Brikar

I'm about to make a shocking revelation: I have not seen every episode of the original 'Star Trek'. I've seen the majority of them, for sure. And over the last few years, I'd been tempted to pick up the various DVD releases. But for one reason or another, I always held off. Now, with the release of Season One on Blu-Ray, I can start from the beginning, in glorious HD.

A word about the audio: This blu-ray set has a 7.1 DTS-HD Master Audio track. For whatever reason, this track is EXTREMELY quiet on my system, forcing me to turn up the volume on the receiver a full 15 points higher than I normally would - but only while the episodes are playing. The trailer for the new 'Star Trek' movie (in glorious 1080p) and the menus at the beginning of the disc are both fine. Even just listening with the TV speakers and not through the surround system, I have to turn the volume way up to get it to a decent level.

I'm gonna go episode by episode on this one, like I did back in the day. I'll be watching the 'enhanced' versions of the episodes, and sample the original versions (both are included).

1x01 - "The Man Trap" - A solid episode. The plot is interesting enough, but what really grabbed me about this was the dialogue. Right off the bat, Kirk and McCoy have a great relationship. Of course, since this wasn't the pilot and the episodes are shown out of order, Shatner and Kelley had some time to mold their chemistry, but it really shines right from the first scene. The video quality is excellent. 1080p is not kind to the seams in Mr. Spock's makeup, but in general, detail is amazing. It's hard to describe - the show still looks old, and yet, it doesn't at the same time. You'd never mistake it for something that was shot recently, but you can still see the pores in actors' faces or where Leonard Nimoy's fake ears start and his real ones end.
GRADE: B

1x02 - "Charlie X" - This episode is pretty strange, but remarkably well-produced for its time and budget. I like the ways the show uses to get around the fact that it doesn't have crazy-awesome special effects (even considering all the new CG enhancements). The actor playing Charlie is appropriately strange. It seems to take the crew a bit too long to realize what's going on with Charlie, but once things get going, it all works pretty well. I had to laugh out loud at Spock being forced to recite poetry in order to keep him from talking to Kirk. The ending is rather downbeat, with young Charlie essentially marooned by the aliens that gave him his power, in order to protect the Enterprise. I liked that Kirk was willing to go to bat for Charlie, even after everything - realizing that Charlie was just a boy, after all, no matter how powerful he was. Visually, this episode doesn't seem to fair as well as the previous one. Detail isn't quite as sharp, , but it's also a lot darker, which leads to more grain in the picture.
GRADE: B+

1x03 - "Where No Man Has Gone Before" - Here's an episode I've definitely seen multiple times. It's strange watching it right after the two previous episodes, as it's obviously a step backward in a number of ways. The crew's uniforms are different, the bridge has a slightly different design for it, Dr. McCoy is missing entirely, as is Uhura and we'd seen both of them in the two previous episodes. And Spock seems to shout quite a bit. Visually, the episode is a mixed bag. The print seems to have some slight damage to it that even the excellent remastering it's undergone didn't totally fix. A couple of darker shots are far grainier than anything in the previous two episodes, but given the episode's status as a pilot episode, it probably wasn't as well taken care of initially. Beyond that, though, I think this is a really good episode, and the CG enhancements to this one are really solid - the galactic barrier looks great.
GRADE: B+

__________________
"A million monkeys typing until the end of time will produce the complete works of William Shakespeare. Ten thousand monkeys typing for ten thousand years will write a Hemingway. Ten monkeys typing over Columbus Day weekend will give you a Dan Brown."

http://olympusmans.blogspot.com
http://benforrealz.blogspot.com

Closet Racist

My set arrives tomorrow and I've set aside Thursday and Saturday night for the household trekkies to check it out. One of them is a purist, but he'll soon be turned to the darkside...

Brikar

Awesome. Let me know if you agree about the audio track seeming really quiet. I'm curious if it's just mastered that way, or if my set is somehow defective.

