enetic engineering is here today. But in the short-lived Fox series Dark Angel, James Cameron's gritty 21st-century vision, genetic manipulation has already evolved to a whole other level, creating a new generation of genetically enhanced humans who are designed to be the ultimate soldiers.
Not surprisingly, the focus of the second and final season of Dark Angel is Max, the exotic, raven-haired beauty with the take-no-prisoners 'tude and martial-arts moves that put Neo to shame.
Season two picks up where season one left off, with Max a captive once again at Manticore, the covert military installation where Max's X5 series of genetically enhanced humans originated. She escapes—with the help of Joshua (Kevin Durand), a gentle bipedal man with canine-like features who was the first transgenic experiment by the man he knows as "Father." And, not surprisingly, Max immediately reunites with her love, Logan (Michael Weatherly), only to discover that she's carrying a virus that's been engineered to kill Logan. She returns to Manticore to find the cure, and upon her escape Max sets the other imprisoned transgenics free. Reuniting with her fellow transgenics—some more mutant than human—is central to Max's mission in the second season. That—and finding out more about the man Joshua refers to as Father.
As the season progresses, Max makes a clear evolution from self-centered girl to self-assured leader. In the final episode, "Freak Nation," her transformation is complete: Suddenly, she's a young woman in charge, a born leader rallying her fellow transgenics to stand up for themselves.
Unfortunately, not everything about Dark Angel's second season develops as finely as the main character herself. Although many of the stories are complex in structure and do well as a stand-alone action showcase, they fail in finding a cohesiveness throughout the season—even when revisiting characters from season one, or raising new elements of the mythology. By the end, not even the writers themselves can fully explain all of the mystical mythology developments (which include a cult led by a government agent that's hell-bent on destroying Max, and the appearance of mysterious runes on Max's body, presumably delivering a message) in their audio commentary.
The six-disc set includes three behind-the-scenes featurettes about the making of the season, and four episode commentaries by producers, writers and actors.
Chaotic commentaries shed light on Dark
The commentary for the season opener, "Designate This," sets the tone for all of the commentaries on this set. Crowded with multiple speakers, the commentary is largely made up of crossover conversation and random comments—and lightly peppered with well-articulated reflections about the making of the episode, and the production of the series itself. "Designate This," for example, has four speakers: producers Kenneth Biller, Rene Echevarria and Moira Kirland Dekker, and director Jeff Woolnough. And the finale, "Freak Nation" (interesting trivia note for Trek fans: the episode was written by Ira Steven Behr and Rene Echevarria), has five speakers (Biller, Dekker, Echevarria, producer Charles Eglee and actor Richard Gunn). (Two of the commentaries, for "The Berrisford Agenda" and "Hello, Goodbye," are slightly less chaotic, with only two speakers apiece.)
The commentary menus are awkwardly designed: Even though the insert says to look under special features, it's really just an option under the episode, and there's no clear way of telling whether the commentary is turned on, or off.
The remaining, anemic special features are on disc six. "Max Resurrected" provides a 15-minute look at the making of season two. Led by Echevarria and Biller, this mini-documentary is jammed with stock soundbites with the actors and producers, and focuses on the characters more than it does on the series itself. Not surprisingly, the segment is produced much like the series—with a quick, frenetic energy; however, while that approach works in the series, it doesn't in the featurette. Creator James Cameron makes an appearance to discuss how he happened to direct the season, and series, finale.
The very short "Making the Manticore Monsters" is a backgrounder on prosthetics with makeup effects head Bill Terezakis and producer Ken Biller. Actor Durand (Joshua) is used as the primary example here. Not worth clicking on is the barely two-minute video "Manticore on the Loose" is just that: a frenetic aggregation of shots of Manticore's transgenics.
The most interesting extra, overall, is the gag reel, which runs nearly four minutes, and is both funny and insightful.
