For those unfamiliar? “The 4400” – overseen by former “Deep Space Nine” showrunner Ira Steven Behr - is an engaging and imaginative sci-fi series about 4,400 people who were abducted – “Close Encounters”-style - over the last 60 years. They’re all returned at once, and each for some mysterious reason has been granted a superpower. Eventually we learned that they were taken and endowed by forces from the future.
Season three of “The 4400” began right after the abductees learned the U.S. government was using chemicals to inhibit their superpowers. A superpowered terrorist cabal called the Nova Group emerged. The series began to utilize longer story arcs and tighter continuity. Characters from the first season – disgraced G-man Dennis Ryland and the Jesus-y superhuman Jordan Collier – returned. 4400 infant Isabelle grew up overnight into a hot, nudity-prone young adult and began acting all horny and evil. The Jeffrey Combs character, Kevin Burkoff, began trying to give himself superpowers with the substance called promicin, which is found in the blood of all of the 4400.
As “X-Men” knock-offs go, this third season represents a strong effort. Not as well-budgeted as NBC’s “Heroes,” certainly, but leagues better than Avi Arad’s syndicated crapfest “Mutant X.”
Extras on the new set include commentaries on six of the 12 episodes, four featurettes, a gag reel and a video introduction.
Season four begins June 17 on USA.
Jason of Star Command, streeting today, originally hit television the same autumn as “Battlestar Galactica,” as the unprecedented success of “Star Wars” continued to grip the popular imagination. “Jason” was crazy expensive for a '70s kid show, but TV execs could not be trusted to think clearly in the new age of Jedi mind trickery.
A spin-off of the Saturday morning kid show "Space Academy," “Jason” began life in 1978 as a weekly 15-minute component (and the only live-action component) of the jam-packed hourlong “Tarzan and the Super Seven” (which also housed “The New Adventures of Batman,” “Web Woman,” “Superstretch and Microwoman,” “Manta and Moray” and "The Freedom Force."). Sixteen of the 15-minute “Jason” segments, co-starring “Star Trek” regular James Doohan, were shot. The following season “Jason” became a standalone series of 12 half-hours.
Sid Haig, fresh from his roles in the blaxploitation actions “Coffy” and “Foxy Brown” and a quarter century before he tackled the role of Captain Spaulding in “House of 1000 Corpses” and “The Devil’s Rejects,” played the main villain of the series, the tyrant Dragos. Dragos was always good enough to provide a steady stream of unmanned drones for Jason to blast.
The packaging on Cagney & Lacey: The True Beginning, streeting today, lies to you. The six-episode first season of “Cagney & Lacey,” like the original TV movie, starred Meg Foster as Chris Cagney. This package contains the show’s second season, the first to star Sharon Gless as Cagney.
Herc’s Popular (And Supersized) Pricing Pantry