Product Description

Genre: Television: Series
Rating: NR
Release Date: 5-AUG-2008
Media Type: DVD

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2820 in DVD
• Brand: STAR TREK ORIGINAL S
• Released on: 2008-08-05
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: AC-3, Box set, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Full Screen, Original recording remastered, Subtitled, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, French
• Dubbed in: French
• Number of discs: 8
• Dimensions: .25 pounds
• Running time: 1311 minutes

Amazon.com
The most famous episode in franchise history, "The Trouble with Tribbles," is one of the highlights of the second season of Star Trek: The Original Series. A deserved classic, the humorous story centers on an ever-expanding mass of furry creatures that memorably rain themselves down on top of Captain Kirk (William Shatner) and into the middle of a Federation-Klingon showdown. It inspired one of the most memorable episodes in the spin-off series Deep Space Nine, "Trial and Tribble-ations." Also in the second season, the Vulcan culture of Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy) is fleshed out in "Amok Time" (in which Spock is faced with the possibility of killing his captain and friend) and "Journey to Babel" (introducing Spock's father, played by Mark Sarek, in what would turn out to be a long-recurring role). A new character, navigator Pavel Chekov (Walter Koenig), was introduced; his Monkees haircut was intended to appeal to the younger audience, but he was also a Russian, which at the height of the cold war reflected Gene Roddenberry's optimistic vision of a more enlightened future. Other social-commentary opportunities presented themselves in "The Omega Glory," "The Doomsday Machine," and "Assignment: Earth," the last also one of those periodic opportunities to scrimp on the budget by time-traveling to an earlier version of Earth. Another example was "A Piece of the Action," a comic episode set in the Roaring Twenties and memorable for, among other things, Kirk's teaching a made-up card game called Fizzbin. In other significant episodes, "I, Mudd" saw the return of the bounder from season 1, "The Changeling" was the original inspiration for the first Trek feature film a decade later, "Wolf in the Fold" (penned by the author of Psycho) provides an example of the series' great writing, and "Mirror, Mirror" introduced the concept of the parallel universe inhabited by vicious, amoral counterparts of the regular crew, another theme later borrowed (more than once, and to good emotional effect) by DS9.

On the DVD
The remastered episodes are the highlight of the 2008 second-season release; like in season one, the reworked visual effects might irk purists but are an improvement overall, and some of the space exteriors are very exciting. It's not in high definition, however; season one was released in 2007 on two-sided combination HD DVD and standard DVD discs, which are now obsolete. Season two mimics the packaging, but is only standard-definition DVD, not Blu-ray. The picture, while obviously not high-definition quality, is still much improved over the 2004 DVD release. Special features here mostly mirror that 2004 set: 80 minutes of featurettes ("To Boldly Go" season recap, " Kirk, Spock & Bones: The Great Trio," "Star Trek's Divine Diva," "Designing the Final Frontier," and "Writer's Notebook: D.C. Fontana"), though missing from this set are the text commentaries on two episodes, the Red Shirt Logs, the production art, and the photo gallery. There are two new featurettes: "Star Trek's Favorite Moments," in which cast members of later Trek franchises and fans recall certain episodes, and "Billy Blackburn's Treasure Chest, part 2," in which a Trek extra tells stories and shows some of his on-set home movies. And because season 2 includes "The Trouble with Tribbles," the set includes two bonus episodes: "More Tribbles, More Troubles" from the Animated Series and "Trials and Tribble-ations" from Deep Space Nine. Conveniently, all three Tribble-centric episodes are on the same disc, and include the bonus features from the earlier DVD releases (the commentary by writer David Gerrold on "More Troubles" and the two featurettes--"Uniting Two Legends" and "An Historic Endeavor"--from "Tribble-ations"). The bonus episodes were not remastered, and you can tell the difference when comparing the original Tribble episode on this set with the grainier footage that was used in the DS9 episode. A minor annoyance is that the discs are one-sided but appear to be two-sided, as if they had been designed for combo HD DVD again before a late change. That means the info on the disc is restricted to a ring around the middle, rather than a full label that could have listed the episodes on each disc; as is, they're only listed on the glossy "collector's data cards." And once again, the plastic shell is clunky and the disc spindles are way too tight. All in all, it's a nice package, especially if one doesn't already have the other Tribble episodes, but it feels like it's floating in a standard-definition limbo, stuck in the transition between HD DVD and Blu-ray. --David Horiuchi

Customer Reviews

A Dream Come True
Ever since I watched the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Trials and Tribble-ations" back in 1996 and saw the classic Enterprise displayed with modern effects, I dreamed about one day seeing the entire Orignal Series retouched in such a magnificent way. 10 years later, that dream came true. Granted, the series does still retain that 60's feel (especially with the bombastic style of the music, and of course the "military uniform" mini-skirts), there was so much of it that made for great television even for today. The effects being updated really gives the series credibility and believability for viewers and allows the original series to fit in properly with all the incarnations that came afterward. Bringing it to High-Definition was truly a great idea, and the live-action image quality is drastically improved, so much so that at times it gives the series an entirely new feel!

