Star Trek: The Original Series - Season One (HD DVD/DVD)

Introduction

In 1966 Gene Roddenberry managed to get a sci-fi series on air in the US that purported to boldly go where no man had gone before.  Conventional science fiction at this point in time was really represented in the mainstream by the rather quaint and camp Lost In Space with Robbie The Robot.  Roddenberry wanted to do something a little different and created a version of the US Navy in space, a ship with a crew of 400+ people organised as per conventional Naval forces.  Therefore this ship had different specialist crew members and sections; science, communications, engineering, command and security amongst others that I may have forgotten.

Roddenberry went further though and envisaged a united globe where the whole of humanity united under a common banner of Starfleet, and so the bridge and command crews are made up of representatives of other countries, although not that many to start.  No Russian presence from Chekov this series, but we have an Asian representative with Sulu (George Takei), and a dodgy Scottish accent via Chief Engineer Scotty (James Doohan).  More controversially though, we have a female black officer in the form of communications officer Lt Uhuru (Nichelle Nicholls), which would have been a real shock to mainstream audiences at this time.



You wouldn't know this if you weren't a fan or saw the influx of Trek-based films and series throughout the 80's and 90's but Star Trek was not a major hit at the time.  With relatively low ratings, Roddenberry's creation was axed after three series and despite a minorly successful cartoon series shortly afterwards, Star Trek only really took off as a phenomenon once it passed into syndication and therefore endlessly repeated at teatime, picking up a younger generation of viewers.

The success of Star Wars then gave Paramount a bit of a nudge, who realised that they could be onto a good thing with an in-built audience, and Star Trek The Motion Picture was commissioned.  Unfortunately, whilst the film would have worked quite well as an elongated episode in the TV series, the end result wasn't quite the blockbuster success that Star Wars was (and this was prior to the phrase blockbuster entering modern cinematic vernacular).  Still, this was rectified by the tour de force that was Wrath of Khan and for a long time the franchise never looked back, until oddly enough the pre-Original Series series named Enterprise after the ship. 



The world has had a break from Star Trek on both the big and small screens for a few years now, until the reboot of the original series in the form of the JJ Abrams scripted feature film - which was rather good and didn't let us down by having yet another dodgy Scottish accent.

Star Trek in it's many incarnations have been released on DVD and VHS before it, but Paramount decided it would up the ante during the rather sad high definition wars for the successor to DVD.  Paramount backed the HD format and authorised the release of Star Trek on flipper discs that contained normal DVD on one side and HD on the other.  And it got a little better, and worrying at that for a number of hardcore fans, Paramount proposed an upgrade of the special effects.

So what's it like?

Picture/Sound

The picture has been remastered and cleaned up, it looks extremely good in places considering its age.  The special effects have also been upgraded with replacement shots of the Enterprise, planetary bodies, and the old matte painting backdrops.  That's not quite it though as the fx team have also upgraded the phaser/photon torpedo's and also such things as adding a blink to the Gorn.  The new special fx work extremely well and are complimentary to the series rather than looking completely out of place, they're not too good though, we're not talking blockbuster-esque fx.

The soundtrack can now be enjoyed in 5.1 surround and is well subtitled.  The famous theme tune has been completely redone and reproduced in as close an approximation as possible with a full orchestra and sounds fantastic in 5.1, especially the whooshes as the Enterprise zooms across the screen during the opening credits.

Extras

Spacelift: Transporting Trek Into The 21st Century (disc 1) - featurette that focuses on the new special effects.

The Birth of a Timeless Legacy (disc 2)

Reflections on Spock (disc 3)

Life Beyond Trek: William Shatner (disc 4) - focuses mainly on his work with horses more than anything else.

To Boldly Go...Season One (disc 5) - Season 1 highlights featurette

Sci-Fi Visionaries (disc 6)



Ray Blackburn's Treasure Chest: Rare Home Movies and Special Memories (disc 7) - a minor extra provides some behind the scenes home movie footage, rather insubstantial really and really does remind me of Guy Fleegman from Galaxy Quest.

