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Special Features
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Millennium marked the second major television series created by Chris Carter, who'd already made his name as the brains behind The X-Files. And, like its predecessor, it shares a lot of the same themes--it's a crime thriller that gradually unfolds into a grand conspiracy involving the government and the fate of the entire world. Agent Frank Black (Lance Henriksen) is a former FBI agent who has transplanted his family from Washington, D.C. to Seattle, after suffering something of a breakdown. He's an expert criminal profiler--arguably the best, thanks to his ability to "see" into the minds of killers--and he fears for the safety of his wife and young daughter. In Seattle, he joins the mysterious Millennium Group, an agency of freelance crime-busters who investigate particularly brutal crimes. As a result, Millennium is downright bleak viewing, as Black jumps from horrific slaying to horrific slaying. Moreover, there's a growing sense of unease about the workings of the Millennium Group, so that in typical Chris Carter fashion, you don't know who to trust. With its pre-Y2K angst and overwhelming darkness, as well as its general humorlessness, Millennium hasn't dated as well as The X-Files. Still, thanks to Carter's vision and Henriksen's compelling take on the tortured Black, it's difficult not to get hooked.
Millennium - The Complete Second Season
The groundbreaking show Millennium was about to take a new, visionary direction in its second season. Millennium could have continued its successful formula of introducing new, apocalyptic "Se7en-esque" serial killers for Frank Black (Lance Henriksen) to hunt down. But as any viewer can attest, it was the exploration of the mysterious "Millennium Group" and Frank Black's role that held the key to the show's potential longevity. And who better to build a mythos for the Millennium than the minds behind The X-Files: producer/writer team Glenn Morgan and James Wong. Stepping in when Chris Carter stepped aside, Morgan and Wong immediately began to focus season 2 not on the killers and their impact on Armageddon, but on Frank Black and his struggle for his personal stability and sanity. The Millennium Group, whose identify and function was never really explored in season 1, now becomes a central entity in season 2 complete with its own Masonic-like mythology.
Millennium - The Complete Third Season
In the third season of Millennium, we find Frank Black (Lance Henriksen) a widower and a single father who is completely disillusioned with the Millennium group and their evil intentions. Hell-bent on revenge, Frank rejoins the FBI, gets a new partner, Special Agent Emma Hollis (Klea Scott), and launches a personal crusade to dismantle and expose the Millennium Group. Interestingly, the visionary, quirky, X-Files mythos-like direction in which the producer-writer team of Glenn Morgan and James Wong took Millennium in season 2 didn't sit well with many fans. Now that a good chunk of the Earth's population had been wiped out by the Group's killer plague, which also claimed Frank's wife Catherine (Megan Gallagher), Chris Carter decided to take the helm once again and redirect season 3 back to the dark, apocalyptic crime-fighting genre in which it was intended. The mythos element is still present, but season 3 is a definite return to the look and feel of season 1 where most of the episodes are individual dark crime stories. The scripts in season 3 are consistently sharp (especially Ken Horton's and Chip Johannessen's), and the interesting, new dynamics introduced could have easily carried the show onward for many more seasons. Sadly, it was never meant to be. Like an apocalyptic metaphor, one of the best-written, best-produced, and most-influential shows of the 1990s would be canceled at the end of season 3, less than one year before the year 2000. Fans were left to wonder about the future of Frank Black, Jordan, and the success of his personal vendetta. Fortunately, The X-Files was still going strong at the time and fans got a bit of closure with The X-Files’ season 7 tie-in episode "Millennium" (included on this DVD set).
