Ginormous STAR TREK DVD Review

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been spending a lot of time in outer space. On spaceships. With aliens. And best of all, with my husband there too. It’s been awesome.

First, we watched STAR TREK: The Motion Picture Trilogy on Blu-Ray, thanks to Paramount Home Entertainment sending it to me for review. The trilogy skips the awful first movie and goes right to these three:

STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN
STAR TREK III: THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK
STAR TREK IV: THE VOYAGE HOME

I have a confession-STAR TREK IV: The Voyage Home, which is also popularly known as STAR TREK: Save The Whales, I secretly kind of love it. It’s just so cheesy and awesome. All three movies, both the Blu-Ray and DVD collections, have been digitally remastered with fantastic picture and sound quality, and The Wrath of Khan has been fully restored in high definition with brilliant picture quality and 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround EX. Both collections include 90 minutes of all-new special features plus over six hours of previously released content!

Did I like it? Heck YES I did!

Then we moved to The Best of STAR TREK: The Original Series on DVD, which includes the popular “The Trouble with Tribbles”, which finds the Enterprise overrun with furry little creatures while the crew helps guard a shipment of wheat. In “City on the Edge of Forever”, Kirk and Spock have to travel back in time to alter the course of history, and Kirk falls in love with a beautiful woman who is facing a tragic fate, unbeknownst to her.

In “Balance of Terror”, the Enterprise crew meets the Romulans and engage them in a game of space hide-and-seek.

“Amok Time” finds the usually cool and logical Spock facing his emotions as he is compelled to return home to Vulcan to consummate his arranged marriage.

Did I like it? The restoration was terrific, and the new CGI effects were well-integrated into the original footage, although the exterior shots of the Enterprise and planet footage does look different. The only disappointment was that there is NO bonus features at all. I can’t believe they couldn’t find ANYTHING, no one who could record a commentary or talk about costumes or anything.

We finished up with The Best of STAR TREK: The Next Generation on DVD. This collection has four episodes as well: the two Borg episodes called “The Best of Both Worlds (Part 1) and (Part II)”, with Captain Picard agreeing to board the Borg ship to save his crew from being assimilated, and turning into “Locutus of Borg”. As the Borg ship heads to Earth for assmiliation, acting captain Riker and his crew rescue Picard and hurry to figure out how to save Earth and get their Captain back.

“Yesterday’s Enterprise” which finds a rift in the space-time continuum sending the Enterprise-C forward into the future where it meets up with the Enterprise-D (Picard’s ship). Fan favorite Tasha Yar reappears, because the future changes so she was never killed. Bartender Guinan (the fabulous Whoopi Goldberg) senses something is wrong and tells Yar she doesn’t belong. It’s heavy stuff.

“The Measure of a Man” finds the Enterprise docking at a new Starbase where they meet a noted robotics expert who is interested in studying Data. Which involves disassembling him. Picard of course protests, and learns that Starfleet considers Data to be just a piece of property. Picard calls for a hearing, and with Riker acting as prosecutor and Picard as the defense, they argue whether or not Data deserves to be treated as a human.

Did I like it? It must have been hard for whomever put this collection together to pick just four of the “best” episodes. And while I certainly agree with their choice of the Borg episodes, my personal vote would have been for “The Game”, the 1991 episode that starred Ashley Judd as Ensign Leffler, and she and Wil Wheaton’s character Wesley Crusher have to save the rest of the Enterprise crew from their addiction to a video game. But, they didn’t ask me Again, it was disappointing that the DVD contained no bonus features at all. There HAVE to be commentaries or featurettes or footage from Comic-Con or SOMETHING that could have been added to this. Hmmph.

Anyway, thank you Paramount Home Entertainment for providing my husband and I with this fantastic collection of Outer Space Escapism. And for bringing Ricardo Montalban and his bare chest into my living room. KHAAAANNNNN!!!!