Tripping the Rift: Season One

Tripping the Rift is part of SciFi's Wednesday, paired up with Ghost Hunters. A computer animated show featuring the voice talent of Stephen Root, John Melendez, and Gina Gershon, it has received its fair share of blame for corrupting the youth of society. Of course, it's also a critical hit, scoring high among internet critics. We received the box set for Season One from Anchor Bay yesterday.

Video:
The quality is top notch, but that's to be expected. While nothing technically difficult is done, what you have here is an extremely confident job from Anchor Bay. All the episodes are blemish free, almost as if the DVD was created directly from the rendering computers used by Cinegroupe.

Audio:
The set sports a 2.1 Dolby Digital audio track which sounds better than it did when it was aired. While there is no rear audio, the front speakers give enough dimension to the image that it sounds as if you're on the bridge of the Jupiter 42. However, for a box that claims uncensored on the front cover, it would've been nice to remove the bleeping.

Extras:
Here is where things go a little south. The only real extras are on the third disk and they're galleries of the characters and random pieces of artwork. However, when put into a DVD drive there are teleplays of all 13 episodes included, a must for any would-be television writer. An interview or two with a couple of the actors, or even the creators would've been welcome. Also, Tripping the Rift first came to my attention nearly four years ago as a six minute downloadable clip. The inclusion of the clip would've been a nice touch.

Final Thoughts:
For those who didn't catch SciFi's original run or fans of the show, I can easily recommend this set. And if you shop around, you can find it for less than $15, which is a hell of a deal for anyone. However, the dearth of extras really kills the longetivity of the set. Overall, it's an average set, but with a little effort it could've been something to truly treasure.

3/5 stars