Legend of the Seeker: The Complete First Season DVD

Posted by Michael Weyer on 10.13.2009

Sam Raimi breathes life back into the syndicated fantasy series with a fine showcase of swords, sorcery and good acting.

Legend of the Seeker The Complete First Season
Five-disc DVD set
ABC Studios
946 minutes



　

The early 1990’s were the heyday of the syndicated television series. Before cable TV started to really get into cutting edge original programming, the syndicated markets were the place to see non-network fare. Between Baywatch and the various Star Trek series, the market for non-network shows was pretty large. Things kicked up majorly with the arrival of first Hercules and then Xena which offered wild fantasy fare courtesy of Sam Raimi. It sparked a host of copycats, the majority of which are better left forgotten as more people tried to cash in on the syndicated rush.

The market pretty much fell out a few years back since cable started to intrude and syndicated broadcasters backed away from the now-riskier venture of a full season of shows that might be ignored by viewers. But leave to Raimi to do his best to revive it with Legend of the Seeker, a fantasy epic that’s old school sword and sorcery but with a nice edge that pulls you in. It may not be on the level of Hercules or Xena but it’s still a great ride in a lush presentation.
　

The Show
　
Based on the series of novels by Terry Goodkind, the show is set in a fantasy world divided into the Midland, Westlands and D’Hara. Richard Cypher (Craig Horner) is a young man living in the woods of the Westlands when he chances to see a beautiful woman (Bridget Regan) being chased by a band of soldiers. He comes to her aid but is wounded in the process and his father tells him to go to see Zed (Bruce Spence), an eccentric old man outside of town whom the woman is also trying to find. It turns out that she is Kahlan, a Confessor, one of a class of women trained in magic who has the ability to not only know when people are lying but, with a touch, can “confess” them, making them her obedient servants. Zedd is actually Zeddicus Zu’l Zorander and the two of them have a major bomb to drop on Richard.





It seems D’Hara is ruled by the twisted Darken Rahl (Craig Parker), an evil wizard who, naturally, wants to take over the entire world. Long ago, Rahl was warned of the birth of a Seeker, a legendary champion of justice who would end his rule. He ordered every firstborn son of a village massacred but Richard managed to escape, whisked by Zedd over the magical boundary to the Westlands. Told the time has come to find him, Kahlan is jarred to find that rather than being trained since birth, Zedd thought it’d be better for Richard to learn how to live like a normal person first in hopes the prophecy would be undone. But when a D’Haran soldier kills Richard’s adoptive father and his brother Michael (David de Lautour), the village elder, reveals he knew Richard wasn’t his real brother after all and considers him an enemy, Richard accepts his destiny. Armed with the Sword of Truth, Richard goes with them to find a way to defeat Rahl and his men while facing everything from assassins to bounty hunters to the ruthless female fighters, the Mord-Sith.

Now I haven’t read all the books so I can’t say for sure how faithful they are to the material. But for what we get, the show is a pretty damn good fantasy epic. The first few episodes are a bit plodded as they have to pack in a lot of exposition and introduce us to this world. But once that intro stuff is done, the show starts to gel quite nicely. The best part is how it’s shaped like a book as characters shift in and out and subplots are added on. At first, the quest is simply to find and kill Rahl but as the season goes on, the show introduces a plotline where the trio have to find a trio of mystical books that, if brought together, can either defeat Rahl or grant him immortality and the chase makes up much of the last half of the season. There’s also how the show nicely uses characters. For example, an aid in the pilot is a hunter named Chase (Jay Laga’aia) who helps out Richard and then vanishes. However, he shows up later to reveal how the D’Harans have taken over the Westlands and Richard has to go back to save them, which means clashing once more with Chase. An earlier episode had Rahl using a spell to make Richard believe he was back home and dreamt the whole adventure and meeting a former young love. In that later return home, Richard sees her for real, bringing up issues with him and Kahalan. The writers do a nice job making this fantasy world work in a way viewers can get into.

The key that makes the show work are the two leads. With a flawless American accent, Horner gives Richard the nice flair needed for an action hero. It starts off uncertain of himself and a bit cocky but that works into the story as he does his best to grow into the role. He may be impulsive but also shows a good understanding such as using his knowledge of forests to find a missing Zedd and will be willing to help others since that’s what a Seeker should be for. Regan matches him wonderfully as Kahlan, giving her character the other-worldly edge she needs. She handles the fighting scenes quite well, aided by her costume design and how her sleeves seem to fly about. The attraction between the two is the heart of the show as they soon fall in love. However, a Seeker and a Confessor can’t be together as her power would overwhelm and corrupt him and thus the two are kept apart. It’s a nice dynamic that keeps the sexual tension high even when the leads are obviously infatuated with each other.

