'Tour of Duty' season sets
07-11-05, 11:01 PM
#1
Banned
Thread Starter
Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: So. Illinois
Posts: 3,019
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
'Tour of Duty' season sets
For those who liked HBO's Band of Brothers, you might wanna check out the late '80s CBS series Tour of Duty. It consisted of 65 episodes over 3 seasons.
The first season is great. Our platoon is based at a firebase out in the boonies. Filmed in Hawaii, it gave it that look of some serious and typical (Southwest) Pacific vegetation. The sets looked very authenic and varied (more on that later). And the show didn't hesitate to kill off some main characters. Good stuff, all around.
From the second season onwards the show moved to shooting in California. The "bush" scenes were of course really different. You'd think that with more land to work with, they could have found more varied terrain to shoot in, but alas that wasn't the case. The combat action seemed to take place in the same locales over and over. Another thing that made the base settings a bit cheesey is that it's a recognizable set. You can make out power line towers in the background on top of the hills. The second season was short. Only 16 episodes I think. And thank god too, as it was the worst season of the three. Most of the episodes revolved around the love interests of the two main characters, one of which was a psychiatrist and the other a reporter. Very few combat scenes in Season 2.
Season 3 gets much better. Easily the second best season behind Season 1. The platoon gets assigned to a S.O.G. (Special Observations Group) camp. And they get sent on a lot more missions, and instead of your basic olive drab uniforms and M16s, they wear the "tiger stripe" unis and arm themselves with various weapons including AKs. The annoying reporter bitch gets killed in the second episode of the season, so from there on end, the season takes a more serious battle war.
The first season is great. Our platoon is based at a firebase out in the boonies. Filmed in Hawaii, it gave it that look of some serious and typical (Southwest) Pacific vegetation. The sets looked very authenic and varied (more on that later). And the show didn't hesitate to kill off some main characters. Good stuff, all around.
From the second season onwards the show moved to shooting in California. The "bush" scenes were of course really different. You'd think that with more land to work with, they could have found more varied terrain to shoot in, but alas that wasn't the case. The combat action seemed to take place in the same locales over and over. Another thing that made the base settings a bit cheesey is that it's a recognizable set. You can make out power line towers in the background on top of the hills. The second season was short. Only 16 episodes I think. And thank god too, as it was the worst season of the three. Most of the episodes revolved around the love interests of the two main characters, one of which was a psychiatrist and the other a reporter. Very few combat scenes in Season 2.
Season 3 gets much better. Easily the second best season behind Season 1. The platoon gets assigned to a S.O.G. (Special Observations Group) camp. And they get sent on a lot more missions, and instead of your basic olive drab uniforms and M16s, they wear the "tiger stripe" unis and arm themselves with various weapons including AKs. The annoying reporter bitch gets killed in the second episode of the season, so from there on end, the season takes a more serious battle war.
07-11-05, 11:20 PM
#2
DVD Talk Legend
It should be noted that the DVDs are taken from the syndicated versions of the episodes, and have replaced the Rolling Stones song that originally played over the opening credits and most of the other licensed tracks with filler score music.
07-12-05, 11:59 AM
#3
Banned
Thread Starter
Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: So. Illinois
Posts: 3,019
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Originally Posted by Josh Z
It should be noted that the DVDs are taken from the syndicated versions of the episodes, and have replaced the Rolling Stones song that originally played over the opening credits and most of the other licensed tracks with filler score music.
Another thing worth mentioning is that the picture quality on the first two sets was a bit lacking. Not much better than VHS quality. However, this third set has much improved picture. About as good as you'd expect from a fullscreen TV show of that era. And the Dolby 2.0 Mono soundtrack is a bit of a disappointment as well. A show of this nature should have had at least Dolby Surround. Would have really added depth to the battle scenes.
