Product Description
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"Space...The Final Frontier. These are the voyages of the
Starship, Enterprise. Its 5-year mission: to explore strange new
worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go
where no man has gone before !" The series is set in the 23rd
century where Earth has survived World War III then moved on to
explore the stars. Brought to you in a brilliant remastered
edition….this is Star Trek like you’ve never seen it before!
.com
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Season One
In 1966, Star Trek set out to boldly go where no series had gone
before, beginning a three-year mission that led to a franchise
( http://www..com/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/265164 ) that would last
decades. Here at last is the first season of the original series
all in one box, 29 episodes in their original broadcast order.
That means starting with "The Man Trap," and soon followed by
"Where No Man Has Gone Before," the second pilot filmed and the
first one starring William Shatner as Captain Kirk. The many
highlight episodes include "Balance of Terror" and "Errand of
Mercy" (introducing, respectively, the Romulans and the
Klingons), the two-part "The Menagerie" (which recycled footage
from the original pilot, "The Cage," which featured Christopher
Pike as the captain of the Enterprise and is not included in this
set), "Space Seed" (introducing Ricardo Montalban's Khan
character), and "The City of the Edge of Forever" (written by
sci-fi giant Harlan Ellison and considered by many the best-ever
episode of the series).
The first-season DVD set is supplemented by 80 minutes of
featurettes incorporating 2003-04 interviews with Shatner,
Leonard Nimoy, other cast members, and producers, and some 1988
footage of Gene Roddenberry. The longest (24 minutes) featurette,
"The Birth of a Timeless Legacy," examines the two pilot episodes
and the development of the crew. Slightly shorter are "To Boldly
Go... Season One," which highlights key episodes, and "Sci-Fi
Visionaries," which discusses the series' great science fiction
writers (most famously in "The City of the Edge of Forever").
Shatner shows off his love of horses in "Life Beyond Trek," and,
more interestingly, Nimoy debunks various rumors in "Reflections
of Spock." As they've done for many of the feature-film special
editions ( http://www..com/exec/obidos/tg/feature/-/378049 ),
Michael Okuda and Denise Okuda provide a pop-up text commentary
on four of the episodes filled with history, trivia, and dry wit.
It's the first commentary of any kind for a Star Trek TV show,
but an audio commentary is still overdue. The technical specs are
mostly the same as other Trek TV series--Dolby 5.1, English
subtitles--but with the welcome addition of the episode trailers.
The plastic case is an attempt to replicate some of the fun
packaging of the series' European DVD releases, but it's a bit
clunky, and the paper sleeve around the disc case seems awkward
and crude. Still, the set is a vast improvement both in terms of
shelf space and bonus features compared to the old two-episode
discs ( http://www..com/exec/obidos/tg/stores/series/-/572/dvd ),
which were released before full-season boxed sets became the
model for television DVDs. --David Horiuchi
Season Two
The most famous episode in franchise history, "The Trouble with
Tribbles," is one of the highlights of the second season of Star
Trek: The Original Series. A deserved classic, the humorous story
centers on an ever-expanding mass of furry creatures that
memorably rain themselves down on top of Captain Kirk (William
Shatner) and into the middle of a Federation-Klingon showdown. It
inspired one of the most memorable episodes in the spin-off
series Deep Space Nine, "Trial and Tribble-ations." Also in the
second season, the Vulcan culture of Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy) is
ed out in "Amok Time" (in which Spock is faced with the
possibility of killing his captain and friend) and "Journey to
Babel" (introducing Spock's her, played by Mark Sarek, in what
would turn out to be a long-recurring role). A new character,
navigator Pavel Chekov (Walter Koenig), was introduced; his
Monkees haircut was intended to appeal to the younger audience,
but he was also a Russian, which at the height of the cold war
reflected Gene Roddenberry's optimistic vision of a more
enlightened future. Other social-commentary rtunities
presented themselves in "The Omega Glory," "The Doomsday
Machine," and "Assignment: Earth," the last also one of those
periodic rtunities to scrimp on the budget by time-traveling
to an earlier version of Earth. Another example was "A Piece of
the Action," a comic episode set in the Roaring Twenties and
memorable for, among other things, Kirk's teaching a made-up card
game called Fizzbin. In other significant episodes, "I, Mudd" saw
the return of the bounder from season 1, "The Changeling" was the
original inspiration for the first Trek feature film a decade
later, "Wolf in the Fold" (penned by the author of Psycho)
provides an example of the series' great writing, and "Mirror,
Mirror" introduced the concept of the parallel universe inhabited
by vicious, amoral counterparts of the regular crew, another
theme later borrowed (more than once, and to good emotional
effect) by DS9. On the DVD
