Customer Reviews

Millennium - The Complete First Season

5 star:		(146)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I'm a professor of English, focusing on mass media and popular culture, so I watch a lot of TV. Having said that, this is the best show I've ever had the pleasure of viewing. The directing, acting, music, tone, writing, and quality of the show is astounding.

I used to watch the show religiously when it was on, and I'd slowly watch my friends and family get turned off by it. The first season was too slow for some, the second too gory, the third, well, you'll have to wait and see. But people couldn't keep up with the harsh reality of Chris Carter's world. They all regret abandoning the show now that it's on DVD, and they've begun watching it again.

Yes, they quit watching because the show was hard. And yes, the show is hard. It makes you think. It makes you feel. It sets up characters, often to kill them off, and make you miss them. Why watch, then, you may ask? Well, when's the last time a show made you feel? Made you sad or angry or worried or made you simply get up and lock your door?

If you want more sappy crappy TV to slide down your throat like everything else in our fast food world, walk away and hit some sitcoms on the big three networks. If you can take a rather hardcore look at crime, demonogoly, and the end of the world, and if you can take actually feeling--emoting in our flood of apathetic televised garbage--then buy this DVD set right away.

Highs:
It's about as cryptic as I remember from my `96 encounter with it and it still has a lot going for it in terms of being something cutting edge for television. Some of the content is difficult to stomach let alone realize it was on TV*. (*See the Pilot)

Lance Hendrickson has that `instant credibility' that is missing from exactly 99.99% of current television. He is a great lead and simply has the exact chemistry the show demands.

The imagery of the show is so unique it is in and of itself a work of art. How many shows could you turn the sound down on and simply `experience`?? Few. Current shows? None.

Megan Gallagher is also a plus, she is beautiful and simply seems at home in the confines of the set. `Jordan`, the daughter is also pretty good at times, but seems to be a bit young for the show. Terry O' Quinn, ahh, the Stepfather return-eth! Great. I love this guy a lot too. The villains are also almost always up to par, which is crucial to a show of this nature. Love the Judge!

Fair extra's, wonderful packaging (much better than the awkward-flimsy-cardboard X-files-junk), the price is spot on, and it has great picture and sound. Wow, I still can't believe I own this!

That there weren't 15 or 20 seasons of the X-files to be made for DVD or this may never have come out... (did all 9 seasons @ $1?0 a pop, really need to come out before this superior show...?)

Special kudos to the young actress who played the young mother in the episode which should have been titled simply... `Angel.' I didn't take the time to find the name in the credits but she really is gifted.

I OWN SEASON ONE OF MILLENNIUM!

Lows:
Few. But here goes...

Ok, the casting seems a bit stiff in terms of the people Lance (Frank Black) works with. They seem fairly `typical TV show' cardboard cut outs. Stiff cop types that seem more like human road blocks/speed bumps than actors, the X-files seems to suffer from this same problem. "I don't know Frank...." You'll hear a lot of... even though he's always right!

Most of the shows are fairly `anti-climatic'.

As much as I love Frank and Katherine separately I must say the chemistry between them is generally lacking. It is serviceable, but often flat. More like a cool professionalism than a marriage. I can understand the character Frank being dark, but there just should be more moments of levity, probably more the writers fault than the actors. The show needs to be somber but that approach is often taken to an extreme.

Waiting another Millennium for season II!

In Conclusion:
If you are even on the fence about this show, don't be. I often have `romantic' notions of old shows I used to watch that sometimes don't pan out (I won't even go into the Land of the Lost DVD fiasco), but on the strength of Lance Hendrickson alone, this is a worthy buy on all counts.

I can honestly say that I have waited a long time for Fox to finally have the good sense to bring the cult hit show Millennium to DVD, and now finally it's here. Created by X-Files creator Chris Carter, Millennium stars Lance Henriksen (you've seen him before in Pumpkinhead, Aliens, Terminator, Near Dark, and he's in the upcoming Alien VS Predator) as former FBI profiler Frank Black who has since moved his family to Seatle. There, he joins the mysterious Millennium group: a seemingly group of crime busters who investigate some mysterious and brutal crimes. However, just like on Carter's X-Files, nothing is as it seems, and Carter weaves a web of conspiracy that it soon becomes clear that Frank doesn't know who he can trust. Henriksen is perfect in his Emmy nominated role, giving what very well could be his best performance ever, and he managed to keep doing it every week until the series' end. At the time the show premiered, Fox was turning out new shows every season to be a double header with the X-Files (remember Space: Above and Beyond? or Strange Luck?), most of which lasted shortly, but Millennium lasted for a good few seasons until it's ultimate end. All in all, die hard fans of the show can now rejoice that Millennium is finally on DVD.