__________________
"A million monkeys typing until the end of time will produce the complete works of William Shakespeare. Ten thousand monkeys typing for ten thousand years will write a Hemingway. Ten monkeys typing over Columbus Day weekend will give you a Dan Brown."

http://olympusmans.blogspot.com
http://benforrealz.blogspot.com

Brikar

1x04 - "The Naked Time" - I hadn't seen this episode in a long, long time, and was more familiar with it's TNG sequel at any rate. Still, there's some charm to this episode. Nimoy does some great work once his character is finally infected at the episode's climax, and Shatner manages to ham that up by professing his undying love for the Enterprise herself. "Now I know why it's called... 'She!'"... Oy. Anyway, not much in the way of CG enhancements for this one, which is too bad, since the end of the episode has the ship imploding its own engines and creating a timewarp to escape the disentegration of a planet. But all we get is a bizarre shot of stars flowing backward. It's a little awkward, and somewhat confusing. Visually, the episode is alright, with detail not quite as good as 'The Man Trap'.

__________________
"A million monkeys typing until the end of time will produce the complete works of William Shakespeare. Ten thousand monkeys typing for ten thousand years will write a Hemingway. Ten monkeys typing over Columbus Day weekend will give you a Dan Brown."

http://olympusmans.blogspot.com
http://benforrealz.blogspot.com

Closet Racist

I'll check it out on both my tv's speakers and my roommate's massive surround system.

Brikar

1x05 - "The Enemy Within" - Despite being written by one of my favorite authors, Richard Matheson, I found this episode to be a mixed bag. Of course, it makes history by being the very first episode to feature the 'transporter accident' plot. But the crew comes off looking a bit foolish, as it takes them far too long to figure out what happened to Kirk. Later in the episode, Spock and McCoy insist on having Kirk make a crucial decision when he seems barely capable of doing so. Maybe the hadn't thought of the idea of relieving the captain of command yet... Who knows. But it's a knock against what would otherwise be a fantastic episode as Kirk faces his inner darkness. Shatner really gets to ham it up some, but the scene with 'evil Kirk' almost raping Yeoman Rand is disturbing as hell. Visually, this episode looks great. There's not much in the way of CG enhancements for this one, just shots of the ship orbiting a planet.
GRADE: B-

1x06 - "Mudd's Women" - This episode had a hard time keeping my attention. While I found the character of Harry Mudd quite amusing, the plot of the episode just wasn't all that interesting. By the end of the episode, I didn't really care what happened to the miners, or Mudd's women. But oh well. Shatner, as usual, is at his best when Kirk gets to be an amiable fellow, joking with the other characters, or in general command situations. He's not given any chance to go all out in this episode like he was in "Enemy Within", and as such, the character prospers. Visually, this episode has some of the grainiest shots I've seen so far, mostly closeups of Kirk on the bridge during the initial chase after Mudd's ship in an asteroid field. The CG enhancements are pretty good, save for the explosion of Mudd's ship, which looks like a videogame graphic from the late 1990s instead of a 1080p high-definition computer generated special effect.
GRADE: C-

__________________
"A million monkeys typing until the end of time will produce the complete works of William Shakespeare. Ten thousand monkeys typing for ten thousand years will write a Hemingway. Ten monkeys typing over Columbus Day weekend will give you a Dan Brown."

http://olympusmans.blogspot.com
http://benforrealz.blogspot.com

Sam Cogley

I never made the connection that Richard Matheson of "I Am Legend" fame wrote both "The Enemy Within" and TZ's "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet." Talented guy.

Brikar

I didn't know it for a long time, either, until I picked up a short story anthology and recognized some of the stories. When I looked him up online and read his full works, I was astonished. "I Am Legend" is one of my favorite books. He also wrote "What Dreams May Come", which was adapted into a movie starring Robin Williams as a man who leaves Heaven to journey into Hell to find his wife who'd committed suicide and attempt to save her soul.

__________________
"A million monkeys typing until the end of time will produce the complete works of William Shakespeare. Ten thousand monkeys typing for ten thousand years will write a Hemingway. Ten monkeys typing over Columbus Day weekend will give you a Dan Brown."

http://olympusmans.blogspot.com
http://benforrealz.blogspot.com

Closet Racist

Both starring Shatner, coincidentally...

Closet Racist

"I Am Legend" IS an awsome book. Sadly, I tried to get my (now) ex to read it after the movie came out and she quit ten pages in, citing "It wasn't ANYTHING" like the movie". Sigh...

Have any of you seen the movie adaptation with Vincent Price?