Product Description
Disc 2: **Millenium Season 1 episodes (Disc 2) *Kingdom Come *Blood Relatives
Disc 3: **Millenium Season 1 episodes (Disc 3) **Wide Open *The Wild and the Innocent *Weeds *Loin Like a Hunting Flame
Disc 4: **Millenium Season 1 episodes (Disc 4) *Force Majeure *The Thin White Line *Sacrament *Covenant
Disc 5: **Millenium Season 1 episodes (Disc 5) *Walkabout *Lamentation *Powers, Principalities, Thrones and Dominions *Broken World
Disc 6: **Millenium Season 1 episodes (Disc 6) *Maranatha *Paper Dove
Season 2: Disc 7: **Millenium Season 2 episodes (Disc 1) *The Beginning and the End *Beware of the Dog *Sense and Antisense *Monster
Disc 8: **Millenium Season 2 episodes (Disc 2) *A Single Blade of Grass *The Curse of Frank Black *The Hand of Saint Sebastian *The Hand of Saint Sebastian Commentary by Tom Wright
Disc 9: **Millenium Season 2 episodes (Disc 3) *Jose Chungâ??s Doomsday Defense *Midnight of the Century (Holiday) *Goodbye Charlie *Luminary
Disc 10: **Millenium Season 2 episodes (Disc 4) *The Mikado *The Pest House *Owls *Roosters *The Mikado Commentary by Michael R. Perry
Disc 11: **Millenium Season 2 episodes (Disc 5) *Siren *In Arcadia *Ego *Anamnesis *A Room with No View
Disc 12: **Millenium Season 2 episodes (Disc 6) *Somehow *Satan Got Behind Me *The Fourth Horseman *The Time is Now
**The Turn of the Tide: Making of Season 2 **Academy Group: Victimology
Season 3: Disc 13: **Millenium Season 3 episodes (Disc 1) *The Innocents (Commentary by Lance Henrickson and Klea Scott) *Exegesis *Teotwawki *Closure
Disc 14: **Millenium Season 3 episodes (Disc 2) *...Thirteen Years Later (KISS) *Skull and Bones *Through A Glass, Darkly *Human Essence
Disc 15: **Millenium Season 3 episodes (Disc 3) *Omerta *Borrowed Time *Collateral Damage (Commentary by Tom Wright) *The Sound of Snow
Disc 16: **Millenium Season 3 episodes (Disc 4) *Anitpas *Matryoshka *Forcing the End *Saturn Dreaming of Mercury
Disc 17: **Millenium Season 3 episodes (Disc 5) *Darwin's Eyes *Bardo Thodol *Seven and One *Nostalgia
Disc 18: **Millenium Season 3 episodes (Disc 6) *Via Dolorosa *Goodbye To All That *X-Files "Millennium" episode from Season 7
**End Game: The Making of Millennium Season 3 & Between the Lines
Customer Reviews
Chris Carter concieved MILLENNIUM to be like the feature films SILENCE OF THE LAMBS or SEVEN but on a weekly format. No aliens or govermental conspiracies like his X-FILES, but a psychological exploration of the nature of evil, of one man's ability to see into the thought processes of the worst of humanity. Frank Black's gift was not psychic in nature but an accute understanding of the heart of darkness: "I become capability. I become the horror -- what we know we can become only in our heart of darkness. It's my gift. It's my curse. That's why I retired."
Lance Henrikson plays ex-FBI agent Frank Black perfectly, a man who was driven to a nervous breakdown when he realized he could no longer keep his family safe from the evil he was helping to fight. He only returns to work with the help of the Millennium Group and the support of his wife, who realises he can't just sit back and wait for a happy ending. Their symbolic yellow house becomes not just a sanctuary but a fragile treasure in Franks mind, one that is threatened as his investigations continue. Evil takes a personal interest in him, tempting him to join it, and we see the toll his resistence to that evil has on his life.
The psychological aspect is what I believe Chris Carter was more interested in, however when Season two began and X-Files script writers/producers Morgan and Wong took over, they changed the focus away from that aspect and more on the supernatural, conspiratorial and mythological nature of the Millennium Group itself. Over that one season the Group turned from a noble company of ex-law enforcement agents (like the real life Academy Group) into a fractured quasi-religious cult, founded at the time of Christ's crucifixtion, with an agenda to not just wait for an apocalypse but to pre-empt it. At the end of the second season, after some exceptional pieces of work, the writers introduced a deadly ebola-type virus, supposedly manufactured by the group itself, that apparently wipes out half the world. At the end of that season, the world has ended, and the writers effectively changed the concept of the show.
