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Space. The Final Frontier. The U.S.S. Enterprise embarks on a five year mission to explore the galaxy. The Enterprise is under the command of Captain James T. Kirk. The First Officer is Mr. Spock, from the planet Vulcan. The Chief Medical Officer is Dr. Leonard 'Bones' McCoy. With a determined crew, the Enterprise encounters Klingons, Romulans, time paradoxes, tribbles and genetic supermen lead by Khan Noonian Singh. Their mission is to explore strange new worlds, to seek new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.
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By Emily J. Jackson (Northwest Alabama, USA)
Everyone knows the superb quality of the episodes from TOS Season One, and with this Blu-Ray set you can watch either the remastered or original FX. The episodes do appear with black bars on the top, bottom, and both sides on 4:3 televisions. Picture and sound quality are excellent, as is to be expected with Blu-Ray.
By Tucson Jim (Tucson)
Never been to a convention but have been a huge fan of Star Trek since the first broadcast in 1966. Season 1 on blu-ray is outstanding. For purists you can watch the original special effects and listen to the original sound track. But if you are daring enough to "Boldly go where no man (in this case) has gone before" you will re-experience Star Trek. The film had been cleaned up extraordinarily well and enhanced. The special effects do the kind of justice that this series deserves. The sound track extraordinary. I plan to purchase season 2 (available 9/22/09) and season 3 as available.
By Robert Moore (Chicago, IL USA)
I frankly had not watched these episodes in very, very long time. I had seen all of them several times each as a kid, but I never really qualified as a Trekker. I never understood the obsession the show drew for many of its fans. So I was curious to see what my reaction to them would be as a more experienced, adult viewer. I suppose the best way to express my reaction is that I'm aware both of the show's many virtues and many flaws, its achievements and shortcomings. It is true that it is more impressive once you factor in what other American shows at the same time were doing, but despite that it compares rather poorly with what was happening in movies at the time and it has not managed to age very well. A great deal of this stems from the fact that TV had not yet matured as a medium in the late 1960s, partly for technological reasons and partly because of the limitations that the networks placed upon the kinds and complexity of stories that were permitted. Story arcs were always expected to be wrapped up entirely in a single episode, which prevented any kind of sophisticated long term story telling. It was only in the 1990s that networks and studios allowed the kind of extended narrative story telling that makes watching quality TV today more rewarding than seeing even the best movies, while only in the late 1990s did the full range of technologies develop that makes contemporary TV so wonderful (steadicams, stunt techniques depending on wire work, high def video, and a wide range of CGI programs). So yeah, it is great for its time, but it is still very much a product of its time.
One of the most interesting things about rewatching the early episodes is how STAR TREK had not, at that point, become STAR TREK. McCoy is just another character. Sulu is a minor character. Uhura is completely undeveloped. Scottie someone who isn't clearly going to be important in the future. Chekhov not even a part of the show. Gradually the pieces start to fall into place. While Kirk and Spock were almost instantly the characters we associate with them, only gradually did the others become the crew of the Enterprise that we know and in some cases love.
The one thing that stands out to me in rewatching it for the first time in ages is just how outrageously awful William Shatner is as an actor. He carries off the role with great aplomb, but his acting technique is so bizarre that the show can easily - if you choose to see it this way - a comedy. Shatner's business, the timing of his lines, his physical posture. Shatner's outrageousness as an actor can be observed in almost every episode. Heck, almost any line! My favorite moment might be in an early scene in the famous episode "The Arena," where Shatner has to run across an open field. His dodges and feints as he runs are among the funniest things I've ever seen on TV. And let's not even talk about Shatner's bare chest! Though I want to ask, was there some contract signed somewhere stipulating that Capt. Kirk had to either appear without a shirt or with a seriously ripped one each episode? And who wanted to see him in such a state? Potential female viewers? Guys? (Oh my. After saying that we shouldn't talk about Kirk's bare chest, we went ahead and did it.) I will confess that Shatner is so utterly horrible as an actor that he actually passes over into the realm where he is funny as hell. In fact, at times he is so funny that I have to tune his antics out so that I can focus on the more serious events in the show.
The show is famous for breaking a number of barriers on TV. They originally wanted Majel Barrett to be the second in command, and would thereby have given a woman a leadership role unseen in the previous history of television except for Annie Oakley and Emma Peel in THE AVENGERS. Even as it is, the show had women in a number of positions that previously would have been held only by men (though women were not allowed to wield phasers). The ethnic diversity was unheard of. Blacks, Asians, Indians, various Europeans, and all of those both male and female. And in Season Two one of the most prominent characters was a Russian, and this at the height of the Cold War. There was still some latent sexism, such as the function of women as military noncombatants and the appalling miniskits all the female crew had to wear, and the women who threw themselves on Kirk each week. Still, given the era, the role given to women outstripped almost everything that had come before. And this was all in a season before the one in which television's first interracial kiss took place.
The writing on the show was extremely limited by the episodic format that dominated the age. My personal belief is that television didn't really begin to come of age before the development of the serial format in the 1980s and its perfection in the 1990s. There is only so much that you can do in a format that limits all that you are able to do with the narrative to 50 minutes. With that limitation, the writing on the show is as strong as you could hope. Many episodes are regarded as "classic" but really don't hold up very well. Many others are just so-so. Some - like the abominable "The Alternative Factor" are miserably awful. But there are a number that still hold up quite well and are a lot of fun to watch. Again, they are not great by today's standards, but they hold up pretty well.
I'm not a Trekker (nor the more derogatory Trekkie) and frankly didn't become a fan of TV Sci-fi until serial narrative shows started to make their way onto TV (ST DS9, B5, and especially FARSCAPE, FIREFLY, and the new BSG). So I've never been emotionally or imaginatively invested in the world of ST, even though I've seen the shows. Still, I had a great time rewatching these after so many years.
By GameraRocks (Gillsville, GA USA)
The picture and sound quality is the best that has been released so far. The color is brought out even more and the details on everything really stand out. I am a BIG fan of the picture-in-picture commentary, though it doesn't have it for every episode. While you watch the episode, every now and then a little screen pops up at the bottom right corner. It is someone telling you info about the scene or where they got the ideas. Sometimes it is the guest star of the episode that makes a video commentary. For example, the guy who played Gary Mitchell on the Kirk pilot "Where No Man Has Gone Before" talks during the episode. The Okudas, Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, DC Fontana and other famous Trek people also comment. It is way worth buying. They tell trivia about the episodes that I didn't know!
By GoGators! (Ocala, FL USA)
I've been holding out to buy the series for a very long time, and I'm glad I did. You have the best of both worlds here by having the original CGI or the original animation. I watched this series as a kid, like many of you, and I am simply thrilled at seeing them in HiDef for the first time. If you were fan of the original series, then this is a must have treasure to possess. I look forward to the next two seasons, and plan to buy both of them. Thanks CBS for making these, and thanks for the low, and very reasonable pricing.
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