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Star Trek: The Original Series | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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n 1966, space was the final frontier, and Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry was bound and determined to explore it. He created a series of interstellar wanderers who followed a mission to "explore new worlds and new civilizations," which became the bedrock of a mighty science-fiction empire that stretched further into the future than one imagines even Roddenberry himself envisioned.
Aboard the starship Enterprise, Capt. James T. Kirk (Shatner), Lt. Cmdr. Spock (Nimoy) and Leonard "Bones" McCoy, M.D., presided over a crew of steadfast Starfleet military men, who week after week would beam up, down and around to new planets and uncover new life forms—many of which were hostile. Appropriately, their exploits paved the way for later voyages, and created enemies, such as Khan, who would return later to challenge Kirk and his crew, not only for command of the Enterprise, but for control of the entire galaxy.
Season one of the original series was a breeding ground for the ideas and storylines the show would later flesh out to form lasting philosophies, not only about space travel or science fiction, but about life itself. Roddenberry enlisted some of the best writers of his generation (including Gene Coon, Harlan Ellison and Richard Matheson) to help expand the universe of Star Trek, and with this release of the complete first year, we can see the beginnings of one of the genre's greatest series of all time.
The best sci-fi DVD of the year
As a fan of the Star Trek series when the uniforms were still made of felt and the set design was limited to redressing the same room six or seven times, I've always enjoyed the stories that Roddenberry and his coterie of writers told, even if upon reflection they are occasionally presented as New Age hokum or theatrical mumbo-jumbo. That said, I thrilled at the prospect of a DVD release of the original series, the first volume of which features not only the complete first season but a collection of extras and enough background information to intrigue even the most familiar follower of the Star Trek saga.
What's most interesting about the collection is how quickly the series developed from a fledgling idea of Roddenberry's to an outright phenomenon that supported its far-fetched ideas with enough practical science to make the episodes believable. Even though the presentation of the episodes is slightly confusing (they are assembled in order of run date, but feature information detailing when they were completed in the production schedule), you can immediately see how not only the characters but the entire series evolved; Spock was the only holdover cast member from the original pilot, but William Shatner quickly took over once the show got underway and made the series his.
The bonus features shed new light on many of the old series' quirks that have long been forgotten: text commentaries by Michael and Denise Okuda explain that even though the original pilot "The Cage" was disregarded, the footage was later used in one of the show's most memorable episodes, the two-part "The Menagerie"; featurettes about certain episodes demonstrate how literary influences played a big part of the Star Trek mythology; and a short documentary about the show's writers reveals how they were able—and, in some cases, weren't able—to enlist the writing talents of some of the most successful science-fiction authors of the '50s and '60s .
The episodes with text commentaries are the most interesting, mostly because the Okudas point out tidbits of background detail that one might never have noticed, but the series was itself a watershed moment in the history of television and reflects the ambition of creator Roddenberry. The pacing might not be quite what we expect from the high-octane entertainment that passes for science fiction nowadays, and the production values may appear to be bargain-basement, but the value of the episodes and their legacy lives on.
Watching the first-season DVDs, I learned more about Star Trek in a matter of episodes than I did in the 30-year history of the series. The text commentaries are incisive, revealing and quite funny (observing commonsense solutions to seemingly complicated problems), but the show is simply too entertaining to resist, whether you're a hardcore fan or just an occasional viewer. As part of a trilogy of Star Trek: The Original Series DVDs due out this year, these collections win my vote for best SF DVD release of the year. — Todd
Also in this issue: The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie and Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning
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