Review of the french mothership dvd set

I bought my copy in FNAC in Nancy, France, for €69, this shop had a whole stack of them and I also saw them in other shops, so it is widely available.

in my opinion it is the best and most imaginative packaging to date, whoever came up with the idea clearly loves V. Til now Warner bros have treated the releases of V very poorly as if they are embarrased by it, or just can't be bothered, so this release is a refreshing change.

So onto the packaging, the clear box has written in red,on the left side, under the visitor symbol, some Visitor letters (where on earth this came from given that no official alphabet exists I do not know), some of the characters exist in the fan produced alphabet, but when I tried to translate it, it came out as gibberish!

On the right side, again under the Visitor's symbol it says "Nous Sommes Vos amis" (we are your friends)

The actual mothership itself is well sculpted (apart from the thin outer edge on the upper half which is a bit untidy) out of thin but durable plastic,it's 5 and a half inches wide and 2 inches deep, and is in two halves, which are not hinged as I originally thought, but just pull apart. The lower half is just as detailed as the top half. Inside, on a central spindle on the lower half are the 9 SINGLE SIDED discs (a big improvement on earlier releases), sadly though the discs have nothing to seperate them from each other.

V and the final battle are split across the first 3 discs, with the series split across the remaining 6.

The discs themselves each have a differing moving menu made up of clips seguing into each other with a large red V at the forefront which then moves into the centre of the screen and the background fades to black.

The card insert (single sided) has the running times-189mins/255 mins for V and The Final battle, and 15 hours 27mins for the series.

The extras listed are a commentary with kennneth Johnson, a 39 minute interview with Ken -which is very interesting and covers every aspect of his involvement in V, covering 8 key points- His original idea, casting, filming, the music of Joe Harnell, advertising and publicity, reception and ratings, TFB, and how TSG came about firstly as a script then as the novel,and lastly a "making of", (just the same as on the previous releases.)

the set is region 2, and is in french mono, and English mono with unremovable subtitles (very irritating, at least with German dvd's you can watch in english without subtitles) and the picture format format is listed as 1.77-16/9 4/3 colour for V and the Final battle, and 1.33-4/3 colour for the series.

Summing up I would say that this box is a bit pricey for what it is, and is only for real collectors/people who prefer single sided discs/or big kids (like me) who think the mothership looks cool!

Hope this review is helpful.