Family Guy: It's A Trap

Family Guy: It's A Trap! may be devoted to parodying a story from 'a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away', but this two-disc Triple Play Edition comes 'future-proofed' with Blu-Ray and DVD versions of the episode, as well as a Digital Copy transferrable to portable media devices.

The accompanying extras are plentiful - but far from perfect. The mixed tone is set by the audio commentary, whose personnel (series creator Seth MacFarlane, executive producer/writer David A Goodman, writer Cherry Chevapravatdumrong, producer Shannon Smith and director Peter Shin) ought to be a guarantee of quality – but in fact there are plenty of longueurs and sections where the contributors are too busy admiring their own handiwork to say anything ("now we're just watching it", one comments more honestly than helpfully).

Tellingly, MacFarlane leaves halfway through the recording, no doubt with better things to do elsewhere. "Maybe," Goodman observes, "we should all go too." Still, there is some interesting material here, including the revelation that the original film's masters were made available for the music scoring, and that Carrie Fisher herself provided some voicework (although not for Leia, which apparently Fisher refuses to do).

There are 39 minutes of animatics for several sequences, including, for those interested, extended or alternative versions that never made the final cut. In the featurette Drawing With Peter Shin (19 minutes), the director gives an impressive masterclass in how he sketches the characters, while in Making The Scene (six minutes), he talks us through what is done to turn the animatic into the final animated version, and how close its look is to that of George Lucas' original film.

The short duration of A Very Special Message From Darth Stewie and Sock Puppet Outtakes – each just over one minute – matches their utter disposability, while Star Wars Trivial Pursuit: The Ultimate Championship is 31 minutes of all the writers of the Family Guy Star Wars parodies (Goodman, Chevapravatdumrong, Kirker Butler, Alec Sulkin) competing in a game of Star Wars Trivial Pursuit – which, for all the charm of the participants, proves even less interesting than watching other people play video games.