"A Soldier in Vietnam had one chance in 55 of being killed during his Tour of Duty." - Title Card for "War Lover"
Tour of Duty: The Complete First Season DVD Review
By Jonathan Boudreaux
When it joined CBS' Thursday night lineup on September 24, 1987, Tour of Duty made TV history, becoming the first regular network series to focus on the Vietnam War. Series as diverse as The A-Team and Magnum, P.I. featured characters that had fought in the war, but never before had a TV show depicted the horrors of one of America's least popular wars. With the recent DVD release of Tour of Duty: The Complete First Season, TV viewers can relive the series while in the midst of our latest controversial war.
Set in 1967, Tour of Duty focuses on a platoon of soldiers operating out of Firebase Ladybird. Terence Knox (who played creepy rapist Dr. Peter White on St. Elsewhere) stars as Sgt. Zeke Anderson. While Anderson is not the highest ranking person on the base, he is the platoon's de facto leader. Currently in his third tour of duty (each tour runs one year), Anderson is a tough, caring father figure to his platoon's green new recruits. Myron Goldman (Stephen Caffrey) is Anderson's new superior, a lieutenant fresh out of officer candidate school. Goldman outranks Anderson, but his inexperience with actual combat lessens his leadership abilities, thus leading to conflicts between the two men. As the commander of Ladybird, Capt. Rusty Wallace (Kevin Conroy) does not venture onto the battlefield often. He does, however, fight behind-the-scenes for the safety of those under his command.
Members of the platoon include pacifist Roger Horn (Joshua Maurer), medic Randy Matsuda (Steve Akahoshi), farm boy Danny Percell (Tony Becker), surfer dude Scott Baker (Eric Bruskotter), tough guy Marvin Johnson (Stan Foster), Bronx-born Alberto Ruiz (Ramon Franco), and Detroit native (and former petty criminal) Marcus Taylor (Miguel A. Nunez, Jr.).
The men start off the season scared of dying, but basically confident that the war is right. By the end of the season, they understand the futility of a war that involves fighting for and then ceding the same area over and over again, losing countless lives to recapture the same hill before walking away from it at the end of the day. It even becomes clear to by-the-books Goldman that the higher-ups in Washington do not have an adequate understanding of this new style of warfare.
The series attempts to realistically portray the violence and day-to-day struggles of fighting a war in the jungles of Vietnam. As the back of The Complete First Season's box proclaims, "Before Band of Brothers there was Tour of Duty." Unfortunately, this helps to point out one of the series' biggest flaws. Band of Brothers was sometimes dramatically flawed, but its battle scenes were always visceral and wrenching, its gory images effectively communicating both the terrors of World War II and the courage with which it was fought. What was allowable on pay cable in 2001 is a far cry from what could be shown in 1987 on network TV. What is presented in Tour of Duty may indeed have been shocking back in 1987, but the atrocities we have witnessed in subsequent productions like Band. and Saving Private Ryan effectively blunt this earlier series.
Tour of Duty also suffers a little from its TV-sized budget. The series is heavy on action scenes, but they are not always convincing. Filmmakers may spend days working on a short sequence of film in order to heighten its suspense, but TV budgets and time constraints do not permit that. As a result, many of Tour's action scenes are somewhat flat and listless. Indeed, some of the season's better episodes take place away from the battles. In "Soldiers," for example, Percell travels to Hawaii to reconcile with his sick father. Taylor and Ruiz tag along on R&R. This is a fun, moving episode as the men readjust to civilian life (they take cover when a car backfires) and witness firsthand the contempt in which some people hold the war. This episode features an incredibly heart-rending guest appearance by David Alan Grier as a severely burned soldier who has been shipped to a Hawaiian hospital to recuperate. His intense, award-worthy performance here may come as a shock to viewers who know him from his work on In Living Color. The Wonder Years' Olivia d'Abo also appears in this episode as a vacationing student who berates the G.I.s with her anti-war views.
Fans of the series from its original network run will be disappointed to learn that the period music once featured in the episodes has now been replaced by generic instrumental music. Even the show's original theme song - "Paint It Black" by The Rolling Stones - is now gone. This is a perfect example of how truly important music is in helping to create mood and tone in both TV shows and movies. In many episodes, there are long, dialogue-free stretches that feature images of the men climbing into choppers, flying over the jungles, looking off into the distance, etc. It is reasonably safe to assume that these sequences were once accompanied by rock songs from the period. Now, however, viewers hear a bland score instead. These scenes may have been effective when viewers were able to mix their own feelings about the familiar rock tunes with the images flashing by on screen - effectively creating their own mental music video - but now the scenes can come across as awkward and even boring.
The problems caused by the scuttled music are sometimes even more obvious. In "War Lover," for example, one of the soldiers becomes so excited to hear Motown's "Marvin (Gaye) and Tammi (Terrell)" on the radio that he begins to dance. Of course, their song has been replaced by a dinky instrumental pop tune, making his reference nonsensical.
Each episode of Tour of Duty begins with a title card offering a different fact about the Vietnam War.
The twenty episodes (plus the pilot) that make up Tour of Duty's first season are divided onto five discs. The division is rather lopsided. The first four discs contain five episodes each. The final disc contains only one. This may contribute to the video problems detailed below. The DVDs are housed in a foldout digipak. The inside of the package (which holds the DVDs) is decorated with a dark green camouflage pattern. The outside is black, with a strip of publicity stills across the top. A booklet (housed in its own pocket) provides an episode guide, including brief episode summaries. The digipak slides into an outer cardboard sleeve.
After a brief full-motion introduction, the menus feature static publicity stills. The menus are simple yet functional. Viewers can choose to watch all of the disc's episodes, or can choose an individual one. The episodes are divided into chapters (including one after the opening credits).
