Star Trek: The Original Series: The Complete Series

I have been a fan of Star Trek since I was a small boy in the 1970s, when the original series WAS Star Trek – all of Star Trek. The original series is still my favorite, and it’s not just nostalgia for the days of my youth that makes this so. I think the show the show was simply better in concept than its successor. I liked TNG overall, but I always thought it was a little too touchy-feely. I hated the idea of children on a vessel which was sent on dangerous exploratory missions, and which also had to be the Federation’s first line of defense against hostile attack. I purely loathed the overreliance on technobabble that we saw in The Next Generation. TNG suffered badly its first two seasons by Roddenberry restricting conflict between the characters, as he felt that humanity would have “moved beyond” that sort of thing. It’s why TNG didn’t really get good till the 3rd season, when Roddenberry’s ill health forced him to step away and hand creative control over to someone else.The problem here, and the reason why TOS did not suffer from these same ills, is that Gene Roddenberry had spent the entirety of the 1970s attending conventions where adoring fans would tell him at every opportunity how great he was, and what a visionary he was, with such a stunning conception of humanity’s future. Frankly, it went to his head and he started believing it a little too much. TOS came before all that, and it’s a little grittier and more down to earth as a result. It still presents a positive and inspiring vision of humanity’s future, and one where human society is genuinely improved, but without hand-waving away the uglier aspects of human nature or pretending that we in a mere couple of hundred years, will “move beyond” human nature in a way we haven’t so far managed to do in tens of thousands. Indeed, some TOS episodes, such as “Where No Man Has Gone Before” and “Charlie X” are directly about how savage and ugly human nature can be, and how dangerous humans can be if they get too much power. By the 1980s though, Roddenberry had internalized that fan message of what a great and noble moral philosopher he was, and his vision of the future by then was a little too unrealistically utopian, in my view. TNG reflects this, especially in its first two seasons when he was dictating things creatively.This is not to say TNG was bad (as I said, I do enjoy it), or that TOS was all good – it certainly had some terrible clunkers among its episodes (e.g. “Spock’s Brain,” “The Way to Eden” [space hippies!], “The Omega Glory,” “And the Children Shall Lead,” et al.), but at its best, it was a truly great show, with some of the best characters in TV history.The blu ray edition of the series is the one to get. You get the episodes in their original, unedited 50 minute length (in reruns, several minutes are routinely cut these days, since most modern “hour long” shows run only 42 minutes and networks want to put in more commercials. You also get to watch the episodes either with the original, 1960s special effects, or the remastered ones with the modern CGI updates. A lot of fans are down on the CGI remastered version, but I for one love them. The original effects were good for their day, given the constraints of 1960s technology, and a TV show budget. In fact, the show’s creators did a fantastic job within those limitations. It’s usually fans of the old show that denigrate the CGI, but a lot of modern viewers, who are not Star Trek purists, are so used to today’s far superior visual effects, that the old effects just look disappointing and take them out of the story.Apart from making TOS more accessible to a wider audience today, the CGI effects achieve two important goals. The first is to bring the special effects up to par with the live action footage. All the live action scenes were filmed on 35mm film stock, and when cleaned up, this looks great on modern high definition TV screens. This can, occasionally, make some of the cheap set and costume elements noticeable in a way they never were on standard definition TV screens, but overall, the series has never looked better. The problem was, they simply couldn’t make the effects footage look that good. The effects shots were filmed on 16mm film stock, and then on top of that, the process of matting different elements together to form finished shots resulted in a further loss of definition, and the final product simply can’t be shown on modern high definition large screens without the difference in sharpness and picture quality being very apparent – it really is too; the image is noticeably grainy and lower in definition. Updating the FX in modern CGI was the only way to give the series effects footage that was the equal of the live action.The second goal achieved, though perhaps less important to casual viewers, was to finally make the appearance of the Enterprise consistent in each episode. The problem with the original FX footage was, again, budgetary. The eleven foot model of the Enterprise was modified twice after it was built for the original pilot “The Cage.” For the second pilot “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” some internal lights were added, and a little more detail painted on. When the series went into regular production, the model was modified again, much more extensively. The bridge was shortened in height, the deflector dish on the front of the secondary hull was made smaller. The front caps of the engine nacelles, which had been dark red with a brass spike protruding forward were replaced with the translucent ones that had the rotating/blinking lights, and the rear end caps were changed from having a “grill” pattern painted on the end, to having white, hemispherical caps added. Even more internal lighting was added, and this had the effect of making the model filmable from only the starboard side, as all the wires and cables to control the model’s internal lighting were ducted through the port side, and were now visible. Budget constraints made it necessary to reuse a lot of stock footage (the entire 3rd season used ONLY stock footage, with no new scenes with the model being shot), and the result was that scenes of different versions of the model (usually the second pilot and regular series versions) would appear beside each other in every single episode. Even as a kid I noticed this, and it was always a little distracting. The CGI effects finally clean this up, and you only see the pilot versions of the ship in the pilot episodes, and never in the regular series run, where it’s always the third version.Certain episodes, like “The Doomsday Machine,” “The Tholian Web,” “The Ultimate Computer” and others, really allow the new effects to shine. But if you are one of those purists who doesn’t like the upgraded CGI, the blu ray gives you the option of watching the original version, with the original special effects.

