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With Abrams' STAR TREK reboot setting the universe ablaze, 'twas only natural Geeks like me (and many others, from my understanding) become ensnared in the recently issued STAR TREK: THE ORIGINAL SERIES - SEASON 1 on Blu-Ray (available HERE ). It was the talk of a party I attended this weekend, was scuttlebutt at the IMAX screening of TREK I attended today, and it...is...simply...cool.
In short: you have NEVER seen the original STAR TREK series look as good as it looks on this Blu-Ray set, and you're not likely to see it looking any better for a rather long time. Having previously sifted through the HD-DVD iteration of Season 1 (I know, I know), the overall picture quality/presentation on this Blu-Ray set is far superior (although I seem to recall some nifty menu animations/designs on the HD-DVD that aren't here...if I'm remembering correctly).
Merrick's Woman - traditionally oblivious to the grandness of HD - walked into the room while I was watching the recently issued STAR TREK: THE ORIGINAL SERIES - SEASON 1 on Blu-Ray and said, "Good God! That's beautiful! I can see the difference!" And then, uncharacteristically, she actually watched an episode with me. This was rather unnerving because...usually...I watch STAR TREK alone, and was unaccustomed to female incursion into my decidedly isolationist man world of starships, galactic barriers, photon torpedoes, and Orion Slave Girls.
This set contains the episodes in their original iterations as well as their recently remastered versions (which includes updated special effects, color fixes, etc.) You can toggle between the two versions easily and quickly via "seamless branching" - allowing you to view the show's original effects in contrast to their reworked appearance.
Also, all of the episodes in this set are presented in their original length. TOS episodes have, for years, been abridged for syndication by 8-10 minutes. You'll see material on the Blu-Ray (including effects work in both the original and remastered versions) that you may never have seen before if you've only viewed the show during its syndicated airings. For clarity, and to the best of by knowledge, other DVD releases of TOS present eps in their full running time as well.
2) If you caught the "Remastered" episodes as they were broadcast, you may've sometimes felt the new/enhanced effects didn't blend with the universe around them as smoothly as they should have. They often appeared overamped, or "too CGI".
This phenomenon is diminished considerably when remastered episodes are viewed in 1080p. The textural differences between the new effects and the footage surrounding them is far less dramatic. I don't pretend to understand the ins and outs of such technical matters, but, if I had to guess, I'd assume this is attributable to the fact that the new effects are now being seen in their native resolution, and we're seeing the episode wrapped around them ratcheted up to 1080p as well...creating a smoother marriage?
I could be totally full of shit with my guess work here...so don't take my explanation to the bank. Just know that, without a doubt, the new effects look much more organic on these Blu-Ray than they did when the show was broadcast.
Episodes included on this set:
"The Man Trap" (McCoy's ex-girlfriend is a salt monster - whose isn't?)
"Charlie X" (brash teen visits Enterprise, lashes out with psy powers, turns a chick into a lizard and slaps Kirk's wench on her butt).
"Where No Man Has Gone Before" (see below)
"The Corbomite Maneuver" (Clint Howard looked weird even as a kid; takes his gigantic glowing Death Star against Kirk's Enterprise).
"This Side of Paradise" (cooler-than-Shyamalan plants make Enterprise's crew carefree as Spock gets it on with Charles Bronson's wife).
"A Taste of Armageddon" (Enterprise is declared a causality in a virtually waged war).
"The Naked Time" (space virus unleashes inner-most emotions of Enterprise crew - dude locks himself in engineering to sing as Enterprise is about to crash into a planet. Spock cries, and George Takei runs around swinging his rapier).
"The Enemy Within" (transporter accident splits The Shat into halves - one nice, one dicky. Confusion abounds.)
"Mudd's Women" (space grifter Harcourt Fenton Mudd & three deceptively beautiful babes upset life on Enterprise).
"What Are Little Girls Made Of?" (Kirk & Co. -vs- a scientist with a spinny machine that can duplicate people).
"Miri" (Kirk and the girl from TRUE GRIT on a plague world ruled by kids).
"Dagger of the Mind" (see below)
"The Menagerie Parts 1 and 2" (court martial necessitates flashbacks to TREK's original pilot ("The Cage"), which featured the same Captain Bruce Greenwood plays in the new movie doing things Greenwood will probably never get to do because of all that time funk).
"The Conscience of the King" (head of a traveling acting troop may be a very, very bad man).
"Balance of Terror" (Kirk -vs- Romulan war ship in WRATH OF KHAN-like game of cosmic cat & mouse. Depending on who you talk to, the character of "Styles" in this may or may not be the same "Styles" who captained Excelsior in STAR TREK III: THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK).
"Shore Leave" (crew takes a break on a pleasure planet that gives you what you're thinking about, which isn't always good).
"The Galileo Seven" (see below)
"The Squire of Gothos" (Enterprise gang -vs- petulant God-like dude who was a helluva lot like "Q").
"Arena" (Enterprise has trouble with the Gorn - a race of stiffly walking lizard men who wanna take 'em out. In the remastered version, the Gorn blinks).
