Miscellaneous notes today...

After a staggering series of recent commentaries on the "Superman" UCE, as well as last month's release of "The New Adventures of Superman", not to mention the 4th of July holiday smack in the middle of last week, I'm not really prepared with any new reviews at this point. I do have two I'm currently in the middle of working on and should have them available in the very near future, both of which I will briefly allude to in my commentary this week.

First off, let's get to some good release news, one I'm extremely happy about. Mark your calendars for October 23rd, because that's when "Young Indiana Jones" will finally hit DVD! Yes!!! According to TV Shows on DVD, this will be the first of three DVD volumes of the series, so it's quite possible we may see the second and third volumes in 2008, around the time of the release of the fourth "Indiana Jones" movie and its subsequent DVD release, if not sooner. That's definitely good news for me! Unfortunately, that still does not change the fact that Mr. George Luca$ has plans to issue only the re-edited TV-movie versions of the series and not the original broadcast versions with the old Indy bookend segments. Fans just can't catch a break sometimes, you know? Better archive those broadcasts to discs for your personal collections!

Lately, for some reason I've been getting into something my just-turned 11-year-old stepdaughter Rachel really likes: "Hannah Montana". As parents, April and I find this Disney series to be cute, harmless, and overall quite funny with a lot of positive values. Any series in which a father - in this case, Billy Ray Cyrus - would star in and allow his teenage daughter (Miley Cyrus) to star in as well must be an extremely clean show to begin with, and that's a rarity in the world of TV these days. It's good to see the Cyrus' morals standing front and center in this series. I'm currently going through the latest release, "Pop Star Profile", and it's a nice quality release. I'll have my full review ready for posting as soon as I finish watching the last of the episode. The third volume is slated for release October 9th, but I wonder when/if Disney and Buena Vista Home Video will follow all of the other major studios and issue "Hannah Montana" and its other series in season sets. They really should.

I'm also currently going through the latest "Star Trek" DVD release from CBS/Paramount Video, the "Captain's Log Fan Collective", which comes out on 7/24. This is the first "Trek" DVD I've gone through in nearly a year and the first one in nearly two years that I'll be reviewing, so I'm having to shake the ring rust and take a dip back into some familiar waters. Look for that review soon. On one hand, I've pretty much sworn off everything "Trek" related and done away with it all in my house. And there's a part of me that doesn't want to get back onto that particular wagon. On the other hand, I do have this set for review, so it's only polite for me to conduct my review and be done with it, since I have no plans to keep this set.

Just to give you a quick heads-up about the "Captain's Log Fan Collective", there is one pretty significant alteration in the set. On Disc 2 the two-part "Chain of Command" has been re-edited from the original TV broadcasts. If you recall, TNG aired "Chain of Command" as two individual episodes in late 1992, which was duplicated as such on the sixth season set back in 2002. For this release, the episodes have been re-edited a bit. The episodes' production credits have been condensed at the start of Part 1; the end credits for Part 1 have been removed; and the Part 1 recap, main titles, and Part 2 episode credits have been removed entirely from the beginning of Part 2, making this a movie-length story. Why couldn't they leave well enough alone? I hope this does not signal the start of a trend with future "Trek" releases. Go figure.

That's all I've got at this time, boys and girls. Be sure to check back soon for my reviews of "Hannah Montana" and the newest "Star Trek" release, whichever one gets done first. See you then!