To Go Where No Man Has Gone Before
Star Trek is coming to Blu-ray in spades lately, starting with the late April release of the complete first season on Blu-ray, with the first six movies coming to Blu-ray this week. This isn’t just your average transfer to Blu-ray and repackage job though — Paramount and CBS have put a lot of sincere effort into this release and for fans of the show like myself, it’s really satisfying.
This gorgeous seven disc set includes all twenty-nine epsiodes from the first season. All told, there is over twenty-four hours of content across these seven discs. Before getting to the specifics of each disc, there are some very important general points in this release that span all seven discs.
First of all, every episode has been visually enhanced, but fear not — you can choose to watch the original un-enhanced versions of every episode, or view their enhanced versions. The fact that they included both versions is critical to a fan like me, and I’m sure that goes for just about every Trek fan out there. So what does Enhanced mean then? Well, the folks behind the release went to great lengths to digitally touch up every frame from the original master film. Image quality was tweaked to the maximum for the best possible picture. Also, other major enhancements were made — the planets and the Enterprise have all been made over digitally. So for all of those scenes where the Enterprise is in orbit around a planet, expect a sharp, vibrant image now that is obviously digital, but hey, it still looks really cool. Also, for those scenes when the Enterprise is not in orbit and just cruising in space, the digital artists spruced up space so that it is more than just stars against a black sky. Other enhancements include minor, but appreciable touches like having the alien Gorn blink (this is the large green alien with the crystal eyes), and Scotty’s phaser lights up brilliantly in The Naked Time episode when he’s trying to get to the door to Engineering opened up after O’Reilly locks himself in.
There are other enhancements throughout this release that really make the experience just that much more special. Besides having both the untouched versions and the enhanced versions available, you can also seamlessly switch back and forth between the two while watching an episode simply by pressing the Angle button on your remote — with this ability, you can really appreciate the job that the digital artists at Paramount and CBS did. I should also mention that both versions of the show are still presented in their original 4:3 ratio.
For audio, an impressive 7.1 Surround Sound DTS-HD track is used. Just like with the video work, the crew went back to the original audio source as well as putting together a orchestra to record the theme. One of the extra features on the first disc includes a lot of great info about what was done to bring Star Trek: The Original Series to the twenty-first century.
Each disc also has the same menu too, which shouldn’t be surprising. The menus are nicely designed and strictly Star Trek themed, which is cool. Now, let’s take a closer look at each disc.
The Blu-ray Breakdown
Disc 1 – The first disc includes The Man Trap, Charlie X, Where No Man Has Gone Before*, and The Naked Time. The asterik indicates that this episode features the Starfleet Access feature — this feature is an optional pop-up trivia track for this episode, giving additional insight about the events in the episode as they happen (I love these). In addition, there is a trailer for the new 2009 movie in HD and the Spacelift feature I briefly mentioned earlier, which is also in HD and runs about twenty minutes. The Spacelift feature includes interviews and footage of the technical crew behind bringing Star Trek to to Blu-ray.
Disc 2 – Includes episodes The Enemy Within, Mudd’s Women, What Are Little Girls Made Of, Miri, Dagger of the Mind.
Disc 3 – Includes episodes The Corbomite Maneuver, The Menagerie Part I*, The Menagerie Part II*, The Conscience of the King. A twelve minute long interview with Leonard Nimoy is included for the feature Reflections On Spock. In this feature that was recorded in 2003, Nimoy talks about his time as Spock and the two books he wrote — very interesting.
Disc 4 – Includes episodes Balance of Terror*, Shore Leave, The Galileo Seven, The Squire of Gothos. The extra feature on this disc is also from 2003 and is an interview with William Shatner. The ten minute SD feature is Life Beyond Trek and includes a 2003 interview and footage of Shatner with his horses, which he loves to ride and care for.
Disc 5 – Includes Arena, Tomorrow Is Yesterday, Court Martial, The Return of the Archons. Two extras are on this disc, both in SD and from 2003. The first is To Boldly Go… and the second is The Birth of a Timeless Legacy. Both features include interviews from the cast and some of the crew (writer DC Fontana, Producer Robert Justman) as well archival footage of Gene Roddenberry. Boldly runs nineteen minutes. The Birth feature goes about twenty-four minutes and includes more of the cast and crew from 2003 talking about the show and various anecdotes.
Disc 6 – Includes episodes Space Seed,* A Taste of Armageddon, This Side of Paradise, The Devil In the Dark. Extras include Sci-Fi Visonaries as well as an interactive Enterprise Inspection feature. Sci-Fi Visionaries is in SD and runs about sixteen minutes; it includes more from the 2003 interviews and talks about how the show exceeded so much adversity and expectations. The Enterprise Inspection feature is a neat HD feature where the viewer is presented with an HD shot of the ship and you can choose different parts of the ship to learn about. An audio recoding about the particular part of the ship plays; pretty darn cool.
Disc 7 – Includes episodes Errand of Mercy,* The Alternative Factor, The City On the Edge of Forever, Operation: Annihilate! Extras on this disc are Billy Blackburn’s Treasure Chest: Rare Home Movies and Special Memories and Kiss ‘n’ Tell: Romance in the 23rd Century. The Billy special is really cool; it runs about thirteen minutes in HD and has just actor Billy Blackburn talking and sharing his really interesting memories of the show, the actors, the set, and so forth. His vintage home videos, at least some of them, are also shown. The Kiss’n’Tell feature is less interesting, but still good. It runs about eight minutes, is in SD, and features Shatner talking about how his character met so many women throughout the episodes of The Original Series.
Conclusion
There’s just something about this classic series that give it a timelessness that so few TV shows can claim. Generation after generation, year after year, these episodes bring entertainment to so many people. This is one show I’m always up for watching; the classical themes, memorable characters and stories, and mysterious, endless nature of space give it so much replay value. It’s an incredible show and this Blu-ray set was done right. Bring on season two and three!