"Noah was an insane man, until the rains came, and that day the flood began. All the people who had jeered showed up. Imagine that scene--the chaos, the violence. People who had taunted Noah just hours before, now willing to commit any vile act... to secure a seat on his boat." -- Iron Lung Man, ep. 13 FORCE MAJEURE

Very few people understood what Millennium was about, but for its fans, it remains a very stirring drama. A lot of critics misrepresent Millennium as some kind of gloomy police drama, when the cases that Frank Black investigated during the course of season one were merely vehicles in which to explore the grayer shades of humanity.

Only about half of the twenty-two episodes during the first season were concerned with just serial killers--far less than critics like to think. Look closer and you'll see that episodes like the pilot, "Gehenna," "The Judge" and "Sacrament" had supernatural/apocalyptic elements to them, which make them far less mundane than some might initially think. ("Gehenna" even had visuals of a winged beast, or Legion as the fans dubbed him, descending from the sky.)

Regarding those other, say, eight or ten serial killer episodes, Millennium addressed the big questions: What made these men? What can society do to stop them? You won't hear the investigators on CSI or Law & Order ask these questions, unless in a glib, sarcastic way. Those programs are all about police procedure. To me, *that's* depressing. When Frank looked 'into the minds of killers,' he was trying to understand them, sometimes even sympathize with them. These killers weren't evil people. They were tragic people that did evil things--most were victims themselves. Millennium gave human faces to ghastly perpetrators. (I recommend Rick Smith's reviews for analyses of individual episodes: http://www.mmreviews.cjb.net)

The latter season one episodes stray from the serial killer motifs. "Force Majeure" involves a man in an iron lung who preaches about a planetary alignment that will have cataclysmic consequences. "Walkabout" sheds light on Frank's past when he participates in a clinical trial for an experimental drug that might suppress his 'gift.' "Maranatha" takes Frank to the Russian district of New York in pursuit of Yaponchik, who may be the Antichrist. And then there's the stunning "Lamentation"/"Powers, Principalities, Thrones and Dominions" two-parter, in which devils and angels aren't merely a concept, but physically exist alongside Frank and his colleagues!

Millennium also isn't relentlessly gory or downbeat. Look at the endings of "The Well Worn Lock," "Powers," or especially "The Wild and the Innocent"--still one of the most uplifting hours of television I've seen to this day. A lot of the show's early work is about criminals taking responsibility, victims learning to heal, and how Frank, and his family and friends, come to an understanding about Why Bad Things Happen. Don't be so dark, critics. Millennium--seriously!--is not.

Season two of Millennium is nothing short of brilliant, but the foundation is laid here. Strong scripts, talented actors, exceptional production values, and timeless themes (the tolls of work on family life, humanity's struggle with evil, temptations of the Devil, faith and religion, corruptions in governments and organizations) make all three seasons of Millennium a MUST BUY. Don't let mistaken critics, or lackluster DVD sets (a show this rich needs more commentary!), dissuade you from owning one of the best shows of the 90's, nay, of all time.

Chris Carter's "MILLENNIUM" was the greatest show in the history of television: PERIOD! This brilliant, "Silence of the Lambs" like weekly TV show on Fox was original, fresh, vibrant and frightening.

On October 25, 1996, Fox Network premiered Carter's latest vision (during the beginning of The X-Files' Season 4). The pilot saw the highest ratings of any Fox program at that time! Soon, the darkness of the show and the bleak storylines each week, ripping the lid off the dark, seamy underbelly of America seemed to get to viewers, and the ratings promptly dropped.

But the show had a loyal and enthralled fan base turning up each week to see Frank Black (Lance Henriksen) and Peter Watts (the incomparable Terry O'Quinn) solving disturbing serial killer cases and apocalyptic codes as the millennium approached.

