Buy This HD DVD And DVD Combo Format Set Now By Clicking On The Icon Below!
Buy This HD DVD And DVD Combo Format Set
Now By Clicking On The Icon Below!
Title:
Star Trek: The Original Series: Season One HD DVD And DVD Combo Format Ten-Disc
Box Set.
HD
DVD Side Region: N/A
DVD Side Region: One
Genre: Classic Sci-Fi TV Series
Episodes Disc One) “The Man
Trap”, “Charlie X”, “Where No Man Has Gone Before”
Episodes Disc Two) “The Naked
Time”, “The Enemy Within”, “Mudd’s Women”
Episodes Disc Three) “What Are
Little Girls Made Of?”, “Miri”,
“Dagger Of The Mind”
Episodes Disc Four) “The Corbomite
Maneuver”, “The Menagerie, Part 1”, “The Menagerie, Part II”
Episodes Disc Five) “The
Conscience Of The King”, “Balance Of Terror”, “Shore Leave”
Episodes Disc Six) “The Galileo
Seven”, “The Squire Of Gothos”, “Arena”
Episodes Disc Seven) “Tomorrow Is
Yesterday”, “Court-Martial”, “The Return Of The Archons”
Episodes Disc Eight) “Space
Seed”, “A Taste Of Armageddon”, “This Side Of Paradise”
Episodes Disc Nine) “The Devil In
The Dark”, “Errand Of Mercy”, “The Alternative Factor”
Episodes Disc Ten) “The City On
The Edge Of Forever”, “Operation Annihilate!”
Stars: William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, George Takei, Nichelle Nichols, Grace Lee Whitney, and Majel Barrett Roddenberry
Guest
Stars: Gary Lockwood, Sally Kellerman, Clint Howard, Roger C. Carmel, Mark
Lenard, Michael Strong, James Gregory, Michael J. Pollard, William Campbell,
Harry Townes, Ricardo Montalban, Jeffrey Hunter, John Colicos, and Joan Collins
Writers: Samuel L. Peeples, Jerry Sohl, Stephen Kandel, Richard Matheson, George Clayton Johnson, John D.F. Black, D.C. Fontana, Paul Schneider, Robert Bloch, Simon Wincelberg, Adrian Spies, Barry Trivers, Oliver Crawford, S. Bar-David, Don M. Mankiewicz, Steven W. Carabatsos, Gene Roddenberry, Theodore Sturgeon, Gene L. Coon, Frederic Brown, Don Ingalls, Borris Sobelman, Robert Hammer, Carey Wilber, Nathan Butler, Jill Ireland, Ken Lynch, Harlan Ellison, and Steven W. Carabatsos
Created By Gene Roddenberry
Directors: James Goldstone, Joseph Sargent, Harvey Hart, Leo Penn, Marc Daniels, Lawrence Dobkin, Vincent Mc Eveety, Gerd Oswald, Robert Gist, Robert Butler, Robert Sparr, Don McDougall, Joseph Pevney, Michael O’Herlihy, Ralph Senesky, John Newland, and Herschel Daugherty
Executive Producer: Gene Roddenberry
HD
DVD Feature Length: 24 hours and 35 minutes
SD DVD Feature Length: 24 hours and 34 minutes
Extras:
Additional Data: StarFleet Access – In-Program Features, Spacelift:
Transporting Trek Into The 21st Century, Billy Blackburn’s Treasure
Chest: Rare Home Movies And Special Memories
The Birth Of A Timeless Legacy, Life Beyond Trek: William Shatner, To Boldly
Go… Season One, Reflections On Spock, Sci-Fi Visionaries, Kiss ‘N’
Tell: Romance In The 23rd Century, Trekker Connections,
Star Trek® Online Game Preview, Interactive Enterprise Inspection, Star
Trek: Beyond The Final Frontier, and
Original Promotional Trailers
HD
DVD Side Languages: English Dolby TrueHD 5.1 Surround Sound, Dolby Surround
Sound and Spanish Language Monaural Sound
SD
DVD Side Languages: English Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround and French and Spanish
Language Monaural Sound
HD
DVD Side Subtitles: English Subtitles For The Deaf And Hearing Impaired and
Spanish Language Subtitles
SD DVD Side Subtitles: English Close Captions and French and Spanish Language Subtitles
Packaging: 10-Disc Book Style Digipack Within A Cardboard Slip And A See Through Plastic Case
HD
DVD Side Sound: Dolby TrueHD 5.1 Surround Sound, Dolby Surround Sound and
Monaural Sound
SD DVD Side Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound and Monaural Sound
Years
of High Definition Television Broadcast: 2006-2007/HD DVD And DVD Combo Format
Release: 2007
Years Of The Original First Season Television Broadcast: 1966-1967
Home Video Distributor: CBS Video and Paramount Home Entertainment
MPAA Rating: Not Rated
Reviewer:
Mark A. Rivera
“Are
you wearing some unusual type of perfume or something radioactive?”