"Tomorrow Is Yesterday" (see below)
"Court Martial" (see below)
"The Return of the Archons" (serene planet descends into debauchery and chaos every once in a while. Why?)
"Space Seed" (Khan)
"The Devil in the Dark" (Enterprise tries to help a mining operation that's being bothered by a cute...surprisingly self-aware...and not entirely convincing lava rock creature).
"Errand of Mercy" (see below)
"The Alternative Factor" (Enterprise grapples with matter/anti-matter versions of the same man).
"The City on the Edge of Forever" (Edith Keeler must die).
"Operation: Annihilate" (flying poached eggs make people crazy; efforts to find a cure turn Spock blind).
A majority of features/extras from the HD-DVD set are present here, with a few missing or swapped out for different material. Among (but not all) the features you'll find on the Blu-Ray edition?
- Trailers for all episodes
- Billy Blackburn’s Treasure Chest: Rare Home Movies and Special Memories recounting the experiences of actor Billy Blackburn on set - he played several roles on the show - supported with rare home movies of SHatner, Nimoy, etc. in action. Awesome stuff).
- Interactive inspection of Enterprise (select portion of thisp to explore from menu, you're "flown" to that section & narration tells you what that part of the ship does, etc.
- "Starfleet Access" for selected episodes (pop-up windows display data/commentaires/etc. for select episodes).
- Details on the resoratio process
- Docs detailing particular details of TREK lore ("Romance in the 23rd Century, for example).
And much, much, more.
HERE is an image-filled write up featuring some interesting before/after
shots of characters & effects - the character frames in particular give you a fine sense of the dramatic improvements to overall picture quality brought about by the remastering.
AICN reported on many of the remastered episodes as they first went into rotation. BELOW: an adjusted sampling of coverage from first season episodes, which'll give you a fuller sense of what you can find in this new set.
NOTE: Honestly, this article should've been posted a few weeks back, but...I've had a helluva time locating the material below on our servers & felt I really wanted to include it in my write-up. Our search engine...is better than it used to be, but is still aggravatingly non-specific. As such, I suspect there may still be a few episodes missing from this round up (the absence of "Balance of Terror" and "Space Seed" - two signature first season episodes - is highly suspicious).
In no particular order:
THE MAN TRAP
This is the very first STAR TREK episode ever broadcast, although it isn't the first in overall series continuity.
In "The Man Trap", the Enterprise gang discovers that the lady who used to be the love of Dr. McCoy's life is, in actuality, a hideous, man-crushing creature disguised as a human. Many men have been down this road; the episode title alone speaks volumes.
One of the most dramatic adjustments made to the episode is this establishing shot of planet M-113. This is the archaeological site where McCoy's Ex hangs out. The original sequence was realized on a sound stage using limited angles. The remastering offers a broader scope - but is rendered to keep the flavor of the environment's original "sound stage" appearance (this was required for visual continuity; many sequences happen in and around this setting).
Original
Remastered - CLICK TO EMBIGGEN
DAGGER OF THE MIND
Here's a shot from the remastered "Dagger of the Mind". This is the one in which Kirk & the gang chance across evil Dr. Tristan Addams, who...on the Tantalus Penal Colony... is using his newfangled Neural Neutralizer to "rehabilitate" (read: melt the brains of) inmates under his dominion.
Marianna Hill is one of the guest stars in this week's episode. She plays Dr. Helen Noel, the Enterprise shrink previously banged by Jim Kirk after a Christmas party (HERE's a picture of her). If indications are correct, Hill is the cousin of U.S. General Norman Schwarzkopf (remember him?).
I've always had a huge crush on Hill/Dr. Helen Noel...she entrances me in a "Please teacher, punish me!" sort of way.
Ahhhh.
Onto the episode...
One of the big revisions made to this particular remastering is the presentation of the Tantalus colony itself. Originally, stock material was used from a previous episode called WHERE NO MAN HAS GONE BEFORE, which featured a sprawling refinery center (Lithium Cracking Station). Here's the image originally used:
Original
Doesn't make a lot of sense for a penal colony. So, the remastering team went to work creating this alternative - which adds a planetary ring evocative of Chesley Bonestell.
Remastered - CLICK TO EMBIGGEN
THE GALILEO SEVEN
This is the episode in which Spock faces Command challenges when his shuttle craft & cranky crew crash on a planet populated by gigantic cavemen who want to wipe 'em out.
There've been some changes regarding where/when you can watch the next wave of remasters...you can find a link below that'll take you to updated details (stations, airtimes, and whatnot).
First up: a reworked shot of shuttle craft Galileo heading out of the Enterprise to go explore Murasaki 312, a quasar(ish) thingie.
Original
Remastered
Here's an exterior angle of the shuttle's departure, augmented dramatically from the original sequence (The Original Series never featured an angle remotely similar to this for such sequences).
Original
Remastered
Next: a rejiggered shot of Galileo in low-orbit of a planet. NOTE the driver...seen through the shuttle's front window. Nice detail.
Original
Remastered
Here's a lovely shot of the shuttle approaching the Murasaki 312 quasar. I really like the detail in the whirlpool around the sun (sorry I don't know the scientific term for it). There is no counterpart for this shot in the episode's original version.
