Fugitive comes to DVD in a 33 disc set on Nov. 1st 2011 (4 Viewers)

[phenri]

The show just gets exponentially better after those first three episodes. I'm midway into season two with my latest viewing of the series from beginning to end. My favorite show ever and this hard fought for box set from CBS is wonderful.

This show gets my vote as one of the best of all time.

I just finished Season 1, and The End Game was a great way to end it. On to Season 2, with all original music!

 

[Harry-N]

 

[Brian Himes]

Here's a screen capture from the 4th season episode Right In The Middle Of The Season. Now there are supposed to be only three people on this boat. Who is the guy in the lower left corner? Another fugitive?

 

[Dave B Ferris]

^ That's great.

Up until a few days ago, we might have asked Wilton Schiller, who produced the 4th season. Sadly, however, I saw his obit in the paper over the weekend.

 

[hypnohighball]

Looks like a bad guy sneaking up the side of the boat!

 

[jimmyjet]

i assume it was some photographer or person from the film crew ?

 

[Hakan Andersson]

Could it be the one armed man who has suddenly lost his whole body?

 

[Brian Himes]

It's funny, but this is the first real blooper that I've found in the series. There are a few continuity errors like people making certain moves in the wide shots (standing up, putting on a jacket, taking off a jacket, etc) and in the close up they do the exact same thing again. Those I've noticed, but this guy's head just popping into view took me by surprise. He pops his head out, looks up, sees the camera, turns his head and ducks back out of sight. I can't believe that the editor never caught this. It wouldn't have been too difficult to zoom in for a tighter shot to eliminate the guy from the scene. I just happen to have noticed movement in that area of the frame or I wouldn't have ever known he was there. But I'm not a professional film editor either.

 

[Harry-N]

Remember too that we're seeing the total image, edge-to-edge, on the DVDs and our flat screen TVs. Back when this show aired, most of that guy's head was probably just outside of the "safe" area that no-one could see on the roundie, over-scanning televisions of the day. The director probably knew that - and rather than re-film it, which costs money, decided to just let it go, since no-one would notice.

And it took 47 years for someone to notice!

Cool find though!

Harry

 

[stringbean]

Hey guys. I live in the UK. WE only have the first season of The Fugitive. I was going to import from the US seasons 2, 3 and 4 until I read the comments about music replacement. Did the individual season 4 set get corrected though?

Lastly, is it safe now for me to import The Most wanted set?

This one.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008OIQYXM/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_S_img?_encoding=UTF8&colid=2L910RFY1V1VX&coliid=I33JYOP4SG3NPL

 

[stevelecher]

Yes. It is likely safe to order The Most Wanted now. I would probably go with someone like Amazon so you don't get a set that has been on the shelf for a year or so.

Season 4 was pretty good, music wise, when first released. It is perfect on The Most Wanted set. Seasons 2 and 3 were bad and are now excellent. Just starting Season 3 on my latest rewatching of the series from beginning to end.

One blooper I've noticed is in the wonderful episode Running Scared. Donna and her husband are in Fort Wayne, at the airport when they're going to pretend to fly out of town to throw Gerard off their trail. On the loudspeaker, we hear that a flight to Fort Wayne was leaving from gate XYZ, but that's an error since they are in that town.

Anyway, they kept the mistakes to a minimum and I wonder if they knew how good their series was as they were doing it.

 

[stringbean]

Thanks for that. I can order The Most wanted set directly from Amazon (US) so that's what I'll do. I can't ever see us poor folk here in the UK ever getting the rest of The Fugitive complete and uncut so this is our only option.

 

[Gary OS]

Thanks for that. I can order The Most wanted set directly from Amazon (US) so that's what I'll do. I can't ever see us poor folk here in the UK ever getting the rest of The Fugitive complete and uncut so this is our only option.

You won't regret the purchase. Best show ever. Period. The End.


Gary "not that I have a strong opinion in the matter or anything" O.

