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Star Trek: The Original Series -
Season Two [Blu-ray]
Editorial Review:
Description:
Space. The Final
Frontier. The U.S.S. Enterprise embarks on a five year mission
to explore the galaxy. The Enterprise is under the command of
Captain James T. Kirk. The First Officer is Mr. Spock, from
the planet Vulcan. The Chief Medical Officer is Dr. Leonard
'Bones' McCoy. With a determined crew, the Enterprise
encounters Klingons, Romulans, time paradoxes, tribbles and
genetic supermen lead by Khan Noonian Singh. Their mission is
to explore strange new worlds, to seek new life and new
civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone
before.
Amazon.com:
The most famous
episode in franchise history, "The Trouble with Tribbles," is
one of the highlights of the second season of Star Trek:
The Original Series. A deserved classic, the humorous
story centers on an ever-expanding mass of furry creatures
that memorably rain themselves down on top of Captain Kirk
(William Shatner) and into the middle of a Federation-Klingon
showdown. It inspired one of the most memorable episodes in
the spin-off series Deep Space Nine, "Trial and
Tribble-ations." Also in the second season, the Vulcan culture
of Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy) is fleshed out in "Amok Time" (in
which Spock is faced with the possibility of killing his
captain and friend) and "Journey to Babel" (introducing
Spock's father, played by Mark Sarek, in what would turn out
to be a long-recurring role). A new character, navigator Pavel
Chekov (Walter Koenig), was introduced; his Monkees haircut
was intended to appeal to the younger audience, but he was
also a Russian, which at the height of the cold war reflected
Gene Roddenberry's optimistic vision of a more enlightened
future. Other social-commentary opportunities presented
themselves in "The Omega Glory," "The Doomsday Machine," and
"Assignment: Earth," the last also one of those periodic
opportunities to scrimp on the budget by time-traveling to an
earlier version of Earth. Another example was "A Piece of the
Action," a comic episode set in the Roaring Twenties and
memorable for, among other things, Kirk's teaching a made-up
card game called Fizzbin. In other significant episodes, "I,
Mudd" saw the return of the bounder from season 1, "The
Changeling" was the original inspiration for the first
Trek feature film a decade later, "Wolf in the Fold"
(penned by the author of Psycho) provides an example of
the series' great writing, and "Mirror, Mirror" introduced the
concept of the parallel universe inhabited by vicious, amoral
counterparts of the regular crew, another theme later borrowed
(more than once, and to good emotional effect) by DS9.
On the DVD
The remastered episodes are the
highlight of the 2008 second-season release; like in season
one, the reworked visual effects might irk purists but are an
improvement overall, and some of the space exteriors are very
exciting. It's not in high definition, however; season one was
released in 2007 on two-sided combination HD DVD and standard
DVD discs, which are now obsolete. Season two mimics the
packaging, but is only standard-definition DVD, not Blu-ray.
The picture, while obviously not high-definition quality, is
still much improved over the 2004 DVD release. Special
features here mostly mirror that 2004 set: 80 minutes of
featurettes ("To Boldly Go" season recap, " Kirk, Spock &
Bones: The Great Trio," "Star Trek's Divine Diva," "Designing
the Final Frontier," and "Writer's Notebook: D.C. Fontana"),
though missing from this set are the text commentaries on two
episodes, the Red Shirt Logs, the production art, and the
photo gallery. There are two new featurettes: "Star
Trek's Favorite Moments," in which cast members of later
Trek franchises and fans recall certain episodes, and
"Billy Blackburn's Treasure Chest, part 2," in which a
Trek extra tells stories and shows some of his on-set
home movies. And because season 2 includes "The Trouble with
Tribbles," the set includes two bonus episodes: "More
Tribbles, More Troubles" from the Animated Series and
"Trials and Tribble-ations" from Deep Space Nine.
Conveniently, all three Tribble-centric episodes are on the
same disc, and include the bonus features from the earlier DVD
releases (the commentary by writer David Gerrold on "More
Troubles" and the two featurettes--"Uniting Two Legends" and
"An Historic Endeavor"--from "Tribble-ations"). The bonus
episodes were not remastered, and you can tell the difference
when comparing the original Tribble episode on this set with
the grainier footage that was used in the DS9 episode.
A minor annoyance is that the discs are one-sided but appear
to be two-sided, as if they had been designed for combo HD DVD
again before a late change. That means the info on the disc is
restricted to a ring around the middle, rather than a full
label that could have listed the episodes on each disc; as is,
they're only listed on the glossy "collector's data cards."
And once again, the plastic shell is clunky and the disc
spindles are way too tight. All in all, it's a nice package,
especially if one doesn't already have the other Tribble
episodes, but it feels like it's floating in a
standard-definition limbo, stuck in the transition between HD
DVD and Blu-ray. --David Horiuchi
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