Agreed by both casual viewers as well as die-hard fans, the second season of "Star Trek" provides us with a multitude of favorite episodes. Two episodes in particular that are given excellent treatment and incredible updating are "The Doomsday Machine" and "The Immunity Syndrome". "The Doomsday Machine", next to "The City on the Edge of Forever" is considered one of the best from the Original Series, even in its unrefined form. The updating on this episode put it into near movie-quality, far surpassing many Star Trek episodes, includng many from other spin-off series, and even perhaps a couple of the motion pictures. An interesting effect, to me, was how the remastering of "The Immunity Syndrome" made a not-so-great episode into a spectacular episode! The 1966 effects were good at the time, but the remastering gives it a whole new sense of realism and scope. Other classic episodes like "Amok Time", "The Trouble With Tribbles", and "Mirror, Mirror" are given good treatments, also.

As of August 6th, I've purchased this set and have been thoroughly enjoying it as much as I knew I would. One of the most common complaints of one-star reviewers is that this season, unlike the previous season's release, is ONLY on DVD, not on Blu-ray or even HD-DVD. Don't let that discourage you. Even in this standard DVD version, Star Trek is given new life unlike ever before. This DVD's visual quality is far better than any previous releases, especially since that this is a down-conversion of the cleaned-up High-Definition source. On a regular 480i/p CRT TV, it looks superb. On an HDTV, a good 1080p DVD up-converter will give you an excellent picture from the DVD; granted of course, it will not be the same as an HD release (no up-converter can do that, but they can get close). The truth of it is that this DVD will be better than what you can see on broadcast TV. I've even noticed that the standard DVD quality is better than the "HD" TV broadcasts.

There have also been those who have wondered what Gene Roddenberry would have thought of this rebuffing of the series. To answer that, here is a segment from an interview with the executive producers of the remastered project on that very question:

"What do you think Gene Roddenberry would think of the remastered effects?

Dave Rossi: When Gene passed away and his estate requested that all memos and paperwork from the Original Series through TNG be turned over, I was the person whose job it was to wade through 27 years of material. One theme that popped up with some regularity in Gene's memos was "What can we do to improve the visual effects?" While that alone isn't an answer, the support the Roddenberry family and people like Bob Justman have shown during this project really reinforces the notion that Gene was always striving to improve the effects to help bring the world of Star Trek alive. We're honored to help fulfill that wish.

Mike Okuda: We had a number of long talks with Matt Jefferies before he died. For understandable reasons, Matt was one of our heroes. He was inwardly very proud of his work on Star Trek, but he was always very apologetic for the limitations of 1960s production techniques. He kept saying how he wished he had the technology that was developed after the show ended. We always responded by reminding him that his designs were a major reason why the show remains successful and watchable to this day. At the same time, it convinced us that he would have been the first to stand in line to update his own work, if he had been able."

Bottom Line -- If you are willing to wait for the Blu-ray versions, that's fine. I'm not. As a lover of the Original Series, it's just too good to pass up. My hat's off to to all those who participated in this extraordinary remastering effort and for turning a dream of mine into reality.

Second season with remastered picture and new visual effects often looks great packaging on the other hand...
The second season of "Star Trek: The Original Series" was a particularly strong one with many outstanding episodes but it also had its share of duds as the grind of producing a weekly TV series wore down the production team. This new remaster uses digitally restored episodes along with new visual effects added recently. Episodes such as "The Doomsday Machine" and "Amok Time" both benefit substanially from the new visuals. The former episode a tense one about an ancient artifact from a long forgotten war that destroys planets features new visuals that compliment the story. The original model for the U.S.S. Constellation which is ravaged by the planet eater was an AMC model that looked terrific at home not so terrific when compared to the Enterprise model. The visual effects crew burned and damaged the plastic model but it never looked realistic. Here you can actually see the support beams where the skin was torn off the Constellation in battle. It makes the episode that much more powerful and the scenes as the Enterprise swiftly moves in to attack the machine look particularly good even if they are in standard definition on this DVD.