 

[Hollywoodaholic]

I'm still finding The Outer Limits score music in the 4th season a bit disorienting. It was especially and almost ironically noticeable (and comical to me) when the ominous theme I always associate with the bear or monster lurking and about to attack, was played while the bitchy wife of some African ambassador was approaching and secretly plotting to out Kimble in "Dossier of a Diplomat."

At this point in the series, was the upcoming ending of the series so inevitable and non-motivating that Frontiere just got lazy writing anything new and decided to recycle more and more of those themes?

 

[Harry-N]

I'm still finding The Outer Limits score music in the 4th season a bit disorienting. It was especially and almost ironically noticeable (and comical to me) when the ominous theme I always associate with the bear or monster lurking and about to attack, was played while the bitchy wife of some African ambassador was approaching and secretly plotting to out Kimble in "Dossier of a Diplomat."

At this point in the series, was the upcoming ending of the series so inevitable and non-motivating that Frontiere just got lazy writing anything new and decided to recycle more and more of those themes?

I think it was more a case of Frontiere knowing that THE FUGITIVE was a current, high-rated series, and that he, personally, had done some great scoring work earlier in the decade for THE OUTER LIMITS, a lesser-viewed, now-nearly-forgotten old sci-fi show, and thought the cues worked well here. Say what you will, but those OUTER LIMITS cues worked perfectly in THE FUGITIVE's fourth season. (Though I have to admit that the OL main-theme cue is a bit startling in "Dossier...").

Today, we have the ability to play these episodes any time we want, and over and over again. THE OUTER LIMITS has become a cult favorite, so the music in it is way more familiar to us. Back in the later '60s, we didn't have the luxury of pulling out an OUTER LIMITS episode to watch and were lucky enough to find it as a grainy print on a UHF TV station sometime after midnight.

Harry

 

[stevelecher]

I'm drawing a blank now. Did Frontiere personally even have anything to do with the series, or did the Fugitive producers just use his existing cues? I know it's not laziness on Frontiere's part. He was certainly never commissioned to compose any new music for the show.Personally, I think this music, while in itself fine, along with the color and weaker scripts, makes the series feel much different from the first three seasons. When watching fourth season, I still like it when we get a moment of Ruggolo or other music used earlier.

 

[derosa]

Lastly, is it safe now for me to import The Most wanted set?

This one.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008OIQYXM/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_S_img?_encoding=UTF8&colid=2L910RFY1V1VX&coliid=I33JYOP4SG3NPL

The potential issue I see is the amazon link seems to be for external 3rd party sellers,
and not from their own inventory. This make me less certain exactly what i'd be ordering.
Is the set actually out of print?

 

[Harry-N]

I'm drawing a blank now. Did Frontiere personally even have anything to do with the series, or did the Fugitive producers just use his existing cues? I know it's not laziness on Frontiere's part. He was certainly never commissioned to compose any new music for the show.Personally, I think this music, while in itself fine, along with the color and weaker scripts, makes the series feel much different from the first three seasons. When watching fourth season, I still like it when we get a moment of Ruggolo or other music used earlier.

From what Frontiere says in the extras on the Season 4 and box set interviews, Quinn Martin basically hired guys to write music for some of his series that ended up in a pool of music that the music editor, Ken Wilhoit in the case of THE FUGITIVE, would use as they saw fit, basically "scoring" an episode with music composed and recorded by others.

Dominic Frontiere was listed in the 12 O'CLOCK HIGH closing credits along with THE INVADERS, both QM Productions. That his work for OUTER LIMITS was thrown into the pot just gave Ken Wilhoit some new stuff to work with.

Harry

 

[rebar]

Hey everybody. Way back in June of '13 (on page 106 of this thread) I posted here about my bad experience w/this set and am checking back in w/another post. I hope somebody can give me some guidance here, because believe it or not, I'm still in the wilderness w/this thing, and need advice.

The Fugitive is my favorite show of all time and I still don't own a copy of this set. I'm somehow just paralyzed by either bad luck or confusion, or both, here. I've never experienced anything like it.

