Heroes Season One Travels To DVD In August

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Unless you’re one of those rare people who have completely escaped the ravages of popular culture (in which case what are you doing on this site?) you can’t have avoided hearing about “Heroes” at some time over the past few months. The series landed on NBC with a bang and what might have been fodder for the cancellation bin over at Fox somehow not only survived at NBC, but thrived, becoming the #1 new series of the 2006-2007 season.

“Heroes” features a spectacular dynamic storyline of normal people discovering supernatural abilities ranging from healing powers to those of mind control and time travel. The show has been celebrated, mimicked, and even mocked in sketch comedy. Now, the weekend before the final episode of Season One airs, Universal has announced the first season set for “Heroes” (on DVD and HD-DVD) scheduled for an August 28th release and it is incredible.

Television DVD sets are a mixed blessing most of the time. Typically studios consider the hours of entertainment from the show itself to be enough and put little effort into added material. For “Heroes” that certainly could be true – just being able to watch episodes sequentially without a week’s wait would be nice, but Universal has gone all out with this one.

For starters: the Season One “Heroes” set includes a 73 minute uncut pilot for the show that was never aired. The episode is exactly as creator Tim Kring envisioned the show, including a never before seen character. Considering the comments from Kring about swapping out characters on the show and the new “spin-off” anthology “Heroes: Origins” coming this fall, I wonder if this is a chance to see a character that will wind up being used, or the first look at a completely discarded concept.

That unaired pilot is followed by another biggie for the set: 50 deleted and extended scenes. That’s over an entire episode worth of new footage.

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Of course, that’s not all for the seven-disc set. Also announced for the release:

Additional Bonus Materials:

  • The Making of Heroes – From concept to pop culture phenomenon, a behind-the-scenes look at the hottest new series on television
  • Special Effects – The secrets behind the eye-popping visuals that give the Heroes their amazing powers.
  • The Stunts – A back stage look at the show’s hair-raising stunts.
  • Mind Reader – Matt Parkman’s mind reading abilities reveal your inner Hero with a series of simple tests.
  • Profile of Artist Tim Sale - A look at the Eisner Award-winning comic book artist (Spiderman, Batman, Daredevil) behind much of the Manga-influenced artwork used in the show.
  • The Score - Go behind the scenes with Wendy Melvin and Lisa Coleman (of Prince’s The Revolution) as they create their ASCAP Award-winning musical score

Next week’s final episode looks to be quite explosive, so the DVD set will be something to look forward to before the coming of the second season of the show. If nothing else, my TiVo will be thankful to see “Heroes” Season one on DVD and HD-DVD on August 28th so I can finally free up some space.

Rafe Telsch