Star Trek The Original Series - The Complete First Season | 
 enlarge | Actors: William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, Deforest Kelly
Studio: CBS Paramount International Television
Category: DVD
Buy New: $137.99
New (4) Used (5) from $60.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  190 reviews
Sales Rank: 9848
Format: Box Set, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dvd-video, Full Screen, Ntsc
Language: English (Original Language)
Number Of Items: 8
Running Time: 1461
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5.6 x 2.1
MPN: PARD050924D
ISBN: 0792197763
UPC: 097360509243
EAN: 9780792197768
ASIN: B0002I831S
Theatrical Release Date: September 8, 1966
Release Date: August 31, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Studio: Paramount Home Video Release Date: 08/22/2006
Amazon.com
In 1966, Star Trek set out to boldly go where no series had gone before, beginning a three-year mission that led to a franchise that would last decades. Here at last is the first season of the original series all in one box, 29 episodes in their original broadcast order. That means starting with "The Man Trap," and soon followed by "Where No Man Has Gone Before," the second pilot filmed and the first one starring William Shatner as Captain Kirk. The many highlight episodes include "Balance of Terror" and "Errand of Mercy" (introducing, respectively, the Romulans and the Klingons), the two-part "The Menagerie" (which recycled footage from the original pilot, "The Cage," which featured Christopher Pike as the captain of the Enterprise and is not included in this set), "Space Seed" (introducing Ricardo Montalban's Khan character), and "The City of the Edge of Forever" (written by sci-fi giant Harlan Ellison and considered by many the best-ever episode of the series). The first-season DVD set is supplemented by 80 minutes of featurettes incorporating 2003-04 interviews with Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, other cast members, and producers, and some 1988 footage of Gene Roddenberry. The longest (24 minutes) featurette, "The Birth of a Timeless Legacy," examines the two pilot episodes and the development of the crew. Slightly shorter are "To Boldly Go... Season One," which highlights key episodes, and "Sci-Fi Visionaries," which discusses the series' great science fiction writers (most famously in "The City of the Edge of Forever"). Shatner shows off his love of horses in "Life Beyond Trek," and, more interestingly, Nimoy debunks various rumors in "Reflections of Spock." As they've done for many of the feature-film special editions, Michael Okuda and Denise Okuda provide a pop-up text commentary on four of the episodes filled with history, trivia, and dry wit. It's the first commentary of any kind for a Star Trek TV show, but an audio commentary is still overdue. The technical specs are mostly the same as other Trek TV series--Dolby 5.1, English subtitles--but with the welcome addition of the episode trailers. The plastic case is an attempt to replicate some of the fun packaging of the series' European DVD releases, but it's a bit clunky, and the paper sleeve around the disc case seems awkward and crude. Still, the set is a vast improvement both in terms of shelf space and bonus features compared to the old two-episode discs, which were released before full-season boxed sets became the model for television DVDs. --David Horiuchi
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 185 more reviews...
 Finally, A Season Set Of The ORIGINAL Series! June 29, 2004
235 out of 254 found this review helpful
With practically all of the Star Trek spinoffs now available as season sets, Paramount Home Entertainment FINALLY delivers the highly anticipated Star Trek - The Complete First Season on DVD this August 31, in an 8-disc collectible box set. The box will contain all 29 episodes - in airdate order - from Season One of the original Star Trek series, along with newly produced bonus features exclusive to this DVD release. The contents of the DVDs are as follows:
Disc 1: "The Man Trap," "Charlie X," "Where No Man Has Gone Before,"** "The Naked Time"
Disc 2: "The Enemy Within," "Mudd's Women," "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" "Miri"
Disc 3: "Dagger of the Mind," "The Corbomite Maneuver," "The Menagerie, Part I,"** The Menagerie, Part II"**
Disc 4: "The Conscience of the King,"** "Balance of Terror," "Shore Leave," "The Galileo Seven"
Disc 5: "The Squire of Gothos," "Arena," "Tomorrow is Yesterday," "Court Martial"
Disc 6: "The Return of the Archons," "Space Seed," "A Taste of Armageddon," "This Side of Paradise"
Disc 7: "The Devil in the Dark," "Errand of Mercy," "The Alternative Factor," "The City on the Edge of Forever"
Disc 8: "Operation: Annihilation"
** These four episodes have text commentary by Michael Okuda and Denise Okuda
Disc 8 of the DVD also includes the following special features:
"The Birth of a Timeless Legacy": The definitive telling of how it all began: from the first pilot, "The Cage," (which will be included on the Season 3 set, and will be the same two versions released before) to reshooting the pilot with William Shatner, to the many challenges leading up to its premiere on NBC in 1966. Included are interviews with cast and network executives and producers. Also featured are new interviews with William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, and Robert Justman.
