Star Trek: The Original Series - Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

Star Trek: The Original Series



Movie:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score:



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Movie
Out of the major Sci-fi universes out there, two rise to the top above all else in terms of mass media acceptance. The first is of course Star Wars, and the second is naturally Star Trek. Both franchises are equally big, bold, and filled the cultural vision with years and years of film/TV service that have both started to become long in the tooth (OK, maybe not STARTED. It’s been that way for a few years now). Comicons are filled with Captain Kirks, Orion Slave girls, Darth Vader masks,s and pretty much anything you can think of. And really, I honestly can’t think of another science fiction IP that has the mass-market appeal of the two juggernauts. And now it’s 60 years since Star Trek began back in 1966, and Paramount has decided to release the original series as a complete box set for the first time since 2016 (which was simply a repacking of the original 2009 remastered editions). And well...there’s a lot of good, but some bad that is simply a holdover from the previous sets.

Space, the final Frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise…

Anyone who has even the slightest association with the words “Star Trek” knows those word, and can hear William Shatner reciting them before every episode of the original series. Originally aired from 1966 to 1969, the original series was a landmark show that not only pushed the boundaries of what good science fiction could be on TV, but also pushed social boundaries. It pushed inclusiveness in an era where a black woman on TV with a white man was seen as “awkward”, let alone the first interracial kiss on TV. But more than that, it was a course change from the more pulpy serials of the past, and Gene Roddenberry infused his own Utopian ideals into the series and leaned heavily into social commentary and high-value special effects (for the time, and really only for the first two seasons, as the third season took a major budget hit).

Featuring the now legendary William Shatner as James T. Kirk, DeForest Kelley as Dr. McCoy, and Leonard Nimoy as the Vulcan Spock, the Enterprise flitted across the galaxy on a 5 year mission to explore new life, new civilizations, and to boldly go where no man has gone before (I don’t care that I’ve heard it a million times. That single sentence still gives me goosebumps and brings me back to when I was a single-digit child watching reruns over my brothers’ shoulders at night). We had phaser pistols, evil Villains (Khan will still be the iconic Star Trek Villain), and new cultures and alien races that boggled the imagination. But strangely, the original show is NOT the best of the many series bearing the same name. Which is kind of a shock considering the first is almost always the best.

In reality, the original series is kind of hokey to anyone older than a Gen Xer for some reason. I love the show, but you can tell that they didn’t have the technology to do what Roddenberry wanted at times, not to mention the 1960s was the home for cheesy, family-friendly shows, and even though Star Trek was trying to be more serious, it couldn’t completely get away from the vibe of the times. It was actually only moderately well received the first couple of years, and by the third season ratings were in a slump. Paramount canceled the short series after the third season, and for several decades the show languished as just another old sci-fi show being shown on network reruns. Attempts were made to revitalize the show in 1979 with Star Trek: The Motion Picture, but it was a lumbering mess that was probably the worst movie out of the entire original 6 films. But it wasn’t till 1982, with Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan,n that things took off for the IP. It was revitalized with a more action-oriented take, and pushed out another 4 sequels up until 1991 when the original cast called it quits.

But in that interim, things had taken off in a big way. Between the 5th and 6th film, the powers that be,e along with Rick Berman, decided it was time that a new TV show was made from the IP, passing the torch from Kirk’s enterprise years later with a new crew and new Captain. And THIS is where the franchise took off in ways that no one had imagined. Instead of being poorly received, The Next Generation became a 7-season-long show that took the world by storm, and after it ended in the very early 90s, Paramount continued with Captain Picard’s crew for another 4 films, AND segued off into the amazing Deep Space Nine and (less quality but still fun) Voyager. After that, the franchise foundered, with Star Trek: Enterprise struggling to modernize the Star Trek world, and only succeeding in the last couple of seasons before getting canceled. Then came the Kelvin timeline films with Chris Pine (which actually weren’t half bad) and finally, “Nu-Trek”, starting with Discovery, and ending with Strange New Worlds (which is the only good show out of the bunch in my opinion). Shows that I feel shouldn’t be spoken in the same breath as the 80s and 90s shows/movies. But I digress, as an aging nerd,d my opinions on Nu-Trek may not be held with the same esteem.




