‘Star Trek’: The Original Series: Season One gets a digital makeover that includes remastered high-def encodes of all 26 episodes that make up the 1966 first season of ‘Star Trek’ as well as cleaned up and added CGI effects that work much better than what Lucas tried to attempt to with ‘Star Wars’ – the result being a release that will be a must-have for Trekkies.
For a lot of fans and purists, the early word about the newly added CGI was a slap in the face. Taking a distinct product of its era, with the chintzy costumes and sets, the garish colors, the models on strings and trying to seamlessly tie in all that with modern computer graphics? Not only would it look ridiculous, but it would defy the charm of the original show in the first place. Well, that was the early word and I’m happy to say that’s not even remotely what the result was.
Paramount’s not stupid and their certainly not going to go out of their way to tarnish their longest-lasting franchise cash cow by offending the main fan base-particularly with a new feature film by J.J. Abrams right around the corner and the easy cash injection of subsequent seasons in HD at stake.
No, Paramount took a reverent approach to the sprucing up, having celebrated ‘Star Trek’ experts Michael and Denise Okuda implementing and approving the tinkering. The result, combined with the painstaking restoration for HD, truly gives the show a new life for casual and long-time fans alike.
While the updated f/x aren’t always seamless, they very rarely prove distracting or an annoyance. In fact, the f/x end up being pretty dang cool and I might even go so far as to say the additions add a depth, an attachment to certain stories, that weren’t possible with the old versions.
And, of course, the big difference being here that the additions complement the story i.e. grainy stock footage of a toy model Enterprise dangling by a string in front of bad planet models is now turned into a CGI replacement with the composition and intent of the scene remaining roughly the same - complementing, not changing. No taking laser guns out of Captain Kirk’s hand and replacing it with a walkie-talkie or throwing in an equally chintzy-looking CGI beastie to replace a chintzy suit. Great care was taken to shine Gene Roddenberry’s iconic creation up and I think most purists will become believers after giving this release a try.
A few exceptions to my positive stance on the CGI, though, one being that it’s quite obvious some episodes were given more care than others for I’m assuming budgetary reasons. As understandable as that is, it’s a decision that throws of the visual continuity with some episodes looking crystal clear and sporting seamless f/x while others have visual effects that are a bit more jarring when transitioning from the new f/x to the old show. And I might note that some of the CGI is a bit too determined at times-while it’s not quite as bad as going from ‘Episode III’ to ‘Plan 9 from Outer Space’, the change is distracting in a few places. A small gripe, however.
The original show itself remains almost beyond reproach. Despite the camp qualities of the sets and costumes, the mini-skirts on all the women, the hambone yet charismatic turn from William Shatner, the stories and writing hold up amazingly well. There’s an undeniable depth to a majority of these episodes and while a few do approach the same themes, sometimes to the point of redundancy, each and every episode of this first season ranks at least good when compared to the pantheon of other ‘Star Trek’ material released over the years.
Leonard Nimoy, the backbone of the show, was always a standout for me and I was always annoyed that Nimoy didn’t incorporate his talent more outside the ‘Star Trek’ universe (not including his directorial career where he directed the hit ‘Three Men and a Baby’ among others). As Eddie Murphy once described of Spock, “He’s got to be the coolest white man on the planet”. And Shatner, of course, fit the role of cocksure Captain Kirk to a T bringing a little 60s swinging swagger to the great beyond. I also like that Shatner went on to have some healthy awareness about the role which makes me even more of a fan of the character and even adds some enjoyment to the aging womanizer that he now currently plays on the great ‘Boston Legal’.
The show did get off on the wrong foot with a pilot episode filmed that had Jeffrey Hunter playing Capt. Pike (curiously reworked later in the series as ‘The Cage’) but the network thought it needed more adventure and ordered a second pilot episode filmed, “Where No Man Has Gone Before”, with everybody being recast except for Nimoy as Spock and set into motion a cast that’s become iconic.
One of the great first episodes of all time, the network still didn’t respond to it that well so they aired some episodes out of order with ‘The Man Trap’ actually being aired first. I can only assume the more extensive sets made the decision but ‘The Man Trap’ is an inferior episode at almost every level. There are continuity errors also if you watch the episodes in the order they aired but luckily all the episodes are presented here for you to watch in any order you choose.
Other highlight episodes that most fans will be aware of are ‘The Naked Time’, ‘Mudd’s Women’, ‘Balance of Terror’, Space Seed’, ‘The Corbomite Maneuver’, ‘Space Seed’, ‘Devil in the Dark’ and arguably the greatest episode of the entire original series: ‘City on the Edge of Forever’. ‘What Are Little Girls Made of?’ is fascinating because of the jaw-dropping sexuality of an android’s threadbare costume and the hottie that fills it. That all the women are generally in skimpy mini-skirts and costumes may have had something to do with its geek cult following… (that I consider myself a member of).
A few head-scratchers or overly cheesy eps pop in every so often- ‘The Galileo Seven’, ‘Shore Leave’, the final ‘Operation: Annihilate!’ – but the season as a whole is an immensely entertaining piece of pop culture that spawned 10 feature films with another on the way and 5 spin-off series of varying quality. That kind of prolific output can’t last over 40 years unless there’s something there that audiences really respond to.