"Life Beyond Trek: William Shatner": Featured on each volume, this featurette follows one principal cast member around on their most current film and TV projects, charity events, conventions, trips, or hobbies. In Season One, William Shatner gives viewers an exclusive invitation to his ranch to discuss his love of horses.
"To Boldly Go .": Includes discussion of "The Naked Time," "The City on the Edge of Forever," "The Devil in the Dark" and "The Squire of Gothos" by cast and production crew members.
"Reflections on Spock": Leonard Nimoy discusses his character in depth, and explains why he chose to write two different books on the subject: "I Am Not Spock" and "I Am Spock."
"Sci-Fi Visionaries": A look at Star Trek's famous writers, featuring interviews with Gene Coon, Harlan Ellison, George Clayton Thomas, Richard Matheson, D.C. Fontana, Gene Roddenberry, Bob Justman and John D.F. Black.
Original Preview Trailers
Photo Log
Here are the official release dates of the original Star Trek season sets:
- Season 1 on 8/31
- Season 2 on 11/2
- Season 3 on 12/14
- The Complete Series on 12/14
THE Sci-fi Anthology of a Lifetime starts right here! October 10, 2005
27 out of 30 found this review helpful
The Star Trek Collection is a worthy hobby and certainly the largest of the television series DVD Collections (The Original Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager and Enterprise). At around 1400 minutes per box, you are looking at approx 30 boxes with 700 hours of viewing. That is 1 month of non-stop Star Trek. No DVD series comes remotely close to that. Get going collecting right now and build up on each succession over the years. By the end you will have a very serious anthology that defines the word awe. This is the kind of item that requires 1 hour a day of your time for the next few years. It is a cherished memory that served your fathers and will serve your children also. Our very planet, Earth, has advanced because of Gene Roddenberry's admirable concept. Roddenberry nailed the premise of the series when he said that he wanted to create a show with characters that we could look up too. `The Bridge' members are like our family. Watch what they do. Then go and spend your life striving for the same on Earth. What engineer, medic, scientist, teacher, worker can not say that Star Trek has not influenced them? The show is this significant in the development of our species. Even Christians respect and quote its authority and it is not hard to see why. The DVD case is beautiful. Make sure to retain the cardboard holder that it sits into as this helps stability on the shelf (although the box can still stand alone the bottom is a little narrow). The shell cracks open down the centre to reveal a box. Sliding out of the box is a small booklet insert with discs in a well designed plastic holder that flip from disc to disc. There are 4 episodes per disc, and 8 discs in total. However the last disc, disc 8, only has two episodes, for a grand total of 30 episodes. The rest of disc 8 is devoted to Star Trek interviews and trailers with the usual expected extras...and then some more. Several of the shows come with a commentary. All the episodes have been remastered to the point that scratches and artefacts are hardly visible. The special effects have been touched up slightly (no strings), however they still retain an overall early look and feel, especially the initial episodes that have budget restrictions. The episodes are ordered not in the sequence they where filmed, but in the sequence that they aired, however each episode has been numbered according to the order they where filmed in. This means on one disc you have shows 4, 2, 12 and 1, in that order. The sound has also been remastered to 5:1 Dolby Digital! Since the show was shot in full frame, these dimensions are retained.