Season 1 saw such terrific hours of television as "Pilot", "Gehenna" (death cult in San Francisco), "Dead Letters" (murderer in Portland, OR), "The Judge" (creepy man passing judgement on victims), "522666" (mad bomber in DC), "Blood Relatives" (guy goes after bereaved), "The Well-Worn Lock" (disturbing tale of child molestation and incest), "The Wild and the Innocent" (brilliant Bonnie & Clyde road trip), "Weeds" (claustrophobic gated community story), "Loin Like a Hunting Flame" (sexual predator in Boulder, CO), "Force Majeure" (brilliant story of clones readying for apocalypse), "The Thin White Line" (a copycat haunts Frank from his past), "Sacrament" (Frank's sister-in-law is kidnapped), "Covenant" (brilliant story of falsely accused man who confesses to murdering his family in Utah), "Walkabout" (Frank is amnesiac after drug trial), "Lamentation" (Frank's partner is killed by demonic forces), "Powers, Principalities, Thrones and Dominions" (a satanic force continues to threaten Frank and his family), "Broken World" (a man kills horses and escalates to psycho-sexual murders of human beings!), "Maranatha" (the Russian Antichrist is behind shotgun murders in Brighton Beach), and the season finale, "Paper Dove", a part 1 of 2 in which Catherine (Frank's wife played by Megan Gallagher) is kidnapped in the end by her polaroid shooting stalker.

The only one of these 22 episodes which gave me nightmares and trouble sleeping was the disturbing episode 9 "Wide Open" in which a man in Seattle takes refuge in real estate open houses and kills the native family after they're asleep (in their safely secure home). A girl sees him murder her family and becomes mute and traumatized by the experience. This one had me checking all the locks 3 times and even then I wanted to sleep with the light on (I was just shy of my 14th Birthday though)...

"MillenniuM" thrived despite bad ratings, due to an unending support base from fans all over the world. Season 2 went under new management with Chris Carter stepping back and Glen Morgan & James Wong (The X-Files/Space: Above & Beyond) taking over exec producer duties. It was the best 23 hours of television ever, and certainly in the history of this show.

Season 3 failed to garner as much intrigue and involvement, taking Chris Carter back as sometimes writer and Chip Johannessen and the disastrous Michael Duggan (wanna blame him for cancellation?) as exec producers. The story tried to finagle a bit of life out of the end of season 2 (an apocalyptic story which ended with the apparent wiping out of the west coast!) but it wasn't as daring, interesting or involving, still a fine piece of work most weeks and well worth owning for continuities' sake.

"MillenniuM" was ahead of its time. It's 1999-2000 (season 4) end date was never reached officially till a band of united fans wrote 22 brilliant online scripts and week after week gave us something to love and look forward to on the internet. It was a proper ending to the show, recovering as best as possible from the less than stellar season 3.

Now the show is coming to DVD, just 8 years after its debut and 5 years after the end of season 3/online scripts of season 4. But the show isn't over.

Soon, on the internet, a weekly first season of 10 minute short episodes will air under the name "MillenniuM: Apocalypse". It will star a model and be crewed by fans/amateur filmmakers. It will be a low budget DIGITAL webcast series in which we follow the weekly exploits of Jordan Black, all grown up (near future?) as she follows her father's footsteps to the Millennium Group, as well as gains new and improved psychic insights and powers (genetically). It looks terrific, and proves whatever the numbers say, the legacy and fan's love of MILLENNIUM lives on!

I plan to buy Season 1 the day it comes out, and have even taken on a summer job picking raspberries in Seattle, WA to pay for it while looking for a regular min. wage type job. I look very forward to season 2 (9/04!) and also season 3 (2005!).

MILLENNIUM is something never to be forgotten. A CLASSIC!

(P.S. buy Millennium and Carter's Harsh Realm if you want to see Space: Above & Beyond come to DVD next year!) PLEASE!

It's about time Fox decided to release, what was probably the best TV series to ever hit the air ways, Millennium. Thanks to Pete Staddon and his belief in Millennium it's finally coming to DVD. The Fox Execs. need to get their heads out of their butts and go ahead and start making seasons 2 & 3 as this season is going to fly off the shelves.