Each of the multiple sets I've ordered has been Riddled w/problems, and the famous yellow-sticker-over-the-UPC-code version, which is what I understand to be the corrected version, has just eluded me.

In total, since this whole thing began, I've ordered & received, from various 3rd party sellers and fulfilled by Amazon, FIVE new sets (all old/1st-generation sets w/the 5 discs needing replacement, unfortunately), and had to return them all - the most recent just last week - because they've ALL had variations of the same problems I outlined in my post of 6/13, namely:

In addition to the 5 bad discs covered by the replacement program, each of my sets have contained Multiple discs with issues up the Ass, causing playback problems that for me are just unacceptable deal-breakers.

When I originally posted, at least one other member responded by confirming that one or two of the problems I described were present on his set, too, but if I remember right, it seemed that he was ultimately unbothered by what for him were relatively minor issues that didn't spoil what was the generally okay quality and performance of the set he'd gotten.

Maybe I'm a freak, but to me, scenes that skip ahead in the middle of viewing them, pauses/freezes between episode segments, an inability to scan ahead on fast view, or back in reverse, etc, etc, are unacceptable problems.
And again, I'm talking about discs Beyond the five w/the universally-recognized problems, and covered by the replacement program. The details and all the little variations on these problems I've experienced w/these other discs would just take too long to go into in detail, but it all adds up to my having received seemingly one batch of bad discs after another.

Over the time, I've regularly checked back in here but have found no posts that even remotely mirror my experience. The general pattern seems to be guys getting their sets, ordering the replacements, having no problems w/the set's other discs, calling it good, and living a happy life.
I've of course also seen talk about getting corrected sets (the yellow sticker), and I'm just like, WTF, dude. I just can't seem to connect, here.

So when I just saw stringbean's posts above re importing to England a set being sold by a 3rd party seller on A., I thought I should speak up, again reporting my experience, and also ask for help for myself, because what I'm doing is just Not working:

My thought is that a corrected set will be my best chance for getting a good Whole set.
Does anyone know where I can buy one?

To me, it seems I've been on the wrong track, sticking w/Amazon. I finally realized this after the last return I made (I'm slow, and dumb). That they don't offer it for sale through their own retail service, but only fulfill 3rd party offerings, suggests to me that they know the set's a hot potato w/issues, and don't want the full share of the headaches. Of course you wouldn't think so, going by the recent positive reviews there; again, everybody seems happy as clams.

But my experience tells me that if I order a set there Today, it's an old set, sitting on a shelf since 2012, or whenever this came out, and I just don't want to deal w/that anymore. It seems like going backward if the corrected sets are out there Somewhere; I feel like I'll have a good chance of just jumping over the problems w/these past sets, if I can just get my hands on one of the new ones.

Lastly, I've tried to contact various other online retailers in advance, asking about which set they're selling, the color of the UPC sticker, etc, and it's just a stone wall, no one knowing or caring about what I'm asking, being unable or unwilling to physically check a set in the inventory location, etc. - no one's going to help me Not Buy what they're selling...

So if anyone can help steer me home, I'll be very grateful. Sorry for the length of this, and for the bitterness, etc, but you can tell it's therapy/venting; it's been a long damn saga for me, and it's not over. But any info or direction will be appreciated. Thanks.

 

[derosa]

Maybe I'm a freak, but to me, scenes that skip ahead in the middle of viewing them, pauses/freezes between episode segments, an inability to scan ahead on fast view, or back in reverse, etc, etc, are unacceptable problems.
And again, I'm talking about discs Beyond the five w/the universally-recognized problems, and covered by the replacement program. The details and all the little variations on these problems I've experienced w/these other discs would just take too long to go into in detail, but it all adds up to my having received seemingly one batch of bad discs after another.

Since you didn't mention it directly, how many different dvd players have you tried with these sets?
It's likely that playback issues could be caused just as much by the hardware as faulty discs.