Star Trek, The Original Series (TOS), Season One, is a fine example of the growing stages of any television series. Viewing the episodes in the order they where filmed shows the vision shaping. Spock is the only character to be retained from the pilot episode `The Cage'. Kirk appears after this one. Chekov does not appear until Season Two. Yeoman Smith appears in quite a number of Season One episodes before retiring from the show. The little known Nurse Chapel also appears here as well as the other series. The Enterprise itself is a mere hunk of plastic that does not improve much until Season Two and is funny to see. There are very little space shots in Season One because of the limitations of visual effects. The main viewer of The Bridge looks like a projector screen and is avoided much of the time. When something does appear there it looks completely phoney... and funny. Spock's makeup design goes through a few changes. However, even though we can laugh at much of Season One now, the series does gel and soon we have some fascinating sci-fi theory and execution, even though what we are watching is the equivalent of a stage play. Nobody can critic the quality of the television acting and not since Flash Gordon had the world seen anything like it before. The stories (mostly by DC Fontana) are slightly narrow in their field of vision, however these where to mature in later seasons. Season One of TOS is mostly about alien illusions, shape shifters, psi-power, viruses, alternative universes, intergalactic slavery, military trials, deities, time travel and close hand to hand combat with aliens. There is also the unforgettable award winning `The City on the Edge of Forever' starring Joan Collins. `Operation: Annihilate!' has the flying face huggers type creatures that the movie `Alien' ripped off. Kahn appears in this series. We have both Klingons and Romulans also. The classic `Devil in the Dark' sees Kirk and Spock fight an underground cave monster. Kirk goes hand to hand with a giant reptile in the episode `Arena'. Surprisingly enough very few episodes actually contain all the characters at one time, including Sulu and Scotty. This does not happen until Season Two and then occurs often in Season Three. In TOS Season One characters are sort of alternated from episode to episode. The bottom line for TOS: Season One is that it is a classic. Although it is not necessarily the best of the Seasons, it works well as a very good foundational study for Trekkies who will absolutely adore seeing the variations in design and theme. All in all this is the funny season for 21st century viewers. You are supposed to laugh at this one more than thinking about its topics. And what a laugh it is! Just watch Kirk roll about the desert scrub with a seven foot man in a rubber reptile costume. How can you not want that!
The voyage continues... July 30, 2004
21 out of 23 found this review helpful
Where, exactly, does one start talking about THE original series that single-handedly launched the TV sci-fi genre like none that came before it and none has done since? What does one say about the one sci-fi show against which all subsequent sci-fi seems to be some kind of lesser imitation or spinoff? Should discussion begin with the original and imaginative concepts and themes - space warp, time travel, alternate realities and universes, powers of the mind and spirit, transporter beams - or should discussion start by talking about how masterfully familiar human interest themes are woven into a technological vision of the future? Or, maybe discussion should begin with how perfectly the show's central characters both complement and supplement each other at multiple levels of the human experience - the decisive commander-warrior, the rational half-human science officer, and the empathetic healer?
Ever since I began staying up late Friday nights to watch the original airings with my parents almost forty years ago, viewing rerun after rerun in syndication for the next fifteen years,sometimes twice a day, every day, and watching the spinoffs throughout the next fifteen years, the answers to those questions have always stayed just out of my reach. The problem has always been that my favorite Trek episode was usually the one I happened to be watching, or, if I hadn't been watching one, my top choices seemed to wander from episode to episode from day to day, even from morning to noon to night. I was vaguely aware that it had something to do with who I was, or what I was experiencing as a person at that particular moment.
For me, the highlights of season one exemplify my sentiments, from "Where No Man Has Gone Before", the powerful opening episode (which was aired out of sequence, for some strange reason) where two crew members, one a personal friend of Captain Kirk, become endowed with mental powers that grow to such strength as to make them a danger to the ship and crew, to the question and problem of time travel raised in "The City on the Edge of Forever", which is regarded by many fans as possibly the best sci-fi episode ever produced.
