Idle Ramblings

Trek as you've never seen it before!

It arrived. I've watched. I'm impressed (mostly).



I have long been awaiting the first season box set of Star Trek:The Origonal Series. Much as I was tempted, I held off buying the individual episodes, mainly because I had gotten most of TOS through the Columbia House Club on video tape over the years. But as the day neared, I donated my video tapes to the liberry and made space along side my DS9 and Trek movie collection for the real deal.



Was it worth the wait? More importantly, was it worth the money? Definitely yes! If, for nothing else, the convenience of having the eight disc, 29 episode set that fits roughly in the space one video tape took.



Now, it's not everything it could have been, and that is a slight disappointment. More on that later.



As for the set, first, the bad part. Each of the season sets come packed in a plastic case, somewhat reminiscent of the origonal tricorder. Yellow for season one, blue I think for season two and red I think for season three. The cases are hinged longways down the middle and open up to reveal the series in a multi dvd case inside. The way the case is built makes it awkward for construction. It's bigger that a regular season set, such as the DS9 or Buffy sets I have. And don't through away the little cardboard box bottom it comes in for shelf storage, because the case doesn't really like to stand up on its own. The individual disks, at least on my set, are also very difficult to get out of the trays. More so than usual with a dvd.



Now for the good part. I have watched only a handful of the 29 episodes so far, but, wow, the quality is amazing. Never before have I seen Trek so clear. The transfer is really impressive. The colors are clear and the picture is crisp. I can honestly say I have never seen TOS look this good. The video tapes were cleaner than what I grew up watching on TV and the Sci-Fi Channel digitally restored episodes looked good as well, but not this good.



In addition, the extrapolating of the sound for Dolby Surround or whatever they call it, makes the episodes sound great. Even the alternate mono track souds really good.



On this first season, I think five of the episodes have text commentary, ala the sepecial edition movie disks. I have watched "Where No Man Has Gone Before" with the commentary. Very cool. I know it's too much to ask, but it would have been great to get the same insights on all the episodes. But naturally here's one of several places Paramount comes up short with Trek. Par for the course.



One of the things that really struck me about the first season is just how out of order the episodes are. They are presented by air date, but the production number is included in somewhere, maybe on the disks or on the packaging, I don't have either with me at the moment, or I could have looked it up at StarTrek.com. But you really see the inconsistancies of the rearranging, with "Where No Man Has Gone Before," the second pilot episode filmed a year before the rest of the series, airing as the third episode of the series. You've already introduced McCoy as a major character in "The Man Trap" and "Charlie X" and now, poof, he's gone for an episode, only to return in "The Naked Time." Not to mention the differences in uniforms, sets, etc.



As for the special features, I have watched a few. The first included interviews with many of the origonal people behind the scenes, including archival footage of Gene Roddenberry. The second feature is about Shatner's obsession with horses. I thought it would be kind of lame, but it actually was pretty good. The photo gallery is the only other feature I've gone through. It's pretty much like any other dvd photo gallery.



The packaging is okay, though a lot of the hardcore fans are going to find the stories included about the history of the Federation and Star Fleet and the evolution of the Romulans kind of lame. Two paragraphs of the Romulan story are devoted to the changes in Romulan fashion from the origonal series, through all the other series on to Nemesis.



Again, Paramount could have done better. They could have just bought a season of Buffy or Angel and looked at how it's packaged.



Overall, the whole thing is great so far. There are a few deficiencies, but nothing that drastically takes away from the set. But you can tell it was produced more for the casual fan than for the hardcore fan. It would be nice if, just for once, Paramount tipped its hat toward those of us who continue to support the franchise, no matter how bad it gets.



There's nothing like The Origonal Series. It's definitely worth the cost.

posted by Joseph @ 9/04/2004 10:34:00 PM