to the point that segments occasionally feel disconnected from one another -- but also turn out to be a bit more engaging since our ever-chummy hosts seem determined to mix up the series' formula.

Elsewhere, the team puts the military's latest toys, homemade weapons, and pyro-technicians to the test in "Hot Stuff & Cold Steel," visit Penn & Teller and a Cirque du Soleil troop for improvised fun in "Las Vegas Warped," and investigate the ins and outs of magic' tricks, Instant Science, hand-to-hand combat, and the jungle's most vicious hunters in "Big Cats & Mixed Martial Arts." Yes, towers of flame and instruments of death dominate the proceedings at times, but Time Warp isn't all flash and bang. Unlike other shows invading the airwaves, Kearney and Lieberman take the time to guide their audience through everything on display, carefully explaining the reasons why objects respond and react to external forces the way they do. As Season Two begins to draw to a close, Japanese heavyweights and Boston fire fighters stop by in "Snakes, Sumo & Bocks," bacteria and food collide in "Goop, Goo, Glop & Germs," tankers, stunt vehicles and amusement park rides take center stage in "Coasters, Cars, Cups & Cans," and super magnets, logging and extreme sports are the subjects du jour in "Car Crushing, Lumberjacks & Skateboarders." Finally, the team turns their spotlight on fluid dynamics, propellers, and performance artists in "Blue Men, Propellers, Big Bangs & Viewer Requests," a fitting end to another captivating season.

Slowing microseconds of footage to a crawl, Kearney and Lieberman capture some truly stunning sights. Learn how radically the human body twists and bends to protect itself from injury. Watch as rolling fire consumes everything in its path, swirling and billowing like some hell-bred storm. Uncover the extraordinary in the ordinary. Witness the effects of sneezing and coughing, the instinctual movements and lighting-quick response time of a prowling predator, and the beauty hidden within common household objects. Time Warp has a broad appeal as well. Though a handful of segments aren't geared toward children (some experiments are inappropriate for young eyes), the vast majority of the series is perfect for family viewing (so long as your kids are old enough to understand they shouldn't attempt anything they're about to see). If I have any complaint it's that Kearney and Lieberman resort to gimmicks in several episodes, focusing on a performer or special guest more than the science behind what those performers and guests have to share. Distracting? Somewhat. Cheesy? Most definitely. That being said, such style-over-substance missteps are few and far between, and rarely detract from Season Two's forward momentum. Here's hoping Time Warp's inevitable third season is as amusing, captivating and enjoyable as its first two.

Time Warp: Season Two Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Like Image Entertainment's Blu-ray release of Season One, the Discovery Channel-issued Time Warp: Season Two is hindered by a problematic, altogether uneven 1080i/AVC-encoded transfer. Detail is sharper this time around -- particularly when Kearney and Lieberman stay within the confines of their well-lit studio -- but colors are often unsightly and overbearing, much to the presentation's detriment. Exterior scenes tend to be soft and chalky, choppy and overheated, or unstable and oversaturated, and skintones run a gauntlet of sickly, milk-soaked hues and garish, sunburnt oranges. Black levels are all over the place as well, wrapping objects in rich, three-dimensional shadows one moment and washing away any trace of texture and depth the next. Worse, a host of technical issues assault each and every episode. The Time Warp team's high-speed photography is already prone to inherent anomalies (vertical lines, pixelation, aliasing and reduced clarity, among others), but many more trace back to another culprit: a medicore encode. Artifacting, banding, noise, color bleeding, ringing, crush... you name it, chances are it makes a number of appearances. Season Two isn't unwatchable, mind you, and still bests its DVD counterpart. That being said, adequate simply isn't good enough.

Time Warp: Season Two Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

While the Blu-ray edition of Season One arrived with a decent DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix (courtesy of Image Entertainment), Season Two only offers a standard Dolby Digital 5.1 surround track. Not that there's a significant difference between the two in terms of the resulting sonic experience. Despite packing lossless heat, Season One still sounds like a low-budget science series. Season Two doesn't fall too far behind, providing ample support to the chaos that frequents Kearney and Lieberman's experiments. Dialogue and narration is generally crisp and clean, LFE output manages to make a solid impression, and the rear soundscape, though rather reserved, handles everything that comes its way in stride. Still, it would have been nice to hear every gushing geyser, exploding barrel, splitting watermelon, screaming engine and erupting fireball in all their lossless glory.

Time Warp: Season Two Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Time Warp: Season Two isn't exactly bursting with special features. Not that fans will be left wanting. A season-one highlight reel (HD, 8 minutes) provides a brief but unnecessary overview of the series' first twenty episodes, while an unexpectedly polished collection of high-quality "Deleted Scenes" (HD, 50 minutes) packs some much-appreciated supplemental meat onto this three-disc set's bare bones.

Time Warp: Season Two Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Time Warp's second season is a tad flashier than its first -- resorting to more gimmicks this time around -- but with longer episodes, more involved experiments, and more revealing high-speed photography, it proves to be just as good. Unfortunately, the Discovery Channel's Blu-ray release isn't so successful. Its hit-or-miss video transfer is problematic to say the least, its Dolby Digital audio mix doesn't tap into the series' sonic potential, and its supplemental package would benefit from more material. Even so, Time Warp is an entertaining and educational diversion that's (mostly) fit for the whole family. If nothing else, the Blu-ray edition of Season Two is worth a look.