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Tour of Duty, television's first gritty drama about the Vietnam War, came to the airwaves in September 1987, six months after Oliver Stone's Platoon claimed the Academy Award for Best Picture. During its three-season run, the show offered a harrowing look at what an infantryman went through during a Southeast Asian "tour." Set in South Vietnam in 1967 at the fictional Firebase Ladybird, Tour follows the operations of multiethnic Bravo Company, led by the fresh-faced Lt. Myron Goldman (Stephen Caffrey) and his second-in-command, battle-hardened veteran Sgt. Zeke Anderson (the amazing Terence Knox). Each week's episode consists of different, invariably dangerous missions against the North Vietnamese Army, a fact hammered home when major players die during the course of a season -- a gambit still beyond the pale in television drama. The first season included in this DVD set introduces the men of Bravo Company and opens with Lt. Goldman, who has just come "in-country" from the States, butting heads with the more experienced Sgt. Anderson during a firefight. The episode "Notes from the Underground" -- a showcase for actor Miguel Nunez Jr. as Pvt. Marcus Taylor -- finds Taylor captured by the NVA and befriending an "enemy" doctor. Racial tensions flare in "Burn, Baby, Burn," an episode that touches on the many problems, in addition to opposing forces, that faced black and Hispanic soldiers in Vietnam. In "Nowhere to Run," Pvt. Danny Purcell (Tony Becker) is devastated when he accidentally kills an eight-year-old while pursuing a Vietcong soldier. Knox really shines in "Roadrunner," in which Anderson finally connects with the emotions he hides under his tough-guy exterior, after receiving an unsettling letter from home. Although short-lived, Tour of Duty ranks with TV's very best dramatizations of war: hard-hitting and at times bloody, the series provides such a connection to the characters that you can't look away. Christina Urban, Barnes & Noble