Rating:

Not rated by the MPAA




Video:

Sad, ly Paramount has not decided to remaster or re-encode the series for the modern era, but has simply decided to re-use the same discs as were found in the 2009 sets (all the way down to the same silk screening on the discs). As much as I would have loved a facelift, the show looked amazing back in 2009 and looks nearly as good today. The 1.33:1 framed image is clean and precise, with great detail levels and great skin colors. Naturally, you can see a bit TOO MUCH detail at times, with the obvious pasty makeup showing up like clay (think Pike’s scarred face makeup in the first couple of episodes) as well as Spock’s fake tan they gave him to appear more alien. But the classically designed set pieces and physical effects hold up well today, and the remastered effects are incredible. Sure, stuff like Styrofoam rocks and rubber suits for the Gorn are going to look cheesy, but they looked cheesy in the 1960s too,o and there’s not much you can do about it. I almost gave this a 4.25/5 rating and rated it down to 4/5, but that seems too extreme, so I’m going to round up to 4.5/5, which is what I gave the series 17 years ago when it first came out.







Audio:

Remastered onto 7.1 DTS-HD MA back in the day from mono sources (and replicated here since these are the same discs as the 2007 and 2016 sets), the audio will never be stellar, but still sounds really good some 17 years later. Music and effects are more subtle than I remember, with the dialog and the beeping of computer screens acting as the main focus of the tracks. Dialog is crisp and cleanly replicated in the front of the room, while ambient surrounds during some of the action sequences kick things up a notch. I wasn’t expecting much in terms of bass, but there is a little bit here and there. Some of the rear effects sound a tad hollow and anemic, though, and this mono-to-7.1 mix just can’t reach into nothingness and fabricate effects that aren’t there. As such, I’m giving this the same score I gave back in 2009. A solid 4/5.








Extras:

Season 1

• Starfleet Access
• Spacelift: Transporting Trek Into the 21st Century
• Reflections on Spock
• Life Beyond Trek: William Shatner
• To Boldly Go: Season One
• The Birth of a Timeless Legacy
• Sci-Fi Visionaries
• Kiss ’N Tell: Romance in the 23rd Century
• Billy Blackburn’s Treasure Chest: Rare Home Movies and Special Memories, Part One

Season 2

• Starfleet Access
• David Gerrold Commentary
• More Tribbles, More Troubles
• Trials and Tribble-ations
• Uniting Two Legends
• An Historic Endeavor
• Billy Blackburn’s Treasure Chest, Part Two
• To Boldly Go: Season Two
• Designing the Final Frontier
• Star Trek’s Favorite Moments
• Writer’s Notebook: D.C. Fontana
• Life Beyond Trek: Leonard Nimoy
• Kirk, Spock & Bones: Star Trek’s Great Trio
• Star Trek’s Divine Diva: Nichelle Nichols
• Hidden Easter Eggs

Season 3

• Episode Previews
• Life Beyond Trek: Walter Koenig
• Chief Engineer’s Log
• A Memoir from Mr. Sulu
• Captain’s Log: Bob Justman
• The Cage
• Alternate Where No Man Has Gone Before
• 2009 Convention Material
• The Anthropology of Star Trek
• The World of Rod Roddenberry
• Billy Blackburn’s Treasure Chest, Part Three
• To Boldly Go: Season Three
• Collectible Trek
• Star Trek’s Impact

Final Score: ​

Star Trek: The Original Series is a seminal piece of science fiction history, and while it isn’t as fun as the 80s and 90s Trek, it is still a must-watch for anyone even remotely interested in the IP. And while I love that we get a 60th anniversary box set, I do have a couple of quibbles with the set from a fan’s point of view. The biggest is obviously the packaging. Like a lot of the Paramount “Complete Series” box sets of old, it uses that multi-disc single case that is DVD height and features not only stacked discs, but overlapping discs. This kind of packaging is NOTORIOUS for losing discs off hubs (or holding onto discs too tightly) and scratching discs. It’s not always, but it happens more often than I like. It is the one case design that I REALLY wish studios would get away from using and go back to individual season Blu-ray cases. The second is that these are the EXACT same discs as the 2009 sets that we’ve had for 17 years. Down to the original silk screening and VC-1 encoding. That’s not bad, as they were superb sets, but I really would have liked to have seen brand new AVC encodes using more modern mastering techniques. So for those of you who already have the previously released sets, I wouldn’t consider this an upgrade in any way. If you’re buying the sets for the first time, then this is a definite space and money saver, but I personally would lean towards the original single season releases due to the packaging. That being said, this was a phenomenal transfer back in the day, and still holds up quite nicely. Highly recommended.


Technical Specifications:

Starring: William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, Nichelle Nichols, James Doohan, George Takei
Created by: Gene Roddenberry
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 AVC
Audio: English: DTS-HD MA 7.1, English, French, Spanish DD 2.0 Mono
Subtitles: English SDH, French, Portuguese, Spanish
Studio: Paramount Pictures
Rated: NR
Runtime: 4062 Minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: September 8th, 2026

Recommendation: Great Watch