Two featurettes, two commentary tracks, deleted scenes for select episodes ---

If “Smallville” continues Clark Kent (Tom Welling) will have to thrown on some spandex and ignore Edna’s (from “The Incredibles”)advice about “no capes” if the show continues. In its eighth season “Smallville” not only has Supes before he became Superman but we also get to meet young superheroes Green Arrow (Justin Hartley)and a number of villains that will reoccur in Superman’s life. ***

For those keeping score “Smallville” during its eighth season crossed over into “Superman: The Movie” territory as Clark Kent works as a reporter at the Daily Planet allowing us to be introduced by Lois Lane (Erica Durance), Jimmy Olsen (Aaron Ashmore)and bringing us closer to the established mythology of the character. While Kent doesn’t don the cape yet, he dons the colors wearing a red jacket and blue shirt reflective of Superman’s later costume. The stage is set for the death of Superman as well as Davis Bllome (Sam Witwer) discovers that he will become Doomsday who eventually kills Superman in battle. ---

Image & Sound:

Unlike the previous Blu-ray release which looked solid but was marred with compression artifacts from trying to squeeze too much content on to a Blu-ray disc, this season of 22 episodes has been expanded to four discs vs. the three of the previous set. There’s a bit more breathing room for content and as a result the image is much improved although not perfect. Colors pop, textures are very nice and detail extremely sharp throughout the set. While there are still some compression artifacts, they aren’t as bad or pronounced as on the previous set. This show would look perfect it Warner had chosen to expand the set to a conventional six disc set. I understand trying to make this cost effective but the short cuts reflected in the image quality aren’t worth it. ***

Audio sounds extremely good throughout with a Dolby Digital 5.1 mix that mimics the DVD set. Again, expanding this set to further discs would allow for lossless audio and we wouldn’t be stuck with the fine if compressed audio we have here. The average consumer won’t notice a difference but an audiophile might.

With a lot of TV shows and movies the special features sell the set for many folks but for the average fan most are happy to have a nice looking transfer of the show. Clearly Warner is aware of this because we don’t get much in the way of special features here. ***

We get a series of deleted scenes all in HD video but stereo audio. We also get two featurettes one which focuses on actor Allison Mack’s directorial debut. ***

The second is on the character of Doomsday which the producers did a very good job of introducing and showing the transformation on the series. ***

We also get commentary tracks for “Identity” and “Legion”. The latter episode benefits from the participation of writer Geoff Johns which allows for a lot of trivia on how he integrated the mythology into the “Smallville” series episode.

Final Words: