Invader Zim: Horrible Holiday Cheer (Volume 3)
So what were the unaired episodes like? We take a look.
The other thing notable about episodes onVolume 3: Horrible Holiday Cheer is that the style of art changed drastically. The outlines of the characters are much thicker to give them more of a cartoon look. Creator Jhonen Vasquez and his crew came from a comics background, and season one looked it more than season two.
Dib changed the most, getting a much larger head and his features more exaggerated. Apparently Dib wasn't popular with the Nickelodeon suits (like they approved of anything on this show?) and they wanted him to be funnier. Well, they got their wish.
The episode breakdown on this two-disc set is as follows:
Disc One:
GIR Goes Crazy and Stuff
Dib's Wonderful Life of Doom
Tak: The Hideous New Girl
Walk for Your Lives
Backseat Drivers From Beyond the Stars (unaired)
The Girl Who Cried Gnome (unaired)
Dibship Rising (unaired)
Disc Two:
Vindicated! (unaired)
The Voting of the Doomed (unaired)
Mortos der Soulstealer (unaired)
ZIM Eats Waffles (unaired)
Gaz, Taster of Pork (unaired)
The Frycook What Came from All that Space (unaired)
The Most Horrible X-mas Ever
The Most Horrible X-mas Ever is here in all of its unedited glory. Nick couldn't deal with the Christmas episode that I won't even begin to describe and forced Vasquez to edit it down. Because this was the only episode from season two to episode, we had a new character with no explanation - Minimoose.
Minimoose is a small, bucktoothed purple moose who just squeaks and floats in the air. He was created by ZIM to be a weapon of mass destruction, with weapons hidden in his nubs. He was supposed to debut in an episode calledNubs of Doom but that episode isn't on this set.
GIR Goes Crazy and Stuff was funny because GIR did just that. He went psycho and even ZIM couldn't control him.The Girl Who Cried Gnome features a freaky Girl Scout-type selling cookies who arrives at ZIM's door and gets stuck on his lawn, which leaves ZIM in a quandary, as for him to save her means exposing his identity.
The funniest, and probably grossest, isThe Frycook What Came from All that Space. ZIM's former boss tracks him down on Earth and yanks him back to the plant Foodcourtia, where ZIM worked before running off on his mission. He's forced ZIM to work on the food court planet for the upcoming 20-year-long Foodening, and ZIM has a week to escape.
Once again, I'm left wondering what Nick executives were thinking, signing up a cartoon like this. They should have punted it over the Spike TV where it might have thrived, instead of being cancelled.
Score: 7 out of 10
The Video
Presented in full screen video as it was broadcast,Invader Zim Volume 3: Horrible Holiday Cheer, this package is a slight improvement over previous ZIM sets. The new color palette Vasquez and company adopted is reproduced beautifully. Everything is rich, dark and vivid and really stands out nicely.
Most impressive is how few aliasing combing problems pop up. Media Blasters tends to have this problem even with their anamorphic stuff, but this set, in full screen, is the best-looking of the bunch.
Edge enhancement was minimal to non-existent and there were no notable compression problems. Overall, it's a much better set.
Score: 7 out of 10
Languages and Audio
All you get is an English or Spanish two-channel audio mix with subtitles in Irken, meaning you can't read a word of it. The audio gets the job done, just don't look to use this as a demo disc. There's a few instances of positional audio but mostly it's talking (actually, screaming)
Voices are all clean and free of distortion and pretty much confined to the center channel. There's slight diffusion of the voices across the front channel, but nothing serious. The commentary tracks and bonus features are far worse, with the voices sounding totally disembodied.
Score: 6 out of 10
Packaging and Extras
Media-Blasters uses a really nice Amaray case with a locking mechanism that does a far better job of holding the disc in place and keeping it from coming loose. Wish the major studios would uses these. There's an insert listing the episodes and extras on each episode.
It's pretty easy to follow, since every episode has pencil sketch animatics and a commentary track. The problem with the commentaries is the participants don't introduce themselves. Yes, it's Jhonen Vasquez and Rikki Simmons on almost every commentary but I'm never sure who the other participants are.
The commentaries don't add a whole lot, either. A lot of time it's just laughing at the jokes. Occasionally they lend some anecdotes, like that Nick executives weren't keen on the Gir going psycho episode because he was the only cute character in the whole show.
The only extra is a 14 minute interview with the production staff, who discuss the challenges of producing the show under a tight deadline, tight budget and tighter corporate control. The audio is really odd, with the voices bouncing like you were sitting in an echo chamber.
And that's it, puny humans!
Score: 5 out of 10