For anyone who hasn't seen this series your in for a treat. There has never been a TV series of any kind that captured my attention as much as Millennium. I was addicted. If I couldn't be home to watch the show,I had my VCR recording it. "IT WAS THAT GOOD". If you liked the show The Profiler trust me when I say it was a cheap knockoff. Millennium with Lance Henriksen was the Bomb. (...). I would have paid more. Trust me Get this Season! You'll love it! 5 Stars All The Way Baby!!!!!

The X-Files Collection is a worthy hobby and next to Star Trek is certainly one of largest of the television series DVD collections, running an extra two seasons longer than the maximum seven season Star Trek series. Although The X-Files is not the longest running television media franchise, it can boast being one of the longest running SF series airing for nine seasons between 1993 and 2002. Between 1996 and 1997 the X-Files creators made a new type of television show with the same high quality production values called Millennium.

At around 950 minutes per box, you are looking at 3 boxes with approx. 47 hours worth of viewing. So you have 2 days of non-stop Millennium if you get the whole collection. Millennium finished in Season 3 in 1999, a 3 season span is still considered a very good run (when compared to most television shows that only last a season) but paled in comparison to its contemporary X-Files parent than ran for 9 seasons and one movie. There is also one crossover episode with the X-Files. It should be seen last after the end of Millennium Season three and is found in the X-Files Season seven, episode four: Millennium.

The X-Files creator Chris Carter wanted to concentrate on human evil rather than just the paranormal and so developed the idea of a new show with more adult themes than what his mainstream creation, the X-Files, was doing at the time. This meant that instead of aiming at a teenage and family audiences Carter would create stories about extreme iniquity aimed squarely at adults. The result is a very dark, scary and often mind shattering experience. You don't enjoy Millennium, you go through with it.

Frank Black (Lance Henriksen) is a former homicide detective turned private investigator with the Millennium group who hunts killers using his special profiling techniques. The series is set during the end of the 1990s and is focused on the end time events as expected by apocalyptic cults in the run-up to the year 2000. While working on individual cases Frank Black is sometimes teamed up with members of the Millennium group such as Peter Watts (Terry O'Quinn), works alongside Lt. Bob Bletcher (Bill Smitrovich) and often talks about his work with his wife Catherine Black (Megan Gallagher) and entertains his daughter Jordan Black (Brittany Tiplady), both who are being threatened by a mysterious serial killer at large whom Frank cannot trace. Most episodes play along with the theme of Frank Black being called to investigate a case only for his family to become involved while he is trying his best to keep them away from what he does.

The DVD case is nothing special but more importantly the six discs with episodes are firmly in place in a plastic flip case inside a thick season box. Although the inside is slightly flimsy, these DVDs are presented on the cheap and so economically Millennium is sound value for money but the presentation is nothing to brag about and when we get around to seeing what is on the discs we will not be so blown away either. There are usually 4 episodes per disc, and 6 discs in total for a grand total of 22 episodes (last disc has only 2 episodes). There are no commentaries and no bonus material. They could have at least provided us with the Millennium remastered in 5:1 Dolby Digital but have instead just presented the series as it was aired in 2:1 surround. Again, everything here is on the cheap. The transfer quality however is very good for most of it. Since the show was shot in full frame, these dimensions are retained.

Millennium: Season one is as hard as adult dramas can get. It frequently contains sex related crime themes and horror. In many ways the show is more disturbing than expected coming from its X-Files production background. Millennium is devoid of any humour, is often very squeamish and many episodes push the psychological boundaries beyond disturbing. While some episodes are somewhat tame on the gore and psychological peril, other episodes are the kind you wished you never saw. When Millennium pushes the tension factor up it usually decides to go well beyond the 10. For this reason you never know if the episode you are watching will be an interesting one or an episode that just suddenly turns very nasty without warning. It is hard to imagine another television series that hit as hard as Millennium did when it was first aired.

Season one of Millennium is about the Millennium group, cults, troubled profilers, priest murders, body parts, serial bombers, funeral murders, incest, security systems, child kidnapping, sins, rape drugs, related suicides, copycat killers, kidnappers, filicide, hallucinogens, prison escapees, Satanism, animal mutilations, the apocalypse and matricide.

