Star Trek The Original Series - The Complete Third Season | 
 enlarge | Actors: William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy
Studio: CBS Paramount International Television
Category: DVD
Buy New: $107.99
New (5) Used (3) from $71.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  79 reviews
Sales Rank: 14846
Format: Box Set, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dvd-video, Full Screen, Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Subtitled)
Number Of Items: 7
Running Time: 1349
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.4 x 2
MPN: 097360509441
UPC: 097360509441
EAN: 0097360509441
ASIN: B0002JJBZO
Theatrical Release Date: September 8, 1966
Release Date: December 14, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Captain James T. Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise travel through space in order to defend the United Federation of Planets and explore new worlds.
Genre: Television
Rating: NR
Release Date: 8-AUG-2006
Media Type: DVD
Amazon.com
Saved from the brink of cancellation by its loyal fanbase, Star Trek's third and final season rewarded them with a number of memorable episodes. Tight budgets and slipping creative control, however, made it the series' most uneven season, though it did have some of the coolest episode titles ("For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky," "Is There in Truth No Beauty," "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield"). Some of the best moments involved a gunfight at the OK Corral ("Spectre of the Gun"), a knock-down drag-out sword battle with the Klingons aboard the Enterprise ("Day of the Dove"), the ship getting caught in an ever-tightening spacial net ("The Tholian Web"), TV's first interracial kiss ("Plato's Stepchildren," and it should be easy to guess who participated), Sulu taking command ("The Savage Curtain"), and Kirk's switching bodies with an ex-love interest ("Turnabout Intruder"). Also appearing in the set as a coda are two versions of the series pilot, "The Cage," a restored color version and the original, never-aired version that alternates between color and black and white. Starring Jeffery Hunter as Captain Pike, Leonard Nimoy as a relatively emotional Spock, and Majel Barrett (the future Nurse Chapel and Mrs. Gene Roddenberry) as a frosty Number One, this pilot was rejected, but a second was commissioned, "Where No Man Has Gone Before," now considered the "official" beginning of the series. But "The Cage" is very recognizably Star Trek with its far-out concepts (telepathic aliens collecting species samples), sexy humanoid women, character development, and of course cheesy costumes and special effects. Footage was later reused in the season 1 two-parter, "The Menagerie." The best of the 63 minutes of bonus material focuses on three of the actors: Walter Koenig, George Takei, and James Doohan. Koenig discusses how he was cast and shows off his various collections, one consisting of Chekov figurines. Takei speaks movingly about the Japanese American internment and, in what is probably his last Star Trek appearance, Doohan, slowed by Alzheimer's but still with a twinkle in his eye, recalls his voiceover roles and his favorite episodes. The Easter eggs are amusingly called "Red Shirt Files" in tribute to those poor saps who everyone knew were only in the landing party so they could die. --David Horiuchi
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| Customer Reviews: Read 74 more reviews...
 Star Trek The Original Series - The Complete Third Season October 22, 2004
110 out of 120 found this review helpful
A generous season of 24 episodes. Some episodes are classics, such as "Plato's Stepchildren", featuring TV's first interracial kiss. In the Sixties with the US in a foreign war, Star Trek's directive of non-interference was appealing and made so much sense. I was in high school when Star Trek first aired and none of us could figure out why they were cancelling such a popular show.
A brief episode guide:
1. Spock's Brain: Kirk goes after an alien who has stolen Spock's brain.
2. The Enterprise Incident: Kirk orders the Enterprise into the Neutral Zone and the ship is captured by the Romulans.
3. The Paradise Syndrome: After Kirk and the crew try to evacuate a planet endangered by an asteroid, Kirk's memory is erased by an obelisk.
4. And the Children Shall Lead: The adults of a scientific colony have died, and the children are rescued by the Enterprise. The children enact the plan of a "friendly angel", an alien named Gorgon.
5. Is There in Truth No Beauty?: A telepathic woman arrives with a Medusan ambassador. One sight of him drives humans insane.
6. Spectre of the Gun: Kirk and crew are forced to re-enact the shootout at the OK Corral.
7. Day of the Dove: An alien creature is on board the Enterprise and so are the Klingons, with only swords for weapons.
8. For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky: McCoy has a terminal disease. A high priestess on an asteroid-like vessel asks him to remain with her.
9. The Tholian Web: The Enterprise is searching for the missing starship, U.S.S. Defiant. They find the ship, but everyone is dead and the ship is trapped between universes.
10. Plato's Stepchildren: The crew of Enterprise save the life of seriously ill leader of a planet. The telekinetic inhabitants force Kirk, McCoy, Uhura, and Spock to stay on the planet. Features the first interracial kiss shown on TV.
11. Wink of an Eye: A landing party to Scalos disappear one at a time. Kirk falls victim and meets native Scalosians who can move faster than humanly detectable.
12. The Empath: Aliens perform experiments on two scientists who die. The aliens then kidnap Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and a mute empath.
13. Elaan of Troyius: An ambassador's duty is to civilize a woman from Elas. According to legend, the tears of an Elassan woman affect men in strange ways.
14. Whom Gods Destroy: The Enterprise takes a new drug to a mental hospital in hopes of treating dangerously insane patients.
15. Let That Be Your Last Battlefield: Two survivors of a devastated planet remain committed to destroying one another.
16. The Mark of Gideon: Kirk is held by Gideonites who want to use him to solve their overpopulation problem.
17. That Which Survives: A woman appears out of nowhere, names her victim, and kills with a touch.
18. The Lights of Zetar: A cloud threatens the Enterprise but especially Lieutenant Mira Romaine.
19. Requiem for Methuselah: Kirk is dependent on an immortal human named Flint for a cure to a plague threatening the Enterprise.