We also get duds like "The Omega Glory" where Gene Roddenberry attempts to use a "Trek" episode as a metaphor for the Cold War. Gene L. Coon left during the second season which means the show lost of one its most creative writer-producers. Coon was one of the finest writers on the production team (along with D.C. Fontana and John D.F. Black during the first season)during the first and second season John Meredyth-Lucas (who wrote the classic episode "The Changling" where the Enterprise's fate hinges on a case of mistaken identity by an old space probe and which probably inspired Alan Dean Foster's story "In Thy Image". That story was to be the pilot episode of the new series with most of the original cast. When "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" was put into production instead Harold Livingston (with some rewrites by Gene Roddenberry) retooled the episode into a feature film directed by Robert Wise) came on board and wrote/directed a number of very good episodes filling much of the void left by the late Coon.

We get almost all the originals special features ported over from the previous boxed set of the second season except for the text commentary tracks. We also get "Billy Blackburn's Home Movies" which gives us more footage behind-the-scenes narrated by Blackburn that was shot when the show was in production. Additionally, we get the "Star Trek: The Animated Series" episode "More Trouble, More Tribbles" with David Gerrold's optional commentary track and the "Trials and Tribble-ations" amusing tribute episode from "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine". There are also some extras ported over from the "DS9" set that had this episode on it including two featurettes "Uniting Two Legends" and "An Historic Endeavor" which discusses the challenges of creating this episode, making it work as a "DS9" episode even though it had a "gimmick" and the difficult in combining the "DS9" crew into the old "Trek" episode. We also get previews for the episodes. The menu is the same design as the previous set. Kudos to Paramount for including the other two "Tribble" episodes with the extras. While it didn't cost them much to include they could have given us NOTHING.

In place of a booklet we get the individual plastic cards that have a picuture on the front from an episode on that set along with details on the back about the episodes and extras. I don't like the cards although they are a clever concept. Which brings us to the flimsy packaging. The plastic case would be great if the hinges weren't so delicate and broke so easy. The design is sharp and the intent was good but the execution was lacking.

The problem with this set though is simple--this was originally to be a dual sided DVD/HD-DVD combo. While the HD-DVD format may be dead, Paramount went ahead and used the two sided hybrid discs that they had purchased for the previous season set to manufacture these but didn't put anything on the "HD" side of the disc except the same disc info as on the previous set. I understand that Paramount was reluctant (with their funding from Toshiba pulled who paid Paramount for the exclusive rights to release this to HD-DVD)to continue on but they should have finished what they started for HD-DVD owners. If nothing else, Paramount should have put episodes on the flip side with the original visual effects so fans could view either version of the show.

I'm disappointed that Paramount didn't put together a Blu-ray version in time to coincide with this release but I suspect they recognized that many fans will buy this AND the Blu-ray so they could double dip. The HD masters were probably already prepared so they should have come out at the same time.

Regardless, this is a fine season with some episodes sporting new visual effects that make a difference while others they are mere decoration. The extras are fine but Paramount should have included the original episodes with the original visual effects or the HD-DVD versions. They also should have released this to Blu-ray at the same time. Recommended but with hesitation because you just know a Blu-ray version is in the pipeline.

Trek Never Looked Better!
I reviewed most of The Original Series episodes during the initial DVD release which began in 1999. So, the comments here focus on the new edition.

Doubtless, Paramount will eventually release these episodes on Blu-ray. But even at standard definition, the picture has never looked better. The colors pop off the screen, scratches have been removed, and grain, while noticeable, has been reduced to a bare minimum. Unfortunately, with the improved picture, flaws in the original production are also more noticeable: shadows from boom microphones are detectable, zippers can be clearly seen in many of the uniforms, and 20th Century buildings can be seen in the background of "A Private Little War." Still, the picture shows the obvious care taken with the lighting and composition of the original shots (very different from today's flatly-lit, smash & grab style of television filming).

Of course, the primary focus of this new release is the new CGI visual effects. Season Two had a number of effects heavy episodes, including "The Doomsday Machine" and "The Immunity Syndrome," and they benefit the most from the new effects. Most of the new space shots are very convincing, remaining in the original spirit of the series. Only a few of the shots are major deviations from the originals, such as when the shuttle is seen exiting the Enterprise from the outside. Restraint seems to be the watchword here, and I would have liked to have seen a little bit more done, such as the replacement of some very dated view screen graphics in "The Changeling," and correction to faulty composite shots, such as in "Bread & Circuses." But the enhanced background plate in "By Any Other Name" is simply stunning, and the expanded castle front seen in "Catspaw" (an otherwise weak episode) is subtly done.

The discs also include audio tracks in Spanish and French, although my partner (fluent in Spanish) tells me many of the Spanish translations are not faithful to the English originals. As for bonus features, the real highlight is Billy Blackburn's behind the scenes movies, which show the actors in costume but out of character - a real treat.

Bring on Season Three!