The most popular episodes are Gehenna, The Judge, Weeds, `Powers, Principalities, Thrones and Dominions' and Maranatha. Broken World stands out as probably the most edge-of-your-seat thriller episode that Millennium has to offer. Lamentation has a shocking twist.

Overall Millennium is certainly not for everybody. Even some fans of the X-Files will find that its core theme of sex crimes and violence is as far from Mulder and Skully as you can get, however if you like the production values of the X-Files then Millennium is just that and then some more. Not many people will want to get inside the head of Frank Black but if you find that a tough gritty crime thriller series is your cup of tea then it doesn't get much tougher than Millennium.

I remember watching the "Millennium" premiere way back in `96. I would've had to have been twelve at the time, and though I'd watched "The X-Files" from the very beginning and had long had a predilection for horror-oriented entertainment, "Millennium" proved a bit much. The pilot. . .disturbed me. As did the next episode. And the next, and pretty much every episode I watched of it at the time. Nothin' but serial killers, so it seemed, and the lead was apparently dead as well. It was all just too damned depressing, and I watched it less and less over time. Nevertheless, it did make a strong impression on me, and I never forgot it. Still, I didn't think about "Millennium" too much for many years, but with the recent DVD revolution, nothing is going to be forgotten or unavailable for very long, and I recently got through my long-overdue viewing of the first season. I must say, I'm quite impressed. At nearly twice my prior age, it doesn't even have a shadow of the original impact, but "Millennium" is still an impressively dark, gruesome TV show, particularly in its first season. And, more to the point, it's just flat-out good.

"Millennium" focuses on one Frank Black and his family as they move to a new home in Seattle. Frank is a former profiler for the FBI, and this move represents a new beginning for him, his wife Catherine and their young daughter Jordan. They live in a cute little yellow, suburban house in a picturesque neighborhood with friendly neighbors seemingly transplanted from a `50s sitcom. Still, as a killer-hunter, Frank is intuitively in tune with the darker side of life, and he can't escape it. He hasn't really abandoned his old occupation anyway, and he now works as a consultant with the Millennium group which basically amounts to continuing work as a serial killer profiler, but with a, well, millennial bent. They think that the increase in violent, disturbing crime a symptom of the impending apocalypse, though we don't hear too much more about this during this season. As it turns out, these elements work best when they're just under the surface, adding a subtle, binding element to the season as a whole.

It's difficult to define just what makes "Millennium" so effective and so different from most everything else on TV. It's not one thing, but rather just the overall milieu of the show, an accumulation of a thousand different details. "Millennium" is an admitted "Seven" cash-in, and it generates the bleak tone in much the same way, with darkened corridors and endless rain, with biblical and general religious themes, both overt and covert, with a contrast between an idealized, middle class life and the degeneracy of the world as a whole etc. This final contrast is an aspect which I particularly enjoy. For whatever reason, the ideas of both utter purity and total depravity particularly intrigue. Perhaps we don't have much of either in day to day life, at least not in suburban, middle-class American life, but that just makes it all the more interesting I guess. Still, when it comes to looking at light vs. dark, "Millennium" is much more intimate with the dark. While it's not shocking the way it once was, "Millennium" still proves to be easily the darkest show I've ever seen on network television or non-premium cable. Though we don't get to see most of it it in much detail, we've got plenty of bad stuff: eyes and mouths are shown shut while the victims are still alive; families are slaughtered while the children are forced to watch; clergyman are burned and tortured alive; teens forced to drink the blood of others; organs are stolen from still-conscious victims etc. And that's just a small taste of the unremitting grisliness of the show.

Lance Henriksen's performance as Frank Black is the key to "Millennium". Henriksen doesn't seem to have a whole lot of range, but what he does he does well, and this show contains some of the best work I've seen of his. He has to walk a thin line, since Frank is a quiet, largely humorless and cold figure, but Henriksen still imbues him with a certain amount of life, and never makes him seem bored or indifferent. He isn't dull, but intense and thoughtful Megan Gallagher is Frank's wife Catherine, and she's not as good, though still adequate. Her relative weakness is probably more a fault of how her character was written than how she was performed, but it's a concern either way. She's just a bit of a drag and a worry wort, frankly. I'm not sure what Frank sees in her, honestly, though it may have something to do with her being 20 years younger than him. (Way to go Frank! Put those psychic profiling powers to good use!) Still, even if I don't especially care about her as a character, I buy that Frank does, and that's good enough. The other recurring characters are mostly cops, of sorts, and most of them don't make too strong of an impression other than Terry O'Quinn as Peter Watts, Frank's major contact in the Millennium group. He's not as prominent this season as he'd become, but he O'Quinn still gives nuanced, sympathetic performances which adds a bit more life to the show.

