Hercules The Legendary Journeys - Season 3 (1995)

TV Shows on tape

recommended for any fan of this classic TV show. They don't make them this way anymore. October 6, 2007

A huge improvement in quality over the previous two seasons

The first two seasons of HERCULES were pretty much just a decent kid's show. Narratively the only thing of consequence was the emergence of Xena as a character prior to her spin off. The core problem with HERCULES was that the show contained no significant conflict. While Hercules had suffered mightily at the hand of Hera, losing his family, he is a remarkably decent, nice guy. Kevin Sorbo managed to make this Hercules likable, but he was unable, given the writing on the show, to make him complex or especially interesting. To be fair, XENA had the same problem until they introduced the "Dark Xena" background stories, which made the Xena of the present infinitely more interesting. But HERCULES never made an equivalent transition and as a result never became particularly compelling.

Nonetheless, beginning about halfway through Season Three HERCULES became far more interesting. Much of this resulted from an influx of characters and storylines from XENA. The Ares who had been introduced on XENA shifted over to HERCULES (Kevin Smith had already been on XENA as Ares, but on HERCULES he was already familiar as Hercules' brother Iphicles). Xena and Gabrielle even made it over for an episode while Joxer even made one of his few appearances on the senior show. Aphrodite made a couple of nice appearances as Amanda Tyddings pulled double duty on both shows, but the best XENA crossover was the first of several excellent appearances by Hudson Leick as Callisto. This would begin a formula that would greatly intensify in the final three seasons of HERCULES, as the two shows would often share recurring characters, in particular Autolycus, Ares, Aphrodite, and Callisto, as well as several lesser characters.

While HERCULES never achieved the excellence of many of XENA's best moments, neither did it succumb to its abuses. If one loves ancient history then XENA is at times embarrassing and frequently profoundly annoying. HERCULES delves into history far less frequently, though it takes, perhaps, even more liberties with mythology. And while I find the frequent fight scenes on HERCULES far less absurd than the Hong Kong inspired fighting on XENA, it was also less imaginative, partly due to Kevin Sorbo doing much of his own stunt work, while on XENA Lucy Lawless was able to hand over to the wondrous Zoë Bell the more extreme stunts.

The biggest disappointment about Season Three was, in a way, the final episode, "Atlantis." The always appealing Claudia Black appeared as Cassandra and at the end of the episode the final shot of the season shows Hercules with his arm around her from behind, suggesting definite romantic potential. Unfortunately, despite Cassandra's suggestion that they were going to be seeing a lot of one another and Hercules' agreement, Black would appear in only one more episode.

All in all, a reasonably pleasant show, but certainly not one of the milestones of television. September 14, 2007

Hercules The Legendary Journeys - Season 3

This was a great way for my son to watch one of his favorite shows over and over again. March 17, 2007

Hercules Season 3

I thought the price was great for the number of dvds included. I am a fan so it would have been hard not to like it. Good extras included on the disks; pics and interviews. I will probably buy them all March 10, 2007

The Best Season!

I agree with Matthew Edmundson (below), this is the best season of Hercules The Legendary Journeys.

The first episode is my favorite episode of the whole series:
Mercenary, which was directed by Michael Hurst (Iolaus).

I recommend purchasing seasons 1+2 before purchasing this season. Hercules involves a lot of recurring characters and stories that you may miss out on if you are considering buying this season first...
Some may say that this series was too corny (from other reviews I've read). But that was the point of the show. The action and the comedy were matched well together. January 11, 2007

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