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Title: Star Trek: The Original
Series: Season One 7-Disc Blu-ray Set
Media: Blu-ray Disc
Genre: Classic Sci-Fi TV Series
Episodes Disc One:
“The Man Trap”, “Charlie X”, “Where No Man Has Gone Before”, The
Naked Time”
Episodes Disc Two:
“The Enemy Within”, “Mudd’s Women”, “What Are Little Girls Made
Of”, “Miri”, “Dagger Of The Mind”
Episodes Disc
Three: “The Corbomite Maneuver”, “The Menagerie, Part I”, “The
Menagerie, Part II”, “The Conscience Of The King”
Episodes Disc
Four: “Balance Of Terror”, “Shore Leave”, “The Galileo Seven”,
“The Squire Of Gothos”
Episodes Disc
Five: “Arena”, “Tomorrow Is Yesterday”, “Court Martial”, “The
Return Of The Archons”
Episodes Disc Six:
“Space Seed”, “A Taste Of Armageddon”, “This Side Of Paradise”,
“The Devil In The Dark”
Episodes Disc Seven: “Errand Of
Mercy”, “The Alternative Factor”, “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
Feature Length: 24 hours and 35 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, Interactive Enterprise Inspection, and the Original Promotional Trailers
Languages: English DTS-HD MA 7.1 Surround Sound and English, French, and Spanish Language Monaural Sound
Subtitles: English Subtitles For The Deaf And Hearing Impaired French, Portuguese and Spanish Language Subtitles
Packaging: 7-Disc Elite Blue BD Case Within A Glossy Cardboard Slip
Sound: DTS-HD MA 7.1 Surround Sound and Monaural Sound
Years
of High Definition Television Broadcast: 2006-2007/Blu-ray Disc Release: 2009
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 directed by J.J. Abrams for theatrical release just a few weeks away, 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 was 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, and with these new Blu-ray Disc releases, you
get both in beautiful high definition 1080p resolution and the episodes look
probably as good as they ever will in both forms. 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.
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 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, I mean not for them to try and 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 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.” Taking full advantage of the higher bandwidth and interactive features present in Blu-ray Disc some episodes grant an option called Star Fleet Access, which gives picture-in-picture like data on technology, alien life forms, planets, and characters encountered in the respective episode. In addition the 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”, “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. 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. Each episode is presented with a new English DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 Surround Sound mix to create a viewing and listening experience never before available on home video for Star Trek fans that surpasses the previous HD DVD release too. The original English Monaural Soundtracks are encoded onto the Blu-ray Discs along with English Subtitles for the Deaf and Hearing Impaired as an option. French and Spanish Language Monaural Soundtrack options and respective Subtitles as well as Portuguese Language Subtitles are encoded for each episode too. The picture resolution can be viewed in up to 1080p full high definition where available. BD Live functionality has been added also.
Featurettes included on both the 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 there 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. 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). TV spots for the 29 episodes are included too Star Trek: The Original Series: Season 1 will debut on Blu-ray Disc on Tuesday, April 28, 2009 courtesy of CBS Video and Paramount Home Entertainment.
©
Copyright 2009 By Mark A. Rivera
All Rights Reserved.
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