Spence is a delight as Zedd, an eccentric who plays the “mysterious know-it-all” card to the hilt but with a nice sense of humor. He’s both parental and insulting to Richard, trying to get him to learn well but making his own mistakes along the way. The actor gives the role a nice power that makes you buy into him as a grand wizard and handles the melodramatic intonations of spells well. He is absent from some episodes on his own mission but gets a nice standout where he returns home to face his brother for the first time in twenty years, bringing up old issues between them of how Zedd seemed the promised child because he was a wizard. For Rahl, Parker is appropriately sinister and dark but has an interesting edge to him. He’s quite smart, often a step ahead of the heroes, showing a smart side to his scheming. It’s also nice that rather than erupt into a screaming rage whenever he gets bad news, he plays it cool which just makes him all the scarier.




The show is rather dark and serious most of the time, lacking the tongue-in-cheek style of Hercules and Xena. Often, there’s the theme of how people are pushed into doing the wrong things for what they think are the right reasons. In one episode, Zedd discovers an old wizard friend is selling potions to fund a rebellion against Rahl but has gotten too much into the power he has. Another has Kahlan trying to get another Confessor to be Richard’s guide, fearing her own feelings for him. However, it turns out this woman has Confessed an entire village, claiming it gives the people the strength to fight soldiers but clearly enjoying them catering to her every whim. A great thriller of an episode has a king desperate to help his people taking on a curse to become a beast that fights off Rahl’s troops but unable to stop it from killing his own people. Another dark one has Richard tortured by a ruthless Mord-Sith named Deanna (Jessica Marias) and pushed to the edge. The show also addresses the questions of good and evil in interesting ways. The best is an episode where Rahl uses a race of creatures as a sort of early day WMD, wiping out villages. Richard goes undercover as a soldier to get one of the devices holding the monsters, intending to use it to wipe out an entire fortress. But he gets to know the commander well and sees him as a good family man who truly believes he’s doing the right thing, making Richard question who truly is right and wrong. It’s nice to see what seems to be an easy-going show tackle some weighty issues like this.

Still, the overall dark mood does drive some interest off the show and makes it harder to get into at times. There are exceptions like “Puppeteer” with Zedd posing as an entertainer for a spoiled princess to get hold of a book and befriending a young girl along the way. The episode “Mirror” is the most light-hearted of the season as a pair of thieves use a magical device to take on the appearances of Richard and Kahlan. There’s plenty of confusion and mistaken identity twists and Horner and Regan obviously have a blast playing different characters. The show does have pretty fantastic elements like living paintings and amazing creatures that work well thanks to good digital effects. But thankfully, the show has the story elements needed to balance that out and make it all entertaining for viewers. You can also see some of the old Raimi players like his brother Ted and Hercules alumn Michael Hurst. The build-up of things is good too so when Richard and Rahl face off for the first time, it feels like a major deal.

The finale may seem a bit rushed despite its intriguing time-travel angle and the nice irony it gives to the fate of Rahl. It’s almost as if the producers were uncertain they’d get another year and so did their best to wrap up this main story which they do manage in a good fashion. Thankfully, the show will be returning and can only improve upon this year. It may be rough in patches but the overall story of the season carries it through as does the good acting and action sequences. It doesn’t treat the audience like fools and takes itself seriously but in a good way. Despite that rough start, the show grows in quality and tighter storytelling as it goes and reminds you why the syndicated market was once so big and at least one series that finds its magic for viewers.


Rating: 7.8 out of 10.0
　

Video: Widescreen 1.78:1, enhanced for 16X9 sets. The show utilizes a lot of moods, dark and bright, along with visual effects and they all come off quite crisp and clear. Indeed, the DVD makes the special effects shine even brighter on DVD to pull you in.

Rating: 9.0 out of 10.0
　

Audio: Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound. In both dialogue and music, the soundtrack is top notch with no need to adjust the volume. Subtitles in French, Spanish and English along with subtitles for the commentary tracks as well.

