By Michelle
August 25, 2004 - 10:34 PMThe first complete season set of the original Star Trek on DVD continues to earn positive reviews from critics.
IGN gave the series an overall rating of 7/10, stating that while usually a DVD must earn an overall score of 8 to be labeled an Editor's Choice, "it's the best you'll ever get for TOS, so if you are a fan...it's a must-own."
Reviewer Andy Patrizio noted that the groundbreaking first season had some great episodes, "including a few story concepts that would be used to this day by the subsequent series." He said that his personal favourite is "Space Seed", the episode that "would set up the best Star Trek movie ever, The Wrath of Khan, and claimed that despite quibbles with the cheesy special effects and questionable acting, the show "was such fun":
In the turbulent '60s, after the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Civil Rights movement, putting that cast together took some serious courage on Roddenberry's part, but he wanted to show a world where we did all get along.
Though he complained that the exterior shots were sometimes " a grainy mess", Patrizio said that in spite of being 35 years old, "these shows look startlingly good...dust and scratches can be seen here and there, but very rarely."
In terms of the extras, "'Life Beyond Trek: William Shatner' is total fluff and I have to wonder why in the world they bothered", wrote Patrizio. However, he enjoyed the interviews with Leonard Nimoy. He found the audio levels rather low but otherwise favoured the technical specs of the set.
Scott Kimball of Home Theater Forum called the packaging "attractive, inventive, and space conscious", though he found the menu animation rather slow and was disappointed to find jitter in the video tracking of "City on the Edge of Forever", one of the first season's most famous episodes. However, he writes: What matters most isn’t the packaging, or the menus, or even the special features. What we really want is the episodes...some of the finest episodes of the series' run appear right here, in season one.
The transfers, he noted, are identical to the video and audio quality of the double-episode DVD releases, in the original 1.33:1 aspect ratio, whereas the colors "are beautiful, vibrant and deeply saturated, but are slightly variable from one episode to the next."
Kimball also called the Shatner documentary a "fluff piece" and seems more interested in the segment. "Most Trekkies will want to check [the special features] out, but few will really learn anything new," he wrote.
The first season complete DVD set is available from Amazon.com. Previous review coverage is here. Discuss this news item at Trek BBS!
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