Review of Phenomenon: The Lost Archives Volume 4

Introduction

The extension of American style 24-hour sensationalist news across the globe has led to almost continual conspiracy theories of one sort or another, fuelled by the wealth of information now available to private citizens via the internet etc.

The Phenomenon Archives are American TV programs, supposedly based on "recently unearthed" government archives. The episodes deal with various topics, including alleged government conspiracies and the supernatural.

This is the third disc and features the episodes Genesis Revisited and Irretrievably Lost: The Search for the Savannah Bomb.

Video

As with the other three discs in the series that I have watched, the video is presented in full-frame and is of variable quality depending on the source material used. The programs are introduced by Dean Stockwell and these segments are of good quality with no dirt or grain. In addition, any interviews filmed for the series are of similar good quality.

Other footage varies in quality wildly, sometimes due to age and sometimes due to it being "camcorder" material.

However, the overall image quality is no better or no worse than other programs of this nature and it is perfectly watchable.

Audio

The soundtrack comes in Dolby Digital Stereo, and performs adequately, with the dialogue being clear and understandable at all times.

There is some generic background music, which isn`t especially exciting.

Features

There are no extras, with just scene selection available from the menus.

Conclusion

Genesis Revisited looks at our solar system, and asks whether mankind is merely retracing the steps of our ancestors who would appear to know a great deal more about the stars and planets than we do. The program includes footage from Russian Mars probes that caused such a stir back in the eighties, along with various theories about life on other planets etc. This is a reasonably interesting program, helped by good archival footage.

Irretrievably Lost: The Search for the Savannah Bomb is easily the best of the eight episodes of the series I`ve seen so far. The program looks at the American nuclear testing program, concentrating on the cold war and the American policies of flying training missions over the United States with live Nuclear weapons aboard bombers. Inevitably accidents happen and this episode looks at the cases of several nuclear devices that were lost in accidents. As suggested by the title, the program centres on a complete nuclear bomb lost just off the cost of Georgia that has never been recovered, despite a search operation at the time of the accident.

The problem with the Phenomenon Archives is the variable quality of episodes included on each disc. These two are pretty good, but other volumes do no offer such an appealing pair of programs.

Overall, this volume has two interesting episodes and as such is the best of the four discs I`ve seen so far. Video and sound are both adequate and the retail price is in the budget bracket at £12.99.