20. The Way to Eden: A group of hippies hijack the Enterprise to search for Eden.
21. The Cloudminders: When Kirk is desperate for zenite to stop a plague on another planet, he is forced into negotiating peace between the miners and the sky-dwellers.
22. The Savage Curtain: Abraham Lincoln and Surak help the Enterprise in a fight against evil.
23. All Our Yesterdays: Kirk, Spock and McCoy enter a time portal and are trapped in the past of a planet that was about to be destroyed by a nova.
24. Turnabout Intruder: Dr. Lester, a woman from Kirk's past, exchanges bodies with him and takes control of the ship.
The voyage continues... July 30, 2004
68 out of 75 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.
Season three is often criticized as being the least original and interesting of the three original Star Trek seasons. Although there may be some truth to that sentiment, I believe it is a matter of degree. To say it is the least interesting of the three is not the same as saying that it is not worth watching. There are still many good episodes to stir the imagination.
In a theme repeated in future Trek spinoffs, Kirk feigns madness leading to his capture by the Romulans in order to execute his master plan to commit espionage aboard a Romulan ship in "The Enterprise Incident". "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" is a powerful allegory of the irrational and destructive nature of racism. The feasibility of artificial intelligence was correctly surmised long before the leading researchers in the field reached the same conclusion in "Requiem for Methuselah" where Kirk and Co. encounter a super-genius who has created a seemingly perfect robot spouse who, in the end, is shown to be nothing more than a sophisticated machine incapable of human feelings. "All Our Yesterdays" revisits the time travel theme in a wonderfully written story about Kirk, Spock, and McCoy's encounter with an automated librarian who is the caretaker of the archives of a great civilization that abandoned its homeworld as their sun nears the end of its life in a catastrophic explosion.
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.
I Might Be Crazy, But This Is My Favorite Season August 6, 2005
27 out of 28 found this review helpful
Yes, the often-reviled third season of Star Trek is in fact my favorite season. Why, you may ask? In the third season Roddenberry basically left the show for all intents and purposes, with Fred Friedberger pinch-hitting as the new producer, and the already tight budget getting cut further by the powers that be.
I suppose that I feel that some of the best art comes from tribulations and limitations. I will readily admit that episodes like "Spock's Brain" and "The Way to Eden" are pretty terrible (although thry are a lot of fun with a drink or five in hand). But some of the more wild ideas worked in a way that never appeared in the relatively more stable first two seasons.
"The Enterprise Incident," "The Tholian Web," "All Our Yesterdays" and "Day of the Dove" are classic well-constructed episode that would have stood out at any time of the show's run. But I have a soft spot for some of the stranger stuff. "The Paradise Syndrome" take a strange Frontierland approach that stands out and explores an emotional dimension of Kirk that rarely appeared in the series. Budget constraints actually turned what would have been the already good "Spectre of the Gun" into a surreal masterpiece. Unable to afford full western sets, the producers simply made it a plot point and managed to provide the episode with an unsettling tone that it would not have had otherwise. Although "Wink of the Eye" and "The Mark of Gideon" both have initially interesting concepts that do not hold up to intellectual scruitiny, they remain so much fun that I really don't care. "The World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky" has a really cool concept that can withstand a little bit of thinking; plus the oracle is super cool. And strange as it may seem, I really love the floating blob of the week that is a hallmark of the season and appears in episodes like "The Lights of Zetar" and "Spectre of the Gun."
Yes, this season is a little on the campy side, but the whole original series is to a certain degree. It's one of the reasons I still love watching this show and for me the Third Season does not disappoint.
Strong Sense of Adventure and Fun September 21, 2004
20 out of 22 found this review helpful
Apart from one or weak stories where characterisation seemed to take a bad turn, this is another excellent season of the original (and best) Star Trek. The sense of fun from the 60s is here and there's a warmth and energy about the proceedings that only TV from the 60s possesses. The tone of these stories is a bit lighter than seasons 1 and 2 but there are some stand out episodes: The Tholian Web, Spectre of the Gun, The Enterprise Incident, All Our Yesterdays, Day of the Dove and For I Have Touched The Sky... and many more. The Treks which followed all had their strengths and produced some outstanding TV - well, let's remember that the original series did this too. (If it hadn't then there'd be no Star Trek of any description.)
Some of the stories seem a bit naive by today's more cynical and "knowing" standards, but the charisma of Kirk-Spock-McCoy helps to drive the whole thing forward. What a pity this was the last of the original seasons - if you enjoyed seasons 1 and 2 then you'll still find much to enjoy here.
just for the fun of it September 21, 2004
22 out of 26 found this review helpful
OK! There are some sticks-in-the-mud who would say that this season is corny or boring compared with the first two seasons, however, it is my favorite season, probably BECAUSE of some of the corny episodes which make the season fun to watch. The episode, "Turnabout Intruder" actually required MORE acting skills on Shatner's part than fewer skills since he had to convince the audience he was actually an evil woman inhabiting Kirk's body. I think Shatner did such a good job behaving like an evil woman he was almost embarrassing to watch. This is definitely the best laugh-out-loud episode of this season.
The episode "For The World is Hollow and I Hath Touched The Sky" has the most poetic title of any episode and was a wonderful story on how governments can keep the masses in darkness and live a lie. The episode "The Paradise Syndrome" was one of the best love stories on the entire series and was extremely sad in the end. The episode "The Tholian Web" was one of the greatest episodes of all time which not only had great special effects but was the best one in terms of the usual verbal battle between Dr. McCoy and Spock.
All in all, it is the best season to watch if you watch just for the fun of it. You don't watch for deep hidden meaning and moral messages - that's in the first two seasons - you watch it just to sit back and enjoy yourself.
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