The remastered episodes are the highlight of the 2008
second-season release; like in season one, the reworked visual
effects might irk purists but are an improvement overall, and
some of the space exteriors are very exciting. It's not in high
definition, however; season one was released in 2007 on two-sided
combination HD DVD and standard DVD discs, which are now
obsolete. Season two mimics the packaging, but is only
standard-definition DVD, not Blu-ray. The picture, while
obviously not high-definition quality, is still much improved
over the 2004 DVD release. Special features here mostly mirror
that 2004 set: 80 minutes of featurettes ("To Boldly Go" season
recap, " Kirk, Spock & s: The Great Trio," "Star Trek's
Divine Diva," "Designing the Final Frontier," and "Writer's
: D.C. Fontana"), though missing from this set are the
text commentaries on two episodes, the Red Shirt Logs, the
production art, and the photo gallery. There are two new
featurettes: "Star Trek's Favorite Moments," in which cast
members of later Trek franchises and fans recall certain
episodes, and "Billy Blackburn's Treasure Chest, part 2," in
which a Trek extra tells stories and shows some of his on-set
home movies. And because season 2 includes "The Trouble with
Tribbles," the set includes two bonus episodes: "More Tribbles,
More Troubles" from the Animated Series and "Trials and
Tribble-ations" from Deep Space Nine. Conveniently, all three
Tribble-centric episodes are on the same disc, and include the
bonus features from the earlier DVD releases (the commentary by
writer David Gerrold on "More Troubles" and the two
featurettes--"Uniting Two Legends" and "An Historic
Endeavor"--from "Tribble-ations"). The bonus episodes were not
remastered, and you can tell the difference when comparing the
original Tribble episode on this set with the grainier footage
that was used in the DS9 episode. A minor annoyance is that the
discs are one-sided but appear to be two-sided, as if they had
been designed for combo HD DVD again before a late change. That
means the info on the disc is restricted to a ring around the
middle, rather than a full label that could have listed the
episodes on each disc; as is, they're only listed on the glossy
"collector's data cards." And once again, the plastic shell is
clunky and the disc spindles are way too tight. All in all, it's
a nice package, especially if one doesn't already have the other
Tribble episodes, but it feels like it's floating in a
standard-definition limbo, stuck in the transition between HD DVD
and Blu-ray. --David Horiuchi
Season Three
Saved from the brink of cancellation by its loyal fanbase, Star
Trek's third and final season rewarded them with a number of
memorable episodes. Tight budgets and slipping creative control,
however, made it the series' most uneven season, though it did
have some of the coolest episode titles ("For the World Is Hollow
and I Have Touched the Sky," "Is There in Truth No Beauty," "Let
That Be Your Last Battlefield"). Some of the best moments
involved a fight at the OK Corral ("Spectre of the "), a
knock-down drag-out battle with the Klingons aboard the
Enterprise ("Day of the Dove"), the ship getting caught in an
ever-tightening spacial net ("The Tholian Web"), TV's first
interracial kiss ("Plato's Stepchildren," and it should be easy
to guess who participated), Sulu taking command ("The Savage
Curtain"), and Kirk's sw bodies with an ex-love interest
("Turnabout Intruder").
The 2008 DVD set benefits from the same remastering given to the
other two seasons, though only the first was released in high
definition (the now-defunct HD DVD format). Still, the episodes
are substantially cleaned up to the point where they look quite
good, rather than jarringly fuzzy to the modern viewer. And there
are some new visual effects that are well-done, and obtrusive
only to the strictest fans. Compare, for example, the dramatic
close-up of the green-glowing U.S.S. Defiant in "The Tholian Web"
with the original effect, which had the ship floating in a green
haze. New bonus features are 11 more minutes of rare footage from
extra Billy Blackburn; "Collectible Trek," a 14-minute discussion
of rare Trek items, filmed in 2004 with the rest of the bonus
content but not included on the previous DVD set; and the newly
filmed "Captain's Log: Bob Justman," an affectionate nine-minute
tribute to the series producer. Otherwise, the set retains almost
all the special features from the 2004 set, including the
features on Walter Koenig, George Takei, and James Doohan (who
died the following year), plus the two versions of the series
pilot, "The Cage," a restored color version and the original,
never-aired version that alternates between color and black and
white. Starring Jeffery Hunter as Captain Pike, Leonard Nimoy as
a relatively emotional Spock, and Majel Barrett (the future Nurse
Chapel and Mrs. Gene Roddenberry) as a frosty Number One, this
pilot was rejected, but a second was commissioned, "Where No Man
Has Gone Before," now considered the "official" beginning of the
series. But "The Cage" is very recognizably Star Trek with its
far-out concepts (telepathic aliens collecting species samples),
sexy humanoid women, character development, and of course cheesy
costumes and special effects. Footage was later reused in the
season 1 two-parter, "The Menagerie." --David Horiuchi