Tripping the Rift - The Complete First Season

Rating NR Formats DVD Genre animated Starring Stephen Root, Maurice LaMarche, Gina Gershon, 'Stuttering' John Melendez, Carmen Electra Directed by Bernie Denk Publisher Anchor Bay Entertainment External Links Anchor Bay Entertainment

Ever since the onset of computer animation as a growing medium of mainstream entertainment, the growing question on most people's minds was this: "Will there ever be an adult-themed CGI show?"

If adult-themed has degenerated to mid-grade animation wrapped in the genre of science fiction and littered with sex gags both creative and uncreative, then we have arrived. Fortunately, it hasn't. Otherwise, LEXX would have been considered for an animated counterpart long before this show was born.

Chuck Austen, already credited with the opinionated ruin of several comic book storylines, and Chris Moeller created Tripping the Rift as a short film in 1999, complete with Star Wars parodies and 3D boobs that defied both gravity and clothing. When executives from the Sci-Fi channel ordered thirteen episodes to comprise a first season of a prime time television series, three other main characters were added and the ship itself was given a personality as well as a complete makeover. Tragically, Tripping the Rift was reborn.

The series does have a mild entertainment value, but there are lots of things lacking. Seems as if the entire animation budget was focused on the animation capacity of Six's breasts and not on texture quality. True, it's a cartoon, but it's not as visually appealing as it could be. The dialogue is not cheesy, thankfully, but it's not always the most imaginative either. Fortunately, the various episode plots are not totally predictable. It follows the form of situational comedy quite well, all faults aside.

In regards to a massive "UNCENSORED" sticker on the front of the box, there isn't much of the series that is uncensored. They still bleep out certain words, but that doesn't really detract from the show. In fact, it's kind of hilarious when you hear the ship inform the crew that they have f***ing mail. As far as nudity, you see plenty of rear shots of Six and her clothing is relatively transparent, but there is nothing actually revealed that is blocked except for black bars around certain "televised" segments within the show, such as a promotional for Venutians Gone Wild.

Extras are a bit slim. There were no deleted scenes, but there were teleplays, which were the original scripts. Reading them reveals edits made for the televised versions of each episode, so its interesting to see what was cut out from the original script, but the edits would probably not have changed the show for better or worse. The character and artwork galleries were surprisingly thorough. Quite a wonderful addition indeed.

Tripping the Rift won't be making any major headlines. At the most, it will remain nothing more than an adolescent, science fiction, sitcom...in space.