The first season of Star Trek was cheaply-made and hastily shot, but its impact still resonates. Science Fiction on TV at the time was essentially limited to Lost in Space. The way it has matured to the point a series like the recently-concluded Battlestar Galactica can air at all, let alone for four seasons, is rather remarkable. The reviews of the upcoming reboot (mine included) seem to indicate Star Trek has finally taken a form that's appealing to the masses beyond the faithful, and this Blu-ray edition could easily find its way into the homes of new fans won by the new movie.
CBS has pulled off a release that all future catalogue TV titles will be compared to from here on out. Most importantly , what they've done here is position the original, ground-breaking series the best they can for future preservation. This makes me wonder at what glorious work could be done on The Twilight Zone (coming later this year) and Night Gallery in particular among many others.
Video & Audio
A few years ago, they completely restored the original series episodes in the process of adding new effects shots and audio for HDTV airing. Here they have included both versions, accessible via seamless branching. George Lucas looks like more of a selfish idiot than ever for being opposed to doing the same thing to his original Star Wars trilogy.
Using the Angle button on the Blu-ray remote, you can hot-swap from one version to the other mid-episode. Make sure you're running the latest firmware on your player, or you may run into issues as I did prior to downloading an update.
a crude snapshot from the Spacelift featurette highlighting the pre- and post-restoration difference
The audio options are also note-perfect. Included is a full DTS HD 7.1 track that includes the re-recorded score in addition to the original 2.0 Mono track. They've even included Spanish and French 2.0, which is often left off.
Even if you aren't fluent as I am, swap over to Spanish a couple times to hear Kirk say, "Eh, Senor e-Spock" a couple times. If I had one item on my BD-Live wish list, it'd be that I could re-dub the episodes in spanish myself along with friends in true telenovela style and upload it to the "cloud." Maybe that can be done down the road, since that's the whole idea behind BD-Live. User-generated alternate audio and YouTube-hosted video could help BD-Live get popular. Now if only manufacturers made some WiFi-enabled, low-cost players.
Extras
There's a great deal of ground to cover here, with over 2 hours of standalone supplements. On top of those, select episodes are enabled as Starfleet Access, which translates to picture-in-picture video commentary blurbs and text comments interspersed throughout. Just like audio commentary tracks, you don't want to watch them before having seen the show on its own.
There is a bit of recycled chatter seen in the wealth of featurettes elsewhere on the set, and there's a regular bit of "now I'm going to describe what is happening on screen right now." Episodes that have SA include Where No Man Has Gone Before, The Menagerie (Parts I & II), Balance of Terror, Space Seed, and Errand of Mercy.
Most of the supplements have been repurposed from the HD-DVD release and the 2004 DVD releases, with a few cut that I don't miss: text commentaries, a missing Starfleet Access on The Galileo Seven, a pair of featurettes and a History Channel doc. The featurettes and doc may show up on a later set. Watch this space for a breakdown of the hidden easter eggs I can find and confirm in a separate post later in the week.
Each disc in the set also features the "coming next week" preview trailers that originally aired with the episodes. There's some doubt as to whether these are exactly as aired, but who really cares? I don't.
The featurettes on this set primarily feature Shatner, Nimoy, series writer DC Fontana, Associate Producer John D.F. Black, and choice bits with Nichelle Nichols and George Takei. I saw James Doohan and Walter Koenig in a couple too.
Spacelift: Transporting Trek into the 21st Century (HD 20:00) [Disc 1]
They cleaned up the video and audio substantially for this release as noted previously. Here you get a look at the process of restoring from original negatives, cleaning up damage and dirt, and re-timing color and contrast. The side-by-side with what were previously the "best available" masters is breathtaking. On top of that, they go into how they re-recorded the theme and built the new effects shots for the Remastered version.
Reflections on Spock (11:52) [Disc 3]
Leonard Nimoy goes into some depth on the duality of his existence as Leonard and as Spock. A nice, tight bundle of anecdotes.
Life Beyond Trek: William Shatner (10:16) [Disc 3]
William Shatner loves horses, his wife loves horses, and they own many horses. Why hasn't someone recently put Shatner into a western? Imagine Shatner as a sheriff or a ranch owner with a big mustache.