Presented in a 10-disc box set with some cool packaging, a plastic case that holds a cardboard sleeve that holds the 10 HD-DVD/DVD combos on plastic trays, the case holds the cardboard sleeve up in the middle to give it the vague semblance of it suspending in air. While it looks good on display, the case does become annoying for practicality reasons when sliding it into a shelf. With no title or label of which season it is on the side of the packaging, normal storage becomes a pain. Included are 5 ‘data cards’ that list the episodes on each disc, the air-date, and the included special features.
While the cards are cool, I was slightly disappointed not more packaged info was included-not even synopsis of the eps are included. The HD-DVD/DVD combo discs sport HD-DVD remastered episodes on one side with SD remastered episodes on the other. There is no separate release for DVD or HD-DVD and the special features are divided across both sides of each respective disc.
‘Star Trek’ is presented in the show’s original 4:3 aspect ratio with bars on each side if viewing on a 16:9 television set. The episodes are presented with a 1080p AVC encode and the level of detail on most of these episodes will prove eye-popping for most - particularly for those that skipped the last DVD release.
The detail could be so good as to highlight a lot of the faults of the show-zippers are now visible, the annoying soft focus of all the actresses on the show are now more noticeable-which may not be a good thing for some. Most of the dirt, grain and corruption have been cleaned up and some scenes look as if they were filmed yesterday.
The audio choices are Dolby Digital Plus 2.0 and Dolby True HD 5.1. The True HD 5.1 track is the recommended choice with a freshly recorded main theme to accompany the new visual f/x and ample surround movement. The Plus 2.0 track is the closest purists will get to the original mono track (not included and a sore point for some), so that might be the way to go if hearing the ’66 Enterprise whoosh behind you makes you want to grit your teeth.
With a healthy supply of new features along with some carry-over features from the 2004 SD DVD release, there’s hours of stuff here to dig through. Starting with the SD stuff, we get ‘Reflections on Spock’, a 12-minute interview with Leonard Nimoy talking about his character, ‘Life Beyond Trek: William Shatner’, a pre-‘Boston Legal’ look at Shatner’s life after Trek, ‘The Birth of a Timeless Legacy’, a 30-minute featurette that goes into the origins of the series, the development and also sorts some cast interviews and Roddenberry clips.
‘To Boldly Go’ is a 20-minute look through the cast members’ eyes at specific episodes and the particular difficulties some of them provided. ‘Sci Fi Visionaries’ is an 18-minute look at the show’s writing and stories. ‘TV Trailers’ are also provided.
HD-DVD features start off with the coup de grace, the ‘Starfleet Access’. Similar to U-Control on Universal discs or if IME’s on WB discs were selectable, ‘Starfleet Access’ is a picture-in-picture info interactive commentary of sorts that allows users to click on various icons as they show up on screen, which will drop the episode into a smaller window with a new window popping up displaying the respective info of whatever icon the user selected.
While more than one of these icons can appear at the same time, it seems that Paramount was promoting going through the episodes a few times to see everything-a mild annoyance for those not wanting to play fish to see all the content on the discs. There’s a lot of useful and entertaining info through this feature though so I found the functionality tolerable. This feature only applies to the following episodes: ‘Where No Man Has Gone Before’, ‘The Menagerie Part I and Part II’, ‘Balance of Terror’, ‘The Galileo Seven’, ‘Space Seed’ and ‘Errand of Mercy’.
‘Spacelift: Transporting Trek into the 21st Century’ is a 20-minute look at the Remastering process and all the work that went into creating this set. ‘Billy Blackburn’s Treasure Chest’ is 15 minutes and provides some intriguing home movies shot by small-time supporting actor Blackburn who played Lt. Hadley on the show. ‘Kiss ‘N Tell’ is a featurette looking at all the women in the ‘Star Trek’ universe.
‘Trekker Connections’ is a trivia game of sorts that plays out for less than five minutes. ‘Star Trek Online Game Preview’ is exactly that. ‘Interactive Enterprise Inspection’ is a cool feature that allows the user to get a visual tour of the Enterprise with useful information provided on various aspects of the ship. And finally, we arrive at the feature-length ‘Star Trek: Beyond the Final Frontier’- a documentary originally aired on The History Channel that takes a look at all the incarnations of ‘Star Trek’, the props and memorabilia, and interviews with most of the cast/crew and their reflections on the iconic show.
To sum up, this is a fairly comprehensive set that should please all but the most dedicated of Grinches. The Bonus Material is ample and entertaining, the CGI additions and Remastering is done with a large amount of reverence and passion and the HD image provides so much detail and clarity as to breathe new life into a 41-year old show.
Add to that a cool, collectible case, a mail-in offer for a ‘Star Trek’-themed HD-DVD Toshiba remote and finally one of the best seasons of Sci-fi Television, nay Television in general, to top off the package, I imagine this will become a must-have for casual and die-hard fans alike, despite the rather steep asking price – Highly Recommended.
Star Trek The Original Series - The Complete First Season (Combo HD DVD) is now available at Amazon . Visit the DVD database for more information.
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