Truth be told, I have a hard time coming up with specific standout episodes. They are all pretty similar, for the most part. And no, not every episode deals with a crazed killer of some sort, but most of them do. The "Pilot" is still particularly effective, with plenty of nasty ideas, though it is perhaps a bit too obviously derivative of "Seven", even as this show goes. I also especially like "The Wild and the Innocent", one of the more unique, episodes, involving a young couples murderous trek across the south in search of their stolen child, and "Lamentation", an episode which initially looks like a typical "Silence of the Lambs" knockoff, but which moves in unexpected directions and helps bolster the supernatural angle of the show which steadily comes into greater play as the season progresses. On the plus side, part of the reason why there aren't many particular standouts in my book is because there are no obvious dud episodes either.

On the downside, "Millennium" doesn't maintain this quality forever. Season 2 sees Carter cease to be much involved, and the show moves in a less bleak, more conventionally "X-Files"-esque direction with some rather bizarre plot developments. It's far from bad, and perhaps this formula would wear thin after a while, but season 2 is still not as good as the first. Still, this is what we've got, and it's more than good enough. Hell, it's pretty surprising that they were able to keep it this unrelenting morbid for as long as they did, so we should consider ourselves lucky to have this much. Anyway, it you're a fan of pitch-black, horror themed entertainment, you'd be pretty damn stupid not to check out "Millennium"

Chris Carter, pressured by the Fox network to create a companion piece to his popular hit series The X-Files, pitched his pilot for Millennium early in 1996. Carter was eager to explore the other side of the horror genre. Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully had spent several years fighting extraterrestrials and monsters, exploring a world of supernatural horrors. Thus, Carter created Frank Black, a behavioral profiler who hunted more terrifying monsters, human monsters. Hyped to the extreme for months in advance, Millennium premiered on Fox with the highest ratings of any premiere the network had shown in its history. Now, in the early days of the twenty-first century, this engrossing series has seemingly been all but forgotten. Fortunately, the series has obtained the DVD release it so richly deserves.

Millennium, unquestionably the darkest television drama of the twentieth century, had no rivals when it came to dramatic storytelling. Both the consistently high production values of the show and its powerful subject matter made this series unique in the annals of television history. Frank Black's unending battle against darkness, week after week, stunned viewers on both intellectual and emotional levels. Never before have episodic stories been so imbued with honesty, emotion, exploration and experimentation. Millennium was, week after week, successful on nearly every level of production. The show's cast and crew were unequivocal. Vastly superior to predecessor, The X-Files, this series had no peers. The first season spent twenty-two episodes exploring the darkest depths of the human soul and the most sickening portions of the human mind. (It has been said that on more than one occasion Fox network employees were nightmare-ridden after viewing uncut episodes of the series.) Perhaps too unsettling, visceral and painfully honest at times, the public seemingly shunned the series following its premiere, leaving only a cult following to invest their hearts and minds in the characters and mythology.

Millennium grew over the course of its three year run to become one of television's most powerful and unique drama series. Frank Black's investigations were continually being shaped by a group of brilliant writers and producers. The show truly deserves a spot in the annals of television history and will always remain prominent in the hearts of its loyal fans.

Thankful we followers are of the announcement that the complete first season of 'Millennium' is now available on DVD! Millennium changed the way I perceive 'unusual' new TV series. I will never understand why they cancelled it but I do know FOX has not come up with another series to equal/surpass it. We need a 'Millenium' now more than ever. Chris Carter should be eligible for the writers Pulitzer Prize for the Millennium series. The show was so unusual that it's eerie content simply pulled you in and at the end of every episode left you anticipating the next. The acting, scripts, photography and timing will never be surpassed by another TV series. I believe 'Millennium' to be the 'Twilight Zone' of OUR time. Thank you, Chris Carter and thank you, Amazon.com for making this all possible and available to we true fans of the show!!