Centennial: The Complete Series

Very excited that Centennial is finally on DVD. Great miniseries and quick service. Thanks.

I love this mini series. I read the book every few years and watched the series on TV whenever I could catch it. Finally I got the VHS set on a popular auction site a few years ago. Paid a pretty penny for it, but it was out of print at the time.

I set up email alert with Amazon years ago for Centennial. So a few months ago, Amazon emailed me to let me know it was coming out on DVD. I pre-ordered. Got a really good price, and free shipping. I sold my VHS set at a garage sale a few weeks ago, go a pretty good price for it, almost enough to pay for the DVD set.

I am watching the series tonite. Quality is pretty good--no obvious foibles and the sound is crisp and clean. I am thrilled to be watching this in DVD format.

I love this story. James Michener's characters are real and believable. None so heroic and perfect that they couldn't be real, but the good guys are the guys you'd like to know yourself or be like.

If you have never read the book, read it! I really suggest reading the book before watching the videos, but the video is pretty close to the book without lots of important differences.

Having seen the original series on t.v. I was disappointed that several episodes are missing from the dvd I bought. For example, at the gathering of fur traders, it's McKeag who must remove the arrow tip from Pasquinel's back. Very little is mentioned about the relationship between Pasquinel and Clay Basket, including 2 sons who aren't mentioned until much later when they are grown men.
Further on in the story, a cattle drive from Texas to Centennial is missing along with all the characters involved.

There are many more things missing so I couldn't give this series 5 stars. Perhaps when the title of a dvd contains the word"complete" series, it should contain the COMPLETE series.

Hadn't seen this series for about 20 years and started watching it as soon as it arrived last week. It is still magnificant. These are wonderful characters and you do feel as if you know them. So much history is represented here, and the location shots are stunning.

Top-notch performances. Robert Conrad, Gregory Harrison, Chad Everett, Lynn Redgrave, William Atherton, Brian Keith, Lois Nettleton ... they are so darn good. But my personal favorite is Stephen McHattie -- a great "sinister" character actor but this performance as Jacque/Jake eclipses anything he's ever done.

Good quality DVD. Love the "book" packaging. Should be added to everyone's movie library.

I read Michner's 'Centennial' in 1975. I lived in Nebraska at the time.
In 1978 I was living in Boulder, CO, attending CU. I read in the paper that a casting company in Denver was looking for extras for a production of CENTENNIAL. My wife (now ex-wife) and I went down to the casting company. We met Chris who signed us on to the project. Chris was looking for Native American extras. We were both of Native American descent, my wife being full-blooded Lakota. We showed up early each morning east of Greely, CO., on location near the Platte River. We were in the story line that tells the story of Lame Beaver, an Arapaho, stealing horses from the Comanches. These were the first horses for Lame Beaver's band. One day we followed Lame Beaver, Navajo actor Ray Tracey, as we snuck up on foot on the Comanche camp, to steal horses. Lame Beaver (Ray) rides off on a pony, stampeding the Comanches horse herd, while the rest of us ran after Lame Beaver and the captured horses.
The production didn't have all the Native American extras it needed, so the next day we dressed up as Comanches and chased ourselves (yesterday we were Arapahos) away. It was great fun! Robert Conrad was great. He hung out with the extras and even did his famous battery commercial. I met Barbara Carrera...what a fox! The tipi's on the set were used for the extras to crash in or to store equipment. In one scene where a group of Indians is running along a ridge line shot from a distance; my moccasin came off and I stepped on a cactus. If you look closely, you will see one Indian hopping along on one foot...that's me. The 'Hollywood' wranglers were very racist against the Indians and were usually high on coke. Several Indian cowboys from the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota showed off their bareback riding skills. I remember one Lakota who's last name was Cross or Cross Dog was expert at riding bareback at full gallop. That guy could ride. We were paid $55 a day and were fed like royalty. Michner was on the set occassionally though I never met him. In one scene, I dressed like an Indian scout, wearing a coyote skin on my head, and rode before the band in a pouring rain. Me and another guy dressed similarly had to negoitiate a very slippery rocky terrain in the rain, riding Hollywood ponies. We got through the scene without going down on the slippery rock with our ponies.
The scene was edited out of the final production. Another scene that was filmed at night was when Clay Basket, now an old woman, goes out by the horse herd to voluntary give up her life by succumbing to the cold in a blizzard. The filming was done in the fall and there was no snow. The movie people brought out this machine that sprayed white soap flakes all over the place. In an hour the set looked like a blizzard had just occured. The problem with the soap flakes was the horses in the herd, near Clay Basket, ate the soap flakes and started farting noisely. They got through the shot but no one wanted to ride the Hollywood stock for a few days. In the scene where an older Lame Beaver played by Michael Ansara,'stakes himself out', to meet the enemy; we fought with dried raw hide sheids and rubber tomahawks and spears. The problem was none of us had been trained to simulate a fight scene without knocking the crap out of each other. I got whacked several time, busted my knuckles on the rawhid shield and unintentially just about took one guys head off in the fight scene. Look for it when Lame Beaver stakes himself out. Some of those blows going on in the background are real. After the fight we laughed about the beating we had all taken and limped off to our crash tipi to nurse our wounds. We were stars! The staff and actors; Conrad, Carrera, Tracey, Michael Ansara, Ivan Naranjo and Richard Chamberlane treated us kindly. The only incidents the marred our experience were the Hollywood wranglers. The local cowboys from the Greely area were repectful and got along great with the Native American extras. I've done other extra work on movies filmed in the Denver area but CENTENNIAL was the by far the most interesting and fun. I hope this trip down memory lane enhances your viewing experience of CENTENNIAL. Enjoy!