Format: 

DVD

Publisher: 

Warner Bros.

Release Date: 

10.06.2009

MSRP: 

$19.95

Number of Discs: 

1

Digital Copy: 

No

The Movie

After Gene Roddenberry's great success creating the Star Trek television series, he tried his hand at another science fiction show. First up: Genesis II, the story of a man named Dylan Hunt, who undergoes cryogenic-like hibernation for what was supposed to be a few days but what turns into over 150 years. The studio decided against picking it up for a full series, and the Genesis II pilot aired in 1973 as a feature-length TV film. It has been largely unseen since then.

The land that used to be America has been mostly wiped out by nuclear warfare and is sparsely populated, consisting primarily of two opposing races: the peaceful humans, called Pax, and the mutant (but not-so-mutant-looking) Tyranians. While Hunt is shaking off his hibernation at the Pax headquarters, Lyra-a, a Tyranian working within Pax, tells him that Pax's self-claimed peacefulness is a facade and that they are actually a race of warmongers. He escapes with her back to the Tyranian headquarters, only to find that the Tyranians are ruthless slave-drivers. Oh, and since he's there, they want him to fix their nuclear generator, but only so they can use it as an energy source -- they promise. The movie follows Hunt as he is pulled back and forth between these opposing races, never truly knowing which side to trust until the end.

Genesis II does not have much to offer other than a handful of moments in which Hunt must make difficult moral decisions. The movie doesn't work well as a warning because its message is as simple as "a nuclear war would be bad," and it is rarely exciting or dramatic. Furthermore, its visuals are dull all around. The most interesting thing you will see here is an attractive woman with two navels. The architecture is not the least bit inventive, and the technologies are boring (see the Tyranians' weapons: batons that cause pain just by touching people). That being said, the feature does have a strong ending, in which the morality of Hunt's final action is placed under the scrutiny of men who have the luxury of retrospect, knowing the history of mankind's destructiveness leading to the nuclear apocalypse and thus having an enlightened understanding of moral utilitarianism. It is a potentially eye-opening moment that may have you questioning generally accepted moral beliefs.

With its premise of a man who suddenly finds himself in a world that he cannot figure out, Genesis II demonstrates the ambition of a creator coming off the heels of a groundbreaking TV show. However, the path the plot takes is simply not engaging. It amounts to a seventy-five-minute guessing game with a moderate payoff. This movie is best viewed as a historical artifact: the rejected work of a science fiction legend. One can see that Roddenberry was trying to do something serious and even important with this show. In the end, though, it was not compelling enough to carry on.

The Extras

No extras. No trailers, commercials, or insert booklets. No nothing.

Video/Audio

For such an old show that Warner Bros. did no remastering of, Genesis II actually looks pretty good. There are some scratches and speckles but not nearly as many as you would probably guess. The lines are clean and the colors are clear. I was expecting VHS quality since this is a Warner Archives release, but this disc is simply on the low end of DVDs. In other words, it's not offensively ugly.

You can't expect much from the audio, either. Straight-up stereo, moderate quality throughout. No subtitles or alternate languages.

Packaging/Menus

This is where the super-bare-bones nature of this disc is most apparent. The movie comes on a DVD-R in the ugly, standard Warner Archives packaging: a blue, streaky cover with a small, low-res screenshot from the show (and I couldn't even find that screenshot in the movie). The menu system is practically nonexistent. There is one screen that has the option to play the movie -- nothing else. The film is split into ten-minute chapters, but there is no scene selection menu option.

Conclusion

For die-hard Roddenberry fans only. It is not difficult to see why Genesis II was not picked up for a full television series, even in the hands of the creator of Star Trek. There are interesting things here from the viewpoint of a science fiction aficionado, but the movie itself offers little enjoyment. This release is entirely lacking of any frills, but that is completely forgivable considering the somewhat obscure nature of the film. For those who want to see Genesis II, it's enough that Warner Bros. is offering it at all (albeit, for a limited time). This is a rare chance to see one of the great Roddenberry's sub-par creations.