Product Description

Studio: Paramount Home Video Release Date: 08/28/2007 Rating: Nr

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4534 in DVD
• Brand: PARAMOUNT HOME VIDEO
• Released on: 2004-05-11
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Box set, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 5
• Dimensions: .70 pounds
• Running time: 664 minutes

Amazon.com
Here's where it all began. The first season of Survivor dominated the ratings in the summer of 2000, helped spur the reality-TV craze, and inspired countless water-cooler jokes about getting voted off the island. The first season established the formula that would continue, with sometimes surprising variations, over numerous subsequent seasons: 16 people intended to represent the American mosaic are stranded far from civilization (in this case, the island of Pulau Tiga, off the coast of Borneo), struggle for food and shelter, compete in a series of physical and mental challenges, and at the end of each three-day episode vote out one of their fellow contestants. After 39 days, the one sole survivor who is able to outwit, outplay, and outlast the others wins a million-dollar prize. Because the Survivor craze preceded the craze for complete-season DVD boxed sets, the first season was represented on DVD and video by a 150-minute highlights package called Season One: The Greatest and Most Outrageous Moments. Now, all 13 episodes are available in a five-disc set (the fifth disc is ...Outrageous Moments) that contains every challenge, every political maneuver, every next-episode preview and previous-episode recap, every tribal council including the famous finale, and the reunion show. If you started watching Survivor in the Australian Outback or later, this is the perfect opportunity to see how host Jeff Probst, scheming Richard Hatch, tough truck driver Sue Hawk, ex-Navy SEAL Rudy Boesch, athletic Kelly Wiglesworth, and the others got the ball rolling. If you did watch the first season, here's your chance to relive it, and you also get an enthusiastic group commentary by host Jeff Probst (poking fun at himself) and contestants Hatch (talking the most, which should surprise no one), Boesch, and Gervase Peterson on the first and last episodes, plus some minor featurettes (seven minutes of footage of the contestants leaving L.A. for Borneo, David Letterman's Top 10 featuring the contestants, and 10 minutes of new interviews with Hatch, Boesch, and Peterson). Many reality shows have come and gone in the meantime, but in terms of staying fresh over a long run, Survivor has outwitted, outplayed, and outlasted them all. --David Horiuchi

From the Back Cover
"Survivor: The Complete First Season" is a five-disc box set that follows the first group of castaways as they learn to outwit, outlast and outplay each other to the bitter end. Disc 5 is the disc that was previously released on DVD in January, 2001.

The DVD collection of "Survivor: The Complete First Season" features all 12 episodes from season one plus the 2-hour finale and town hall meeting.

The contestants on "Survivor" first find themselves divided into two tribes: the Tagi and the Pagong. Forced to compete in a series of physical and immunity challenges, the teams come together for ritual "tribal counsel" meetings where players are individually voted off the island by their colleagues. Forced to forge alliances and provide necessities for themselves, the contestants, consisting of Richard Hatch, Colleen Haskell, Rudy Boesch, Kelly Wiglesworth, Susan Hawk, Gervase Peterson, Jenna Lewis, Sean Kenniff, Gretchen Cordy, Greg Buis, Sonja Christopher, BB Anderson, Stacey Stillman, Dirk Been, Ramona Gray and Joel Klug, soon begin to dwindle in numbers, until two teams turn into one and the tensions grow even deeper.

Customer Reviews

The Grand Sociological Experiment of the New Age
In June 2000 the landscape of American television was starkly different than it is now; nearly all shows stopped production in the summer, and aside from a traditional game show fad that was beginning to subside, all programming was scripted fiction.

Then Charlie Parsons and Mark Burnett brought to CBS an idea that, while not entirely original in concept or design, was remarkably different than anything currently being aired in the United States. It was a "reality" show, based on the hit Swedish program "Expedition Robinson", in which a group of strangers were dumped on an island and forced to fend for themselves, and vote each other off one by one. They called their version "Survivor", and it kicked off a TV revolution that does not appear to be going away.

This first season of "Survivor" established all the rules which, eight seasons later, are considered gospel by fans and contestants alike: sixteen players are divided into two tribes where they must build shelter, find food, and compete in challenges. Lose the challenges and you face Tribal Council, where the tribe votes out one of its players, be they the weakest link, the bossiest leader, or the slimiest snake. Eventually the two tribes merge into one where the challenges become individual and the field is ultimately levelled to two remaining players who are judged by their fallen peers. One is left standing to claim the million-dollar prize and the title of Sole Survivor.

With these parameters, sixteen Americans volunteered to be the initial guinea pigs, and were marooned in Borneo. Some were there for the adventure, some for the fifteen minutes of fame, and some for the money. It was, in the end, a game, and those who sought the pot of gold proved the most ambitious. One of the only rules of Survivor is that you cannot conspire to share the prize money. The Pagong tribe, consisting of mainly younger players like Jenna Lewis, Colleen Haskell and Greg Buis, were quite content with this and opted to lay back and let the cards fall where they may. But the Tagi tribe (including Rudy Boesch, Susan Hawk, and, of course, Richard Hatch) discovered early on that you could bend the conspiracy rule without actually breaking it. If they all voted together as a bloc, they'd have the numerical advantage to ensure a slot in the final four or five. You could call it an arrangement, or agreement. They called it an alliance.