To Boldly Go...Season One (18:52) [Disc 5]
An overview of the episodes of the first season. Boundaries they pushed and limitations they rammed up against.
The Birth of a Timeless Legacy (24:07) [Disc 5]
This is more focused on the genesis of the series, covering the multiple pilot episodes, changes made to the cast, and including a fair amount of Gene Roddenberry interview clips.
Sci-Fi Visionaries (16:30) [Disc 6]
Hre they talk about how they brought in established names from science fiction to give the show Sci-Fi credibility. I can't be the only one who misses the presence of Harlan Ellison, who I would have paid extra to have seen here, since the set contains one of the greatest episodes they ever did, which he wrote (The City on the Edge of Forever). Instead, they focus a lot on The Naked Time, and at one point Associate Producer John D.F. Black talks about Ellison like they're ever the best of friends and then makes fun of him in the same breath. I'm not talking about the "aw you old son of a bitch" kind of thing, but where some anger and envy seeps into one's voice. It's the kind of thing where you wonder if he would say the same thing with Harlan in the room.
Interactive Enterprise Inspection (HD 1:00:17) [Disc 6]
This is most likely to only appeal to serious Trek fiends and children being introduced to this stuff for the first time. This thing as a whole runs a total of about an hour and lets you select different systems and features of the ship for it to talk about.
Kiss 'n' Tell: Romance in the 23rd Century (8:23)
More like "Chasing Tail in the Future." Kirk's many conquests take up a healthy chunk here, but they touch on other crew members, even Uhura, Scotty, and Chekhov.
Billy Blackburn's Treasure Chest (HD 13:22)
Billy Blackburn was DeForest Kelley's stand-in and played various background characters including the Enterprise's navigator. Blackburn talks about the atmosphere on set and shares some Super8 footage he took throughout production.
Star Trek BD-Live
This is the kind of BD-Live integration I've been hoping to see since its inception. New content keeps old releases fresh, and linking them to the physical, definitive software release not only keeps DRM concerns in check but prevents the tendency of double-dips being necessary. When Paramount releases a new Trek sequel, they can flip the switch on new content for owners of the existing TV show sets.
BD-Live requires both an active internet connection and a SecureDigital (SD card). The trick is that even once you've downloaded content to the SD card, you have to have Disc 7 of the set in your player and be connected to the BD-Live service to access it. I'll edit this to include coverage of the BD-Live featurettes later in the week as I'm assuming some other stuff might pop up once the box set has been released to the public. Check back Wednesday.
The lingering issue preventing this from exploding in popularity is getting people's internet connection into the living room. As it stands, you have to go hard-wired in, as WiFi players are only just being demoed and won't be mass-market for I don't know, two or three years? Technophiles like myself are not fazed by this, but if studios want these features to proliferate to broad market titles like Planet Earth and others like them, there's no way around being hamstrung by broadband providers and hardware manufacturers.
Final Thoughts
The first disc in the set auto-plays the trailer to the JJ Abrams Star Trek movie coming out May 8th. Having seen it a few weeks ago and now having plowed through these discs, I feel confident we're coming up on a surging wave of interest the likes of which the franchise may have never seen. The reboot/sequel/origin story works, the home video version of the original series episodes is immaculate, and Star Trek is on the verge of becoming really cool in two weeks' time.
Gone are the days that it cost near $150 for one season of this stuff. The current Amazon and BestBuy week-of-release prices are $64.99, which is a much better value than anyone is used to on Blu-ray or DVD. Proportionately, do you usually get over 8 hours of content on a $20-$30 feature film Blu-ray? They've been ratcheting the price down on this since the pre-orders went up, and I think wisely so. This could go a long way toward bringing down Blu prices across the board if other TV box sets follow suit. Talking to a friend yesterday, he's considering buying a Blu player for this set at this price even though he does not own an HDTV.
Anyone who has affection for this show and have put off getting these shows on disc can feel safe pulling the trigger now and not feel burned. CBS wants this to be right the first time so that it really is a truly definitive release. I should hope other studios follow suit on other vintage titles. This is a top shelf disc with no compare in the TV department, and only a few in the feature film category stack up in terms of proportional value.