The Merchandise Guide
US Laserdisc
Compiled by Martin Willey

"Force Of Life" and "Dragon's Domain"

USA: January 1990

"Special Collectors Edition" "Two Complete, Uncut Episodes!"

This laserdisc contained two episodes (16mm prints). The front cover featured a background photo of the Moon and the horizon of Psychon, top (the Eagle is obscured), and the logo over two large square photos from Force Of Life (Zoref stood in NGA3) and Dragon's Domain (the dragon). The rear cover features four smaller photos under the tag "Escape Into A World Beyond Belief" and episode descriptions.

USA: Released March 26th 1991; $29.95 each

A series of 23 video laser discs, each containing 2 episodes (total 46 episodes: the rights to "Bringers Of Wonder"/"Destination Moonbase Alpha" were held by CBS-Fox who refused to give up their rights to the episodes). CX noise reduction, hi-fidelity digital sound. Released in a batch of 16, then 4 more, then the final 3 discs. There were just 300 sets in total. Very poor sales led to rapid deletion.

The sleeve features the logo and the tag line "Escape into a World Beyond Belief", with Year One or Year Two publicity artwork. The first series artwork is the Charlton comics painting by Gray Morrow. The back cover features four photos between the episode descriptions and credits (from the original ITC publicity packs).

The image and sound quality was high, with transfers made from high resolution 35mm prints. However some episodes (notably "All That Glisters" and "The Beta Cloud") suffered from darkness and poor colour control. In addition, the poor quality pressings (at the Philips Blackburn plant in the UK) led many copies to suffer from laser rot (oxidation of the aluminium layer) causing speckles on screen and ultimately making the discs unviewable. In addition, a few episodes (Ring Around The Moon, Collision Course and Dorzak) were cut in order to remove scratches. The quality problems (and use of the Philips plant) were imposed on Image by ITC.