Star Trek: The Original Series: Season 2
Paramount Home Video
Cast: William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, George Takei, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, Nichelle Nichols
Extras: Featurettes, Text Commentary,
Rating:
Paramount Home Entertainment is dishing out the original Star Trek show in season box sets now that certainly catch one’s eyes. Coming in a custom contoured plastic case, the packaging definitely stands out and has a unique, vintage Star Trek communicator feel to it.
On this Season 2 box set we find all 26 episodes of the 1967 season spread across seven discs, each of which carries a nice label print, just like the previous set. Holding four episodes per disc, the presentation is very good, allowing enough headroom for quality compression of the material free of artifacts. The quality of the presentation varies a bit from episode to episode, probably for technical limitations of the original production. While optical effects shots show noticeable grain, the majority of the footage is very clean and stable, without noise or grain, making for a wonderful viewing. Colors are nicely reproduced, perfectly reflecting the slight pastel colors used throughout the show but also bringing out the vibrant hues of the reds in the uniforms and sets for example. All in all, it’s a meticulous presentation of this beloved TV show.
Audio comes as a remixed 5.1 channel Dolby Digital presentation with a good frequency response. While some technical limitations are evident and dialog sounds a bit harsh occasionally, the remix certainly makes for a more natural listening experience than the show’s original mono tracks.
The DVD set also contains some supplements, all included on the set’s seventh disc. Here you find ’To Boldly Go…: Season 2’ an insightful featurette covering some of the episode highlights of season 2. Complete with cast and crew interviews you will hear some really great information and anecdotes about the show’s production.
’Life Beyond Trek’ on this DVD set covers Leonard Nimoy as he spends an intimate twelve minutes with the audience, talking about himself, his life, his family, his work and life in general.
’Kirk, Spock & Bones’ is a featurette about the show’s great trio, once again, filled with interviews by cast and crew members. In ’Designing The Final Frontier’ we get to take a look at the show’s productions design, including sketches and pre-production art and how they evolved into the final sets.
’Star Trek’s Divine Diva: Nichelle Nichols’ is a wonderful featurette in which the actress gets the chance to talk about her character of Lt. Uhura in quite some length. She also remembers how she got involved in the show, certain anecdotes from the show as well as her favorite moments. It’s a great supplement full of charm and laughs that you should definitely check out.
In the ’Writer’s Notebook: D.C. Fontana’ the writer gets the chance to talk about her involvement in the show and some of her favorite story moments of the second season.
’Star Trek: The Original Series: Season 2’ is another quality box set from Paramount, catering to the fans of the show. Upon revisiting it, it just reminded me, how well conceived, written and how imaginative the show was – which undeniable spawned its long-lasting success, of course – but it’s easy to forget until you see these episodes again after some absence. Episodes like ’The Trouble With Tribbles’ or ’Patterns of Force’ are clearly season highlights and should get you hooked no matter what.