The original series totally remastered on Blu-ray. You can’t beat it. This was what started the whole Star Trek phenomenon and it is still great. It’s really nice seeing it on Blu-ray because it’s what Gene Rodenberry was expecting.

love the originial series of star trek

So happy to finally have all three seasons of Star Trek -- a.k.a. "Star Trek: The Original Series" or TOS -- in one affordable package. The remastered episodes look and sound better than ever, including the digitally enhanced FX, and the special features make it worth the upgrade from watching on Netflix or the internet. Also nice to have "The Cage," the original unaired NBC pilot with a different cast.The great thing about classic Trek: It's incredibly fresh, energetic, fun, original, and touching. While some themes and stories repeat themselves, there's a higher concentration of originality here than on any of the later Trek series. The cast here -- all in their 30s -- has the most energy and believable chemistry of any Trek show. Even the show's excesses and dated values are ambitious and watchable, being part of the pop culture Zeitgeist of American history. And because there are only 79 episodes, each show tends to do something fresh and new, playing with different genres and allegories in a Sci-Fi setting.Great cast: Leonard Nimoy's Spock is still the coolest and most iconic Trek character ever; Nimoy's method acting is a delightful contrast to the Shakespeare-trained stylizing of William Shatner's Captain Kirk and the gruff humanism of DeForest Kelley's Dr. McCoy. Jimmy Doohan's Scotty makes a colorful engineer, George Takei's Sulu is a cool cat at the helm, Walter Koenig's Chekhov is a lovable naif, and Nichelle Nichols is groundbreaking as the beautiful and capable Uhura. Semi-recurring characters add color: Majel Barrett as Nurse Chapel, John Winston as Transporter Chief Kyle, and Grace Lee Whitney as Yeoman Rand are standouts. From action thrillers like "The Doomsday Machine" to allegories like "Patterns of Force" and dramas like "City on the Edge of Forever," they make their way through a series of colorful adventures which feel truly risky and improvised, much like the show itself.I love all Star Trek and I'm a fan of all the later shows as well. But this is the one that started it all. The Animated Series captured a bit of the spark by bringing these actors back; TNG hit some new highs despite its overall blandness and self-righteousness; DS9 broke new ground for the franchise in characterization and extended story arcs; "Voyager" had its moments in a long uneven run; and "Enterprise" brought a new level of cinematic visuals to some fairly routine stories. Then there's the movie series, ranging from the highs of "Wrath of Khan" (best of six films with TOS cast) to the lows of several TNG films and the recent generic action of JJ Abrams' reboots. And yet nothing (at least on the small screen) will ever beat The Original Series for pure inventiveness, fun, and humanity. If you can look beyond the cheesy sets and dated elements of this show, you'll find a true classic that's more about people than hardware, and this affordable DVD set is the best I've seen yet for my favorite TV show of all time.

The packaging inside the collectors box was damaged

I saw this series when it came out on TV. I wanted a copy as you cannot guarantee streaming will have this one available. I will meet William Shatner in person in June, the captain of this series. I never tire of watching the episodes over and over.

Una excelente serie y se ve excelente

ME GUSTA TODO Y EL SERVICIO DE ENTREGA ES RAPIDO

Later addition: Amazon has resolved the issue in a timely and efficient manner. So, boost review from 2 stars to 5 stars.Just received Star Trek TOS Box-Set which was delivered with noticeable defects (long cuts in the plastic cover over the front paper desc sheet, large cracks in the top, front and side of the blu-ray box set) and not shipped as stated in listing (french version instead of US version). The good news is that all 20 Bluray discs are accounted for.The 2 stars is not a review of the video or audio quality of content, condition of the blu-ray discs, review of the Star Trek TOS.

I looked everywhere for these original TV series recordings. As expected. Satisfied with he product.

Para revivir los momentos de esas series de Ciencia Ficción, incluso ver los capítulos que me había perdido