The alliance strategy ultimately proved the obvious way to go, and it was perhaps that one aspect of this first season which proved the most influential on the seasons which followed it; nearly every subsequent winner of the game has used a solid alliance to get them to the top. It is not always the ringleader, not always the strongest or smartest. No one person or personality is guaranteed victory in this wholly unique game, because the game is shaped by the people who play it, and no two people are the same. Survivor was an almost instant ratings smash, and the first season finale ranks among the most watched events in recent years, and this can be attributed not to its sex appeal or entertainment quotient, but its curiosity. Random people scheming and plotting to outlast each other in a democratic process. Survivor is, at its core, a microcosm of Western society and politics, a grand sociological experiment of the Pax Americana.

The DVD release of the complete first series allows many fans who have forgotten or did not see the original Pulau Tiga castaways to experience, or re-experience, the show that they fell in love with those four long years ago. And coming with the hindsight of eight sequel seasons (season nine is being cast as of this writing, and producer Burnett and host Jeff Probst are reportedly signed through season twelve), it is a real trip to go back and watch how it all started; when grubs were considered "gross food", sloppily-edited credits gave away future events (giving berth to the wild internet "spoiling" subculture), and "alliance" was considered a dirty word. Probst is shaky here; the job is new to him and there is no edge to his attitude. It is a new experience to him, as it is to everyone else. And all the great moments are here: Greg and his "coconut phone", Sean's alphabetical voting strategy, and of course Susan's infamous "snakes and rats" jury speech, often imitated but never duplicated.

Survivor fans will need a copy of Season One. Others may want to consider this as the perfect place to start catching up on what they've been missing.

Why This Show Works on DVD
Contrary to a popular belief, SURVIVOR is not the kind of show that only works in its first viewing. Yes, as a game show with an unpredictable outcome, the first viewing may be the most entertaining, but what one must consider here is that SURVIVOR remains popular, season after season, because it is the best-produced show on the air. If you have any interest in TV as a creative medium, think about what it takes to produce a show like this: the countless hours of editing to create story arcs amongst the contestants and keep the outcomes unpredictable, the artfully-woven travelogue elements that present the geography and harsh climate of a remote location, the vast creativity and ingenuity required to come up with dozens of well-designed games and challenges that will entertain viewers while truly testing the players. (It looks as if the DVDs themselves could have presented a few more extras, in which the depth of these processes are shared.) SURVIVOR changed the face of modern TV for a reason -- and, to this day, it maintains the professionalism and class that few, if any, other reality programs have achieved.

In fact, I'd argue that watching the series again *after* the first time is the only way to completely grasp what makes SURVIVOR work so well, as being less focused on who is ousted from the island each episode allows the viewer to actually notice the details. New viewers, one-time viewers, and longtime fans alike should all be able to appreciate this set, while purchasing it will most likely determine whether later seasons are released onto DVD as well... so have at it.

(Speaking of later seasons, all of them contain a series of reactions and strategies against the standards set by this season, when the slate was clean and no one really knew how to play. The powerful reactions of the often innocent players, not expecting the backstabbing and deceit that everyone expects from this game now, are completely unique in that respect to this season of SURVIVOR, and remain gripping -- even emotional -- four years later.)

Bring out ALL Seasons on DVD for Fans of the Show!!
I finally succombed to survivor fever back when it was first on tv during the merger episode. By then, I really didn't know enough from the earlier episodes to understand the moronic attitude of the anti alliance group, and to appreciate Hatch. I did not like him for years. However, I got my S1 dvd set this week and I am on disk 3 now. I LOVE THIS. What a great season.

Here are some observations.

Cheesy stuff they don't do anymore, that I think is great in these episodes:

1) the gong going to tribal council
2) the treasure chest full of "money" (my note: what happened to this money during the rainy tribal councils? They never show it soggy)

More on the filming:

During most of the challenges, you can see boats out at sea that are supporting the production. Most of the time, the cruise ship they used for the crew is parked at the horizon, clearly visible in the scene. I heard helicopter noise during the filming of the merger challenge, where pagong lost for the last time to make it an even 5.

It is VERY amusing to watch the voting after the merge. Pagong pagonged ITSELF. This is hilarious. I just finished the episode where Jenna gets voted on by her entire tribe, even though the alphabet voting put greg out.

Another observation: whenever Jenna was on a tribe, the tribe did happy things. Pagong was a happy tribe as was Chapera. I think Jenna is under appreciated as a player on survivor.

I miss them casting a wide age range of players. If they bring that back, it will make the dynamics more interesting. BB's game strategy was a train wreck. Sonja was a great lady. I loved her singing that funny song to hatch.

Gretchen was an interesting survivor, she understood the game, as did Greg. How come we don't hear about these contestants?

If you haven't watched the new dvd set, I recommend that you watch the first CD all the way through WITHOUT the probst et al commentary turned on. Then go back and turn on the commentary and watch E1 all over again listening to the boys talk about the scenes as they unfold. This is great stuff. I wish they had commented on EVERY episode with more of the cast.

This was probably the best $35 i have spent on entertainment in quite some time. I hope they bring all the seasons out on DVD.

What I wish they will do for future sets:

1) after the credits for each episode, then show clips of the voting confessionals and ALL the insider clips that were on the CBS website each week.

2) Have cast commentaries on EACH episode by cast members of that season that you can turn on or off, like they did for episode 1 on this set.

3) Show audition tapes of cast members (I don't know if these are on this set, I am still watching disk 3)

Also for those purchasing this set, don't mistake the plastic on each CD case as something you have to rip off. I was bone headed and discovered AFTER I ripped off the plastic on my case that it was to hold the cover in place. The cd case itself was not sealed in plastic (dah). Oh well.