Clevercell
Very disappointing...
LastingAware
The greatest movie ever!
BroadcastChic
Excellent, a Must See
Humbersi
The first must-see film of the year.
Joshua Lawrence Pike
Odyssey Five is a sadly short lived series (just one season). It starts on the space shuttle, then suddenly the earth is destroyed (sort of implodes). Just when they are running out of air a large aliens ship appears. The alien tells them that they are far from the first that had their planet imploded, he has spent centuries going from one system to another. He detects radio waves, then by the time he gets there the planet is gone. This included his home. However there is hope, he can send their minds back, five years back in time. He knows nothing about what is causing it (and one of the five people still alive is dying so time is short) He sends their minds five years back in time, with little more then the bare knowledge of what will happen.While it was rough in spots, the show had interesting plot lines, and interesting characters. There very much is a fish out of water element. Three astronauts, a science writer, and a reporter are not the group you would pick to investigate aliens destroying the earth. That is not the say they are not capable, they are, but they very have to make it up as they go.Its very good, if you like sci-fi you will like this.www.JoshuaLawrencePike.com
tonyd11763-957-387989
This piece of claptrap is so boring and slow-moving that it's no wonder the series failed to get renewed. Convoluted plot lines that make the X-Files look sane by comparison, villains everywhere you turn and no two of them seem to be working together. The operative phrase from the 1960s would be "no redeeming social value".When the Seeker explains how all the societies that he visited were destroyed the same way as Earth it seems obvious that he's the cause and he's sending them back to create the seeds of Earth's destruction. Every episode seems to further expand this premise since every threat that the 'Odyssey 5' conquer seems to cause two more to replace it, just like the Hydra of Greek Mythology.If you absolutely MUST waste time on this series, borrow it from your Library so at least it won't cost you any money.
Knut Torgersen (knutt)
... to quote an old Ian Hunter tune. When I saw this one on sale at my favorite DVD shop, I did some research and found it to be a) canceled and b) rated to be a top of the tops show, so I found out I'd take a chance and added it to my collection.The series hit me like a ton of bricks. For one, they actually had RUDE comments to each other and they dared using f-words! This made the dialog fresh, real and very funny. Dialog, generally, in the show is (well, was) intelligent.The actors is a chapter by itself. All of them do a marvelous job, but I'd like to emphasize that Peter Weller is PERFECT as Chuck Taggart.One other thing about the show that I like is the fact that the episodes are interconnected in such a way that they tell a story, and not like, say, Star Trek Enterprise, where every episode is yet another travel in any arbitrary direction and you can see the episode totally as a standalone. O5 is more like the later seasons of Stargate SG-1: You'd better pay attention or you will miss something.Some guy or committee at Showtime found out that "No, we don't want this", so it got canceled after season 1 finished. Too bad and actually for GOOD sci-fi, a disaster. Odyssey 5 was probably THE best series in this category, and they canceled it. I can only suggest that people reading this that love the show, go over to Manny Coto's fan site (address on his IMDb profile) and register their opinions in the forum, so that Mr. Coto HOPEFULLY does what he say he want to do: Continue or start over.
melwyn
I'm astounded at the number of people who describe this as the best scifi they've ever seen - if that's the case, then god help the whole genre.I just finished watching the "complete" series on DVD. First the good points: the characters are well written, the dialogue is thankfully excellent (because it's a real let down in many shows), the cast are great, and a special mention to the incidental music. It's one of the best scores I've heard and I think Laura Karpman is a genius.The bad points: it is not, as others might have you believe, highly original. In very general terms, the "aliens among us" type of story is one of the oldest of scifi themes, and has been around since the early 20th century. More specifically, the show takes a great deal from "The X Files": they've just changed the shadowy secret organisation within the Government to the shadowy secret organisation within NASA, changed "aliens" to "sentients" and Mulder and Scully to the Odyssey 5 crew. But to describe it as a "complete" series is unfortunate. The DVD release may comprise all the episodes that were filmed, but it is far from the whole story. I watched it with an increasing sense of foreboding as it seemed there was an unhealthy emphasis on character development and "set piece" events that comprised entire episodes, at the expense of the main plot. Of course character development is a vital part, but it should never take first place ahead of the plot. Watching it, I felt as if the plot was moving at a snail's pace.Had I known that it is basically not finished, I would not have bothered investing 15 hours of my life into watching it. There's no such thing as a "great story" that's only half written, and the really frustrating thing is that they could have wrapped it up in 18 episodes with sharper writing and editing. If you like stories to have an actual ending, don't bother with this. It will only make you angry and disappointed.