Season three, back now in the hands of Chris Carter, starts off without making any real reference to the virus outbreak, with Frank back at the FBI, until a few episodes in when it's revealed it was only a media panic over a few isolated cases rather than the real apocalypse. The SOUND OF SNOW is particulary a heart-wrenching episode where Frank finally deals with his wifes death. Try as they might, despite some exceptional work, the show never recovers from the loss of the Catherine Black character, the loss of the symbolism of the yellow house, or the change of Millennium Group to religious conspiracy cult. After the Group begin to execute those members deemed too dangerous to their agenda, Frank goes on the run with his daughter Jordan.
These DVD's are still a must buy for any fan of dramatic storytelling, because even the worst episodes are better than 90% of current tv. If you like CSI, 24 and all of the other procedural shows, you'll like this. They're excellently put together with commentaries and documentaries, which especially give you a palpable sense of the frustration felt by the actors and Chris Carter of how great the show could have been if allowed to grow at its own pace. Regardless of any faults, MILLENNIUM is a special show, the level of acting and production elevating it over any inconsistancies of series narrative. It has inspired fans to create a continuation of the show in two professionally scripted Virtual Seasons (VS4 and VS5), with a third (VS6) being written this year (2010), and an ever growing movement in the Back to Frank Black campaign, to take the show to the big screen.
As Lance Henrikson says in the documentary, about missed opportunities, MILLENNIUM still haunts him.
So will this, but for all the right reasons.
Season two still bears Carter's name, but he was busy working on the "X-Files" movie, and consequently left Glen Morgan and James Wong in charge of "Millennium" this particular year. Some fans see the second season as a too-abrupt change of pace from season one, and indeed there is a palpable difference in both content and tone. The show is still dark, but the plot opens up to become a bit more of a standard "X-Files"-like conspiracy show, with the Millennium Group put a bit more front and center. To me, this seems like a natural outgrowth of the first season, so no complaints. And about half season two's episodes are not just good, they're GREAT -- this season is HIGHLY recommended.
Unfortunately, season three is a colossal disappointment. Without giving anything away, let's say that season two ended on, well, a BIT of a cliffhanger, and one that seemed as if it was pushing the series in a very specific direction. The beginning of season three almost totally ignores that intended direction, and if you're one of the people who feel that season two went against the grain of the first season, well, maybe that's a good thing. For everyone else, it just feels like a huge cheat. Again, I don't want to say too much, lest I spoil parts of the plot for newcomers; but suffice it to say that I just DO NOT accept the direction the third season took. It definitely doesn't match with season two, but I personally don't think it matches with season one, either. It's not a complete waste of time, as the production values remained high, Lance Henriksen remained awesome as Frank, and several individual episodes managed to be good ones. But there are also a few that are laughably bad, and all in all, it's just not good.
Still, the first two seasons are absolutely terrific, so this set as a whole is definitely recommended.
Season One focuses more on the killer-of-the-week structure (that also came and went through The X Files as well). This season was the darkest and most horrific (and consequently quite the way to introduce viewers to the show!)
Season Two is my personal favorite. These episodes manage to lighten the load of terror and dread a wee bit and pose more metaphysical inquries; many of which find little or no resolve, leaving the viewer to construe their own meaning. (This is MUCH appreciated by engaged watchers...)
Season Three is like the big comedown after the high. While not bad by any means, it is a bit more tired (as is Frank at this point), relies a bit more on conventional crime solving (although the story arc does pervade this season as well.)
Overall, the series does not "end with a bang, but with a whimper"
People have mixed feelings on how the writers chose to end the dark drama, but the ambiguous nature of the show as a whole is what this reviewer thinks made it so special and welcoming to individual interpretations. Highly recommended to those willing to step into the dark closet and face some heavy issues.
