Re: THE FUGITIVE, Season 2, Vol. 1 - Replacement Program Announced
Yeah, I see that now Carab. What happened is, when I submitted my post earlier, your message wasn't on yet, but my post was held for a little bit because I'm new.
It's irritaing to learn all of the TZ music is gone. You would think one of the greatest TV shows of all time would have been treated a little bit better than this. My first exposure to this series was in the late 1980s or early 1990s when it ran on A&E. I remember recognizing it contained music from "The Twilight Zone," and how well that music fit in. It was exciting when the announcement finally came that this series was heading to DVD, and when it finally hit the shelves, fans like me could not have been more pleased. The picture was perfect, the acting suberb, the stories engrossing, the audio clear and the music just like I remembered. It was another stellar offering from CBS/Paramount, who I had come to believe were the best in putting old TV shows on DVD.
I introduced the series to my girlfriend, my son, my nephew, my brother, my mother -- they were all hooked. Who would have ever thought then the whole thing would get bogged down by this music controversy? I was more worried about the length of time passing between release of the volumes. My brother bought S2V1 immediately when it came out, but luckily I had a bunch of other things going on at the time so decided to hold off a couple weeks. He called me up after watching a few episodes and said that, while he enjoyed it, there was something odd about the second season he just couldn't put his finger on. He said there was something missing, and this was coming from a guy who never watched the series when it aired on television.
Not long after talking to my brother, I read the news on the Internet of what happened. As the months went by, I became angrier and angrier about the situation. (Of course, like everybody here this constituted only a small fraction of my life's daily frustrations). Finally, I came to accept that my days of watching "The Fugitive" had ended. I just could not bear to watch it without the music I was familiar with.
But out of the blue, CBS announces S2V2 is coming out. However, there's no word on whether there will be any changes to the music. Everyone assumes it will be more of the Heyes stuff, and the frustrations of the past months are reborn.
Then, a miracle. Much of the original music has been restored and S2V2 will be like the Season One volumes. But that's not all. CBS also will supply replacement discs for S2V1 that has the music restored. Rapture!
Then the details start to emerge. Carab is very optimistic at first, but you could sense his frustration grow with every posting. Like many of us here, he understands the importance of this series retaining its "Twilight Zone" cues. Sure, he believes the replacement discs are a vast improvement, but it is still not what Carab and other fans want. We could have lived with a few Capitol Music Library cues missing, but not the TZ ones.
Will I still buy it? It's too late. Upon reading the tvshowsondvd article, I immediately ordered S2V1 so I could send out for the replacement discs. I'll watch those 15 episodes but I'm certain every time the Heyes music kicks in I'll cringe. It will be like a miniscule shard of glass embedded in my heel that hurts like hell and is hard to remove. I'm sure many fans here will feel the same way.
If S2V2 suffers from the same problems, CBS needs to know -- again -- how badly they are letting down their customers. If the excuse for not including the TZ cues turns out to be CBS was unable to differentiate them from Capitol cues, that would be unacceptable. I can't understand a note of music but I'm still able to recognize when TZ music is used in "The Fugitive." If it's an economic excuse, i.e., CBS doesn't want to pay out any more royalties because it committed to Heyes, that is unacceptable, as well. After the duress caused to fans with S2V1, the problem should have been rectified 100 percent, not 80 percent. And if the reason turns out to be somebody was trying to cover his or her butt and keep the boss happy, that somebody ought to be fired. It would be a shame if all the fans of "The Fugitive" were subjected to Heyes music even on the replacement discs because somebody was trying to avoid getting in trouble at work.
One final thought. If there's such a big issue with the TZ cues, what about the Season One volumes? They're already on the shelves. Everybody already has them. If it was OK to include the TZ cues in the first two volumes, why not the rest of them? Again, none of this makes any sense.