Doctor Leonard H. McCoy – Star Trek: The Original Series: “The Man Trap”
With
the 11th feature film in the Star Trek franchise being
directed by J.J. Abrams for theatrical release late in 2008, Star Trek is
in a sense going back to the beginning in more ways than one. To celebrate the
40th anniversary of America’s oldest ongoing TV and feature film
franchise, (Doctor Who is the world’s oldest), CBS and Paramount
Television performed a frame for frame digital cleanup and remastering of the
original classic series and mastered the episodes in high definition from the
original film negatives. A similar revitalization was done ten years earlier for
the thirtieth anniversary airing of the series, which had broadcast exclusively
on the SCI FI Channel back in 1996 and subsequently these transfers were used
for the original 40 volume DVD releases which were sold between 1999 and 2001 as
well as the three season DVD sets that were released in 2003.
Yet
Star Trek: The Original Series has never been overhauled like it was to
celebrate the 40th anniversary because in addition to the new digital
cleanup and high definition mastering from the original film negatives,
Alexander Courage’s original series theme has been rescored with a full
orchestra and all of the effects have been done over again using CGI, but much
like the way Star Trek: The Motion Picture received a digital makeover to
bring the film as close as possible to Robert Wise’s vision, Star Trek: The
Original Series has been overhauled in such a way to correct certain effects
and improve them, but also to remain true to Gene Roddenberry’s vision and
present a speculation of what he might have liked had he now been able to
personally supervise this refit or had the effects and technology been available
in 1966 and so on. Now just as there will always be people who prefer the
original Star Wars Trilogy as it was presented in the late 1970s and
early 1980s over George Lucas’ 1997 and 2004 special edition versions which
have all but replaced the trilogy as we have known them before, so there are
bound to be Star Trek fans that will prefer the original series as it was
presented between 1966 and 1969. However those DVD releases containing the
original versions as far as I know are not going anywhere and they can be placed
in an up converting standard definition DVD player, HD DVD player or even a Blu-ray
Disc player and be enjoyed in near HD resolution the same way these recently
released HD DVD and DVD hybrid discs can be up converted from their standard
definition DVD side presentations and enjoyed on up converting players too. So
no one as far as I know is losing anything and in return we are being given an
opportunity to revisit Star Trek in a way like we have never seen or
heard before. The first season in HD aired in syndication during the 2006 –
2007 TV season and the second season in HD is airing now as well as expected to
be released on HD DVD and DVD combo format sometime in the first half of 2008.
Watching season one of Star Trek: The Original Series in high definition, I was reminded once again just how great the original Star Trek was and how much Star Trek has evolved since then. Sometimes change can be quite scary and yet it is an inevitable part of life. We can never have the same Star Trek as it was in the 1960s anymore than we could have another Next Generation exactly as it was in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Each Star Trek has successfully achieved a variation on Gene Roddenberry’s vision of the future and for the most part Star Trek has endured because it has changed with the times. Where I think the creative people behind Star Trek could benefit from watching Star Trek: The Original Series is not in trying to imitate it. I think they should look at how Roddenberry hired a pool of talented and true science fiction writers as well as television writers and then gave them room to tell an intriguing and contemporary tales. I had often noted that I felt Star Trek needed new creative blood, but that doesn’t mean that Rick Berman had to step aside for someone else. Far from that, I think Star Trek needs to open up their fraternity doors again and allow new writers to submit scripts regardless of whether or not they have a literary agent. Manny Coto did a fantastic job with the fourth season of Star Trek: Enterprise so much so in fact that the series actually ended on a high note with the fourth season being the best of the prequel TV show that aired on the now defunct United Paramount Network. J.J. Abrams is kind of becoming this generation’s George Lucas and Steven Spielberg as well as this generation’s Irwin Allen with hits on both the small and big screen so I think the new film will be better perhaps than the last two Next Generation feature films.
