Catch up with The Vampire Diaries, The Originals, The 100, Mom and 2 Broke Girls on home video

The 100: The Complete First Season

If vampires, werewolves, witches and ghosts aren’t your thing, The CW network took a detour from the supernatural to science fiction with its newest series The 100. Unlike Star-Crossed, they found themselves with a hit on their hands and the second season launched this fall.

Ninety-seven years after nuclear Armageddon destroys the planet, humanity’s sole survivors live on the Ark, an aging space station experiencing overpopulation and inadequate resources. When faced with difficult choices, the Ark leaders — chief medical officer Abby (Paige Turco), Chancellor Jaha (Isaiah Washington) and the mysterious Kane (Henry Ian Cusick) — decide to send 100 juvenile prisoners back to Earth to test its living conditions. Among them are Clarke (Eliza Taylor), Abby’s bright daughter; the daredevil Finn (Thomas McDonell); and siblings Bellamy and Octavia (Bobby Morley and Marie Avgeropoulos). With the survival of all in their inexperienced hands, the 100 young people must learn to rise above their differences and forge a new path on a wild and dangerous landscape that teems with radioactive waste, turbulent weather and unimaginable predators, or face the ultimate extinction of the human race.

The show turned out to be extremely engrossing and, like The Vampire Diaries, keeps viewers on their toes with the ever-changing plot dynamics. The first season’s 13 episodes are presented on Blu-ray (with Digital HD, DVD sold separately) beautifully. The show’s cinematography is outstanding for a network production, perfectly delineating the two different settings: the space station and the wilderness of Earth. On the station, everything is pretty much devoid of color, mostly blindingly white (although the image is never blown out). My one complaint about these scenes – and it’s not a complaint about the presentation as much as it is the artistic decision of the producers – is the needless artificial lens flares applied to just about every single shot. And it’s not even a J.J. Abrams show! Thankfully the lens flares are not present on Earth, which has a very lush, earthy, colorful palette. The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 is also excellent and comparable to the other Warner Home Video presentations.

The 13 episodes are spread over three discs. Disc 1 contains episodes 1-5, plus the 2013 Comic-Con panel, which took place long before the show aired so details about the season are far and few between. Disc 2 contains episodes 6-9. Disc 3 contains episodes 10-13, a deleted scene for episode 13, audio commentary on the season finale with executive producer Jason Rothenberg and director Dean White, and the Special Features:

• “In the Beginning” (7:13) — Cast and producers discuss creating the show’s mythology and answering the question of why no one has an accent on the ship (when a lot of the actors do in real life).
• “The Ark” (6:37) — A look at the design and effects used to create the 12 space stations that have become The Ark.
• “A New Earth” (6:47) — A look at the visual effects that make up the creatures, disasters and wonders of the earth.
• “Grounders, Reapers and Mountain Men” (7:52) — Wardrobe, makeup and hair departments talk about creating the different survivors on earth.