Rating: 9.0 out of 10.0




　

Bonus Features The DVD comes in a nicely thin case with all five discs in a set of plastic holders so it fits nicely on your shelf. Oddly, the cover features Richard and Kahlan with Chase while Zedd is on the back.

There are four audio commentaries spread throughout the discs. “Prophecy/Destiny” the two-part premiere, has Craig Horner, Bridget Regan, executive producer Ken Biller and co-exec producer Stephen Tolkin. They kick off talking about Horner speaking in his normal accent, the actor saying he was into American movies as a kid and picked it up there. They also laugh about how the first time you see Richard, he’s shirtless and working in the forest. He and Regan discuss the horse riding by both them and their stunt doubles as each wanted to do as much stuntwork as possible. The producers discuss the changes they made from the books such as how there Richard and Zedd knew each other well but they thought it’d be better for the show for them to be more strangers. They point out some stuff like an early Mord-Sith costume and they talk about how heavy the soldier armor can be. Some stuff is interesting like how they wanted to get an actress to portray the living charm Shar but couldn’t make it work and how the actors got into this wild fantasy world.

“Deanna,” has Horner and Jessica Marias who played the title character in the episode. Most of the discussion is on her costume and how hard it was to walk or even bend over in it. Marias had actually read several of the books to get into her character and points out things like how her mystical weapon uses her own screaming when it’s utilized. Horner matches her with how it felt getting beat on and that he really was hanging from his arms on chains for most of the filming. They discuss the lighting and production of it and give props to director Michael Hurst (of Hercules fame) for capturing the psychology of the storyline. A nice bit is during the big fight scene at the end with Horner applauding Marias for managing to make it work in that incredible outfit.

“Puppeteer,” is the best commentary with Bruce Spence and Craig Parker. They have fun with the episode, which was written by Nicki Paluga, the resident Goodkind freak among the writers. The two are friends and have a fun time joking about the show such as it’s “huge” effects budget and suggesting a drinking game for a soldier dying and then showing up alive again two episodes later. There’s good revelations like how Spence was fighting a cold during the episode while Parker had to handle a troublesome wig as Rahl. They both give props to the child actresses in the episode, one who didn’t even tell her schoolmates she was doing the show because she didn’t want to seem a diva. A funny bit has Parker saying that when he threw a box aside on the show, a crew member was supposed to catch it but Parker accidentally hit him in the head with the box. The two men get along great talking about the story and even mocking a major plot hole of the episode for a lively time.
　

Forging the Sword: Crafting a Legend (16:21) is the main making-of doc of the show. Producer Mark Beesley discusses the creation and the casting and how they did their best to capture the flavor of the books. Regan and Horner give a tour of the massive Studio 5 where most of the series is filmed with its large forests and how they shift the same village sets around to create different towns. They do outdoor shooting as well with how it feels filming in New Zealand (“We were smart enough not to muck it up for the rest of us,” one crew member quips) and show how the leads trained in horse riding and fighting. While it would have been nice to see Raimi discussing his return to genre TV, it’s still a good overview of the show.
　

Words of Truth: A Conversation with Terry Goodkind (13:31) is a focus on the author who created the book series. The man is interviewed as his mountain home, an intense figure in some ways but one who enjoys life a lot. He relates how he used to make violins and that gave him time to think and how he enjoys a lot of extreme sports stuff. He built the house with his own hands, keeping to his philosophy that “the harder it is, the more fun it is.” He discusses how he came up with the series, the image of Khalan running through the forest popping into his head and he often walks the forest area near his home to understand the fantasy world better. He gives props to Keith Parkinson, who does the covers for his books and we see him racing cars to get a good thrill with his wife talking about his interests. He seems pretty proud of how the books have come to life on TV and looks forward to seeing more of his work adapted. It’s a good look at the man who created it all and you can’t help but admire his drive and his motto “Be relentless.”

There are eight deleted scenes which are more like extended ones. There’s one from the pilot focusing on the blind witch Adie and how she is forced to aid some soldiers. Many are from the episode “Deanna” with stuff on Khalan and her Confessor friend and the torture scenes. Another expands nicely on Zedd and his brother. None are really necessary by their inclusion but nice to watch nonetheless.

Rating: 8.0 out of 10.0

The 411: While rough in places, the series overall is a great throwback to the fantasy series of old and nicely develops its plots over the season. The acting and effects enhance it so the show clicks as a great escapist treat with the extras fleshing it out and giving viewers a series that enjoys being pure fun.

Final Score:  8.0   [ Very Good ]