There
are just so many great episodes in the first season alone that it is impossible
to do a synopsis of them all and those familiar with the series already know
about them anyway. Yet undoubtedly there are a few to note here such as the
series’ second pilot “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” “The Corbomite
Maneuver,” “Balance Of Terror,” the Hugo Award winning two-part episode
“The Menagerie,” “The Squire Of Gothos,” “Space Seed,” and “The
City On The Edge Of Forever.” On the high definition side of these hybrid
discs there are seven episodes that take advantage of the HD DVD interactive
features when an option called Star Fleet Access is enabled, which gives
picture-in-picture like data on technology, alien life forms, planets, and
characters encountered in each episode. In addition the seven episodes offer
video commentary from various guest stars, producers, writers, and Michael and
Denise Okuda, who shed a better light into the nature of the Star Trek
Universe as well as reasons for the digital makeovers in certain shots,
which are shared with one of the producers at CBS Digital. The episodes that
include this feature are “Where No Man Has Gone Before”, which features new
video interviews with Gary Lockwood and Sally Kellerman, “The Menagerie, Parts
1 & 2”, “Balance Of Terror”, “The Galileo Seven”, “Tomorrow
Is Yesterday”, “Space Seed”, which features comments by Wrath Of Khan
producer Harve Bennett and AICN creator Harry Knowles, and “Errand Of
Mercy.” All 29 episodes are presented in their original broadcast (1.33:1)
aspect ratios. On the HD DVD side the episodes have been encoded using MPEG-4/AVC
and for the episodes that feature the enhanced interactive features on the HD
DVD side, the MPEG-4/AVC coding was used also. Colors and backgrounds whether
they have been digitally enhanced or not are richer than ever before and
according to the producers more accurate too. However the show still has a bit
of grain in it sometimes that is partially due to shots where the stock footage
used was not done over with new effects and perhaps also due to the age and
nature of the film stock used back then. On one of the featurettes they show
images of the original series in 16 by 9 widescreen and while an alteration like
that would be akin to pan & scan on a widescreen motion picture, I have to
admit I like the way the original Star Trek looks in widescreen and wish
that option was made available perhaps on double sided HD DVD discs instead of
hybrids. Though it does not say so on the packaging, each of the episodes on the
HD DVD sides of each disc is presented in high quality English Dolby TrueHD 5.1
Surround Sound to create a rousing combined viewing and listening experience
never before available on home video for Star Trek fans. The enhanced
video commentary tracks are presented in Dolby Digital Plus Surround Sound.
English Dolby Surround Sound and a Spanish Language Monaural Soundtrack are also
encoded onto the HD DVD side along with English Subtitles for the Deaf and
Hearing Impaired and Spanish Language Subtitles available as options. The
picture resolution can be viewed in up to 1080p full high definition where
available.
The
standard definition DVD side presents each episode in a (1.33:1) television
broadcast aspect ratio encoded using MPEG-2 with English Dolby Digital 5.1
Surround Sound and French and Spanish Language Monaural Soundtracks offered too.
English Closed Captions for the Deaf and Hearing Impaired and French and Spanish
Language Subtitles have been encoded on to the DVD sides as options too.
Featurettes
included on both the HD DVD and DVD sides include Billy Blackburn’s
Treasure: Rare Home Movies he shot on Super 8mm film during the production
of the series (13:22), a featurette detailing the making of these high
definition Star Trek episodes entitled Spacelift: Transporting
Trek Into The 21st Century (20:06) and a preview of the Star
Trek Online Game. Exclusive to the HD DVD side besides to enhanced Star
Fleet access is a wonderful three-dimensional high definition interactive
inspection of the Enterprise with optional audio comments that detail the
various points and places externally on the ship. It is really cool. Exclusive
to the standard definition DVD side are several featurettes carried over from
the previous season one DVD release that include
a look at the development of the show in The Birth Of A Timeless Legacy
(24:14) and a retrospective journey back to the roots of the series with To
Boldly Go… Season 1 (18:59). Unless you are really into horses, you might
find the featurette Life Beyond Trek: William Shatner (10:27) to be a bit
dull. Nimoy’s Reflections On Spock (12:13) is far more interesting and
relevant to the series with a look at the ramifications and misunderstandings
that occurred after his book I Am Not Spock was published and how his
continued participation in the venerable franchise led to his updated book I
Am Spock. There is a touching if not inspirational look at how the Writers
of the original Star Trek helped bring science fiction to the masses with
Sci-Fi Visionaries (16:39).
The feature length A&E TV special Star Trek: Beyond The Final Frontier (1:29) hosted by Leonard Nimoy details the Christies Auction of Star Trek memorabilia to fans and features interview clips with Patrick Stewart, Avery Brooks, Kate Mulgrew, Jonathan Frakes and others. Also included within the set is a Trekker Connections Game, which is kind of lame and Kiss ‘N’ Tell: Romance In The 23rd Century (8:34). TV spots for the 29 episodes are included on the DVD side and there are also home video promos for Star Trek On DVD and Twin Peaks: Definitive Gold Box Edition (3:12).
The
interactive menus on the HD DVD side are a little hard to navigate at first
until you figure how the interface works, but otherwise is well rendered. Both
sides depict the transporter room aboard the Enterprise. The ten-discs
come housed within a thick book like Digipack in a cardboard pouch with five
collector’s cards that detail the contents on the reverse side and a special
offer from Toshiba on a Limited Edition Star Trek Phaser Remote Control.
The pouch is housed in a see through plastic case. My only caveat is on the
sides of the case there is nothing to tell anyone what the box set is on the
side. They should be marked at least with the season number.
Star
Trek
lives on in the new millennium now with the Star
Trek: The Original Series: Season One HD DVD And DVD Combo Format Ten-Disc Box
Set, which is available now
at retailers on and offline courtesy of CBS Video and Paramount Home
Entertainment.
©
Copyright 2007 By Mark Rivera - The
Brooklyn Critic
All Rights Reserved.
Buy This HD DVD And DVD Combo Format
Set Now By Clicking On The Icon Below!