The original Star Trek series holds a place near and dear to many of us who grew up in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This is the show I grew up on. For a long time, every weekday evening at 6PM, one of our local independent television stations would show an episode. I was always disappointed when my father came home later than his usual 5:40PM because that meant dinner would take place during the show.

Now, all these years later, the series is available with each episode uncut and uninterrupted on Blu-ray. It’s well worth the cost and it comes packaged nicely in a yellow plastic container with the Blu-rays themselves in another, separate plastic book inside a paper sleeve. The result is great protection for the Blu-rays, which now seem impervious to any dust or dirt getting on them when they are put away. The casing makes it attractive in a Blu-ray cabinet as well as easy to locate.

The episodes are on the Blu-ray not in production order, but in the order they aired on NBC for the first time way back in the 1966-1967 television season. Watching it straight through from the beginning, it’s obvious that the show took a bit of time to find its footing, sometimes painfully so. There are a few episodes where characters are completely out of character for what fans are used to. However, actors, writers, and the show’s creator, Gene Roddenberry, got a better grasp on just what they had going. Toward the end of this first season, there was a string of episodes that are some of the best of the series.

This season also benefits from the fact that the actors were still fairly unknown and didn’t have the giant-sized egos some of them would develop with all of the fandom and reverie surrounding the series. The show seemed to be more of a collective, where the scripts benefited from them working together to create a good show, rather than some of them looking out for their own interests.

The cast was also quite unique. Women were shown on an equal footing with men at times, their mini-skirt uniforms notwithstanding. There were minorities present on the bridge in critical areas, such as Lt. Uhura in communications and Lt. Chekov as the helmsman. Then there was the alien, Mr. Spock. Half human, half Vulcan, he was supposed to display an emotionless exterior, but fans delighted in the moments when his very human, emotional side came through.

There are terrific episodes, such as Miri, where an Earth-like society dies off after trying to create a way to immortality. Balance of Terror introduces the Romulans and has Mark Lenard make his first appearance in the show as a Romulan Captain, not as Spock’s father, where he will become most renowned. Space Seed sets the stage for the second Star Trek movie, introducing Star Trek‘s most notorious villain, Khan, and unintentionally leaving the opening for that movie.

The City on the Edge of Forever had Kirk making what could be the ultimate sacrifice after a time-traveling accident leaves three of the Enterprise‘s senior officers in 1930s Earth. The Devil in the Dark has the crew battling an unknown menace while making a statement about our own human prejudices and assumptions. Errand of Mercy has the late, great John Colicos in his first appearance as Kor going head-to-head with Captain Kirk.

These Blu-rays are set up very nicely, with interactive menus that are pretty cool. They are set up to look like the station of the bridge on the original Enterprise. This is different than the boxes sets for Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, where the menus were pretty straightforward.

Each episode includes the preview trailer for that episode. Sound options for each were created with the remastering and are available in either English 5.1 surround sound or English Dolby surround. A few episodes have text commentary from Michael Okuda.

The best of the special features are on the last disc. These really are pretty good. Much of the original cast comes to reminisce about the show, including William Shatner and the late Leonard Nimoy. Old interviews with those who have left this world, such as Gene Roddenberry, are shown. It amounts to more than an hour’s worth of time, which is excellent and something I wish would be done for other series out there of this caliber.

What this disc doesn’t include is the original pilot. Although the episode it later spawned, The Menagerie is here, the original one is not. That is a shame and I hope it’s coming up down the line.

If you are a fan of the show, you need to have this and I suspect most fans already do. If you haven’t watched the show, check these out and I’m pretty sure by the time you reach the last disc, you’ll feel as strongly about the series as most fans. It doesn’t just make good science fiction, it makes for good social commentary and some interesting takes on issues which were front and center at the time these episodes aired. Most of all, it showed us that it was possible to be a show that was both smart and entertaining.


SPECIAL FEATURES:

” The Birth of a Timeless Legacy
” Life Beyond Star Trek: William Shatner
” To Boldly Go… Season One
” Reflections on Spock
” Sci-Fi Visionaries
” Photo Log