Product Description

The fans and captains have spoken! Not only have Star Trek fans voted online for their all-time favorite captain episodes from all five Star Trek series, but each show’s legendary leader Captain Kirk, Patrick Stewart, Avery Brooks, Kate Mulgrew, and Scott Bakula has carefully chosen their favorite episode, which resulted in Star Trek: Fan Collective Captain’s Log.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13379 in DVD
• Brand: PARAMOUNT PICTURES
• Released on: 2007-07-24
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: AC-3, Box set, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, Subtitled, NTSC
• Original language: English, Spanish, Portuguese
• Number of discs: 5
• Dimensions: 1.00 pounds
• Running time: 781 minutes

Amazon.com
OK, all you Trekkers who have been resisting the Star Trek: Fan Collective series on principle because it's an inexpensive repackaging of the episodes you already have on DVD. Captain's Log, the fifth in the series, raises the bar, not just by including a fifth disc, but by providing a host of brand-new content. As usual, fans selected the initial 10 episodes--two per series--but each "captain"--William Shatner, James T. Kirk of the Original Series; Patrick Stewart, Jean-Luc Picard of The Next Generation; Avery Brooks, Benjamin Sisko of Deep Space Nine; Kate Mulgrew, Kathryn Janeway of Voyager; and Scott Bakula, Jonathan Archer of Enterprise--picked a third episode as a personal favorite. Each captain then introduces the selected episode in about a one-minute segment (the exception is Shatner, who dishes for 12 minutes about "The City on the Edge of Forever," joined partway through by co-star Joan Collins), and in most cases, introduces the fan-selected ones as well. Finally, each captain is interviewed in a series of featurettes (some with common themes, such as "The Importance of the Captain's Log," "What Makes a Good Captain," or the character's legacy or future) lasting 8 to 12 minutes total. (Brooks' segments don't follow the themes and appear to be recorded a while back.) And thankfully, of all the episodes in the set--"The City on the Edge of Forever," "The Enterprise Incident," and "Balance of Terror" from the Original Series; "In Theory," "Chain of Command," and "Darmok" from The Next Generation; "Far Beyond the Stars," "What You Leave Behind" parts 1 and 2, and "In the Pale Moonlight" from Deep Space Nine; "Counterpoint," "The Omega Directive," and "Flashback" from Voyager; and "Judgment," "These Are the Voyages," and "First Flight" from Enterprise--only "The City on the Edge of Forever" is repeated from a previous Fan Collective, and it's hard to complain about seeing that episode too many times. --David Horiuchi

Customer Reviews

A fine collections for Star Trek fans
I was eagerly looking forward to this collection for months! The episodes chosen are all excellent episodes and, for the most part, exemplify the Captain in question (though Patrick Stewart admits on his introduction that he chose "In Theory", a Data episode, because it was his directorial debut).
With Deep Space Nine being my personal favorite of the series, which has often been only minimally-represented by previous Fan Collectives, it was gratifying to see three of my favorite episodes from this excellent series chosen, including the 2-for-1 series finale.
My only complaint, as with the previous four Fan Collectives, was the limited number of episodes. Granted the Q set was as complete as it could be (save for the vague possible connection with "The Squire of Gothos") and there were only a few later Voyager Borg-episodes that might have fit with the Borg set. Still, the Klingon and Time Travel sets could easily have been twice as large (and I would have been willing to pay twice as much if they were) and so could the Captain's Log set.
Still, this set not only features great episodes but finally has some featurettes in addition to them, though I did miss the witty and enjoyable text commentaries of the prior sets.
If you're a Star Trek fan strapped for cash, or a newcomer looking for a relatively inexpensive way to get to know these fine series, I would highly recommend the Star Trek Fan Collective: Captain's Log.
If any higher-ups in charge of such things somehow wanders here, by all means keep these sets coming! We still need Volumes 2 of the Klingon and Time Travel sets, the Vulcan set, the Romulan set, the Ferengi set, the Prime Directive set, the Mirror Universe set...

Captains' Perogative
This is a nice collection of Star Trek episodes. Each of the five actors who portrayed a Star Trek captain picked their favorite episode and several additional epsiodes, chosen by fans, were added to round out the package. In addition, interviews of each actor are also included.

The actors' choices are hard to dispute as each actor has a different perspective of why they liked the episode. Their reasons are discussed in an introduction preceeding each epsiode. William Shatner even has Joan Collins appear in his introduction It is also interesting to note that two actors (Patrick Stewart and Avery Brooks) chose epsiodes that they directed.

The fan-picked episodes are more difficult to accept. The TOS segment has Balance of Terror and The Enterprise Incident. These are hard to dispute, but Journey to Babel would have been a better choice than Balance of Terror ... and it still has Mark Leonard in it!

The TNG segment features the two-part Chain of Command and Darmok. Certainly The Inner Light, Starship Mine and Lessons would have been better Picard episodes.

DS9 also has the two-part What You Leave Behind, and In The Pale Moonlight. There is no argument that In The Pale Moonlight is one of the best Trek episodes, but Explorers and The Jem'Hadar show off Avery Brooks' acting talents better than What You Leave Behind.

Voyager's fan picks are The Omega Directive and Flashback. 11:59 is a better Kate Mulgrew epsiode than the dreary Omega Directivre. It is too bad there was no room for the Bride of Choatica episode. While not a Mulgrew-strong epsiode, her appearance as Queen Arachnia is a hoot.

The Enterprise fan picks, These are the Voyages and First Flight are suitable Archer sagas.

None-the-less, this collection is well put together and worth the price.

Captains Log - Supplimental
If you've got the entire series collections, you've got all these episodes. The same can be said for all of the "Fan Collective" assemblies. If you DON'T have the entire series, this is a good way to capture favorites. I got to vote on some of these episodes, so it was cool to see how the voting turned out. Only three of the ones I picked made the cut - oh well. These are all good episodes. Some you will find on OTHER Fan Collective editions as well. The opening commentary by each Captain's actor is novel - as are the other comments they offer in each bonus feature section of each disk. I think you'll enjoy that each series Captain has a disk of thier own, with three episodes per disk (one chosen by the actor, the other two by the fans). You can easily sit down for an "evening" with each Captain and not get too much episode vertigo.