Oh, but then there's "Space Seed", whose sequel was produced in the feature film, "The Wrath of Khan", where the Enterprise is commandeered by a rogue group of genetically-engineered super-leaders from the 20th century. Ricardo Montalban may have turned out the two most memorable performances of his career as the charismatic but overly-ambitious Khan. It is even more impressive when one considers that genetic engineering was barely a blip on the scientific radar in 1965 when the episode was written and filmed.
Who can forget "Balance of Terror", which was Trek's rendition of the movie classic "Run Silent, Run Deep", which tells the story of two seasoned commanders playing a deadly game of cat and mouse in in deep space? This episode features Mark Lenard, who would also act the part of Spock's father in several future TV episodes and the feature film, "The Search for Spock".
Season 1 also gives fans the first glimpse of the mischievous but lovable space-rogue Harcourt Fenton (aka "Harry") Mudd in "Mudd's Women". Viewer beware - do not allow the episode's light-hearted tone to obscure it's message, that physical beauty is merely an outward manifestation of one's true, inner beauty.
As I watch all these episodes again for what must be the eighth or ninth time, I still see things for the first time I somehow managed to miss throughout all my previous viewings, and I still find myself pondering the large questions of life: who and what is man?, love and hate, war and peace, faith and reason, and all the other issues related to our purpose in this life. The voyage never ended for me.
It's About Time October 14, 2004
11 out of 11 found this review helpful
Finally Paramount has released the original Star Trek series in one-volume single season sets. It was way to expensive for me to buy in the previous two-episode sets. This 8-disk set of the first season is just what I've been waiting for. It contains every episode from the first season plus bonus features.
When first purchasing this I was a little fearful that the production quality would be poor. Despite a few flaws - I felt the production quality was very good, unlike many single-season sets I've bought of other television shows.
The special features were a bit of a disappointment. None of them are particularly good except the interview with Leonard Nimoy, which I did find very interesting and offered some insight into the shows, its characters, and the actors.
So if you are a fan of the original Star Trek I highly recommend this set.
Yeah, sure, NOW August 27, 2004
14 out of 15 found this review helpful
Five years ago, I began collecting the 2-episode Star Trek discs. The video and audio were superb and Star Trek has never looked or sounded better. I eagerly awaited each new release, and it seemed to take forever for Paramount to issue the entire series. But at last, after three years, I had all 40 discs.
By then, this method of releasing TV episodes seemed like, well, "stone knives and bear skins." Everybody else was doing season boxes and this had become the norm. (A notorious exception is the original Twilight Zone, which ran to 43 discs, later collected into five box sets, but in random order, seasons mixed together, etc.) Wouldn't it have been nice if I could have saved all that money and shelf space? Oh, well...
NOW they put out season boxes. Gee, thanks guys. Too bad I can't get a trade-in on the old ones. But, let's look at the bright side. I loved watching these episodes again, in vivid color and Dolby Digital 5.1 audio, and I enjoyed the anticipation of waiting for the next pair of discs to come out.
For those of you who didn't buy the old discs, you're in luck. This new set is the same transfer, but I don't think it could get any better. You do get a few extra features that didn't appear on the old discs (which included only the old trailers), but let's face it --- there are only about 10,000 books on Star Trek if you want background material. It would have been nice if they'd included the blooper reel.
The only real gripe I have is that the boxes will show the episodes in broadcast order, as opposed to production order, as in the old 2-episode discs. Having watched all of these shows dozens of times over the years, I can assure you that it makes a big difference watching them in the order they were made. The character development is much smoother and makes more sense. You also don't have such inconsistencies as Dr. McCoy suddenly disappearing in mid-season for the pilot "Where No Man Has Gone Before" --- to say nothing of the uniform differences.
But, hey, it's not a perfect world.
|
|
|