Remastered
I could find no "Original" shots that I felt matched either of the Remastered FX shots below.
The first image is of Enterprise heading towards quasar Murasaki 312. The original episode never showed the ship on-screen with the quasar - we only saw the phenomenon through the main viewer on the ships bridge.
The second shot is the shuttle over the planet. This is the first episode to actually feature a shuttle craft...transporters had been used to this point in the show.
CLICK TO EMBIGGEN
ERRAND OF MERCY
In short, this is the episode in which the Federation and Klingons get into a standoff that is ultimately broken by a deceptively simple race called the Organians. This paves the way for the tiresome overuse of Klingons as allies in subsequent TREK series.
This is an interesting episode to post about because, unlike a majority of the other remastered FX shots we’ve covered so far, there actually aren’t “original” shots that equate to two of the images seen below. Klingon “ships” were not yet available to the production when this episode was rolled out, so they were kept off screen & edited around in the original version. The remastering will now drop in quick intercuts of Klingon ships in Enterprise’s space to broaden the story’s scope a bit, and actually illustrate what characters talk about in the show…butwas previously kept off screen.
Unless I’m mistaken, in STAR TREK’s Remastered universe (certain designs and continuities are being adjusted and conformed throughout the series), these new scenes with Klingon ships will now serve as the introduction of the classic Klingon designs.
BELOW:
A Klingon ship, Remastered style.
Enterprise –vs- a Klingon fleet (am I seeing glowing torpedo tubes on the front of those ships, evoking the Klingon vessels in the movies?)
And, the Organian (energy form) as they originally appeared…and Remastered.
Remastered
Remastered
Original
Remastered
WHERE NO MAN HAS GONE BEFORE
In this installment, Kirk's buddy (played by the astronaut who isn't David Bowman in 2001) gets psy powers, goes nutso, and takes the original 'Hot Lips' O'Houlihan as his woman. Kirk's gotta clean up (beat down) the mess.
The first image shows a slightly retouched Delta Vega ore processing station. The effect uses the original matte work, incorporating a few adjustments to lighting and structures.
The next image shows the Galactic Barrier seen in the episode, reworked via fluid dynamic simulations. The Barrier will look more-or-less the same from a distance, but big changes will be seen as Enterprise closes in. CLICK ON THIS IMAGE TO MAKE IT LARGER!
Love 'em both. The top matter painting is one of my favorite from the original series; it's nice to see The Powers That Be keeping revision to a minimum on that one.
COURT MARTIAL
This is the one in which Kirk, through a variety of machinations, is put on trial for jettisoning an Ion Pod from the ship...Lt. Commander Ben Finney (Richard Webb) still in it. 'Cept...if Finney's dead...
There was nothing particularly noteworthy about the Enterprise shots in the original iteration of this episode...pretty much standard angles of the ship orbiting a planet the Starbase is on.
The Remastered team added an angle in which, if one looks very carefully, you can see space suited technicians replacing the Ion Pod previously jettisoned by Kirk. They also added a Starfleet shuttlecraft (I guess that's a Starbase Registry number on its side?)
CLICK TO EMBIGGEN
TOMORROW IS YESTERDAY
This episode finds the 23rd Century Enterprise thrown back in time to the 1960s, where it unwittingly takes on a passenger whose presence threatens to change the course of human history. The problem is: it may be dangerous to send him back now that he’s seen the future…
First up, here’s a comparison shot from the episodes’ opening moments, which find a freshly displaced Enterprise within the Earth’s atmosphere…hanging as a “UFO” over Nebraska.
To represent the Nebraska landscape for the Remastering, CBS Digital used photographs of the state taken from the (real life) International Space Station.
Original
Remastered [CLICK TO EMBIGGEN IMAGE]
NEXT: Enterprise eventually climbs to proper orbit, rendered in the Remaster via photos of Earth nabbed by a Space Shuttle Crew.
Original
Remastered [CLICK TO EMBIGGEN IMAGE]
Finally, Enterprise attempts a “sling shot” around our sun in an effort to pick up enough speed to do its time warp thingie. This conceit was later used by Kirk & Co. to return to the 1980s in STAR TREK IV: THE VOYAGE HOME (and The Original Series episode/backdoor spinoff pilot “Assignment: Earth” if I recall correctly).
In The Original Series, we never actually saw effects representing the Sun – basic (and sparse) “flyby” effects (like the “Original” image below) were intercut amongst the gawking reactions of Enterprise’s bridge crew. The Remastered episode fleshes out the narrative a bit by incorporating shots of the ship approaching our sun, etc.
Original
Remastered [CLICK TO EMBIGGEN IMAGE]
All "Original" images from TrekCore
All in all, this new set is a tremendous accomplishment that can't be recommended highly enough if you've any interest in TREK whatsoever. At $64.99 (current Amazon price HERE], it's a sight to behold and a tough price to complain about.
If you're horny to revisit the original show now that you've seen what J.J. had in store for us, or if you're approaching the series for the very first time, this is the way to do it.
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