Kiss 'n' Tell: Romance in the 23rd Century (disc 8) - I was hoping for some discussion on the groundbreaking kiss between Kirk and Uhura, but this is just a general featurette on some of the luscious ladies to appear in season one.

Trekker Connections (disc 8) - minor game where you connect actors/actresses via Star Trek.  Again, insubstantial

Star Trek: Beyond The Final Frontier (disc 10) - very substantial documentary that centres around the 40th Anniversary auction set up by Christies in New York.  Hosted by Leonard Nimoy, this includes contributions from cast members of TOS, TNG, DS9 and Voyager.  Lasts an hour and a half and includes footage from within the auction that is oddly moving as real fans spend an absolute fortune for props, costumes and models (the Enterprise D went for $500,000!!!)

Star Trek On-Line Game Preview - a pre-view of an attempt at an MMORPG as part of the Star Trek franchise.  Not sure if this is actually released yet, the target date as in 2008, but I can't help thinking that only the ST universe will make this different in an already crowded market.  Not sure if that will be enough.

Overall

I was one of those people who got into Star Trek well after original transmission, which isn't really my fault as I was only born in the year it was cancelled.  I can remember in early '76 getting into the Star Trek novelisations of the Original Series, borrowed from my local library.  I read more episodes than I had actually seen at that point but safe to say I was quite heavily into the adventures of Kirk et al in written form.   It never developed into complete Trekkie obsession though, and despite Wrath of Khan, I never really viewed the Star Trek films with anything other than mild interest.  I did watch TNG with much interest at first, although that was more to do with Dr Crusher and Tasha Yar than anything else.  DS9 came a poor second to Babylon 5 and I never got into Voyager or Enterprise. 

So after all that, I hadn't really seen much of Star Trek TOS until last year when Sky decided that it would be a good idea to repeat a large number of episodes.  With a mild interest in seeing how the episodes fared some 40 years on, I dutifully set my Sky+ to record them all and was completely blown away.  True the fx were not that great, it was the 60's after all, but the stories were clever and funny and really had something to say.  I guess it helped that Roddenberry had an idea to allow proper sci-fi writers to pen episodes rather than the tradition of networks getting TV writers to attempt scripts in this genre.



Star Trek TOS is essentially  based around the triumverate of Captain James T.Kirk (William Shatner), Commander Spock (Leonard Nimoy) and Doctor McCoy (DeForest Kelley).  Kirk is the intelligent brawn, a Captain who is a master strategist but is willing to thump the living daylights out of his enemies if required (and it is).   Spock, as per his Vulcan heritage, is the cold logic and McCoy is the over dramatic conscience.  This first series very much revolves simply around the three of them and their chemistry is superb, especially between Shatner and Nimoy; it really doesn't surprise me that the two are life-long friends.

The other crew members get lines here and there but aren't as predominant here as you might think.  As mentioned before, there's no Chekov but you still have Uhura, Sulu and Scotty.  Another crew member who appears throughout a large portion of this series is Yeoman Janice Rand (Grace Lee Whitney), who is effectively Kirk's batman and also serves the role of providing unresolved sexual tension as is the wont of TV series.  It would appear though that this kind of got in the way of Kirk getting off with the female guests each week and so Rand just disappears without explanation after a while.



Overall the stories are strong and hold up today, only the rather dated sets and costumes (whether monster or otherwise) letting the series down a little when viewed by modern eyes.  Luckily the update of the special fx, and particularly the model shots, give the series a slightly more modern feel.  They're not too good but good enough, I think that was the thought behind them as well, so a bit of intelligence from the bods at Paramount there.  It would appear that they may have gone down well with die hard fans as Paramount are due to release TOS on bluray, although the bluray version apparently will give you the choice between the new fx or the old.

There's a nice variety of extras on this set and despite it being flipper discs with the now defunct HD format on the flip side, it is probably worth getting this set  if you're not yet converted to BD; you can pick these sets pretty cheaply these days.  There are 29 episodes here and there was only one that I didn't like at all, that's a pretty impressive return.

I've also got Series 2 & 3 to get through at some point, and that'll probably be sooner rather than later...