featuring the episodes Arena and The Alternative Factor

There are few examples of Classic Trek action as fine as Arena, and it may rank next only to Amok Time as the undisputed king of action episodes from the original series. Based loosely on Frederic Brown’s classic pulp sci-fi tale (and yet close enough that Brown got a screen credit after the fact), Arena is no “Enemy Mine”, but it’s also one of the defining universe-building moments of the first season, as Kirk refuses to kill his Gorn antagonist after a fierce battle. (more…)

featuring the episodes Shore Leave and The Squire Of Gothos

All aboard! This volume of Classic Trek is headed for mind-warp city, messing with your head at warp 7.5. Shore Leave is the original example of what has now become a bit of a Trek staple, the “whatever our heroes imagines suddenly happens” phenomenon, and it does it well. The episode has its own charms as well, with McCoy flirting with a female crew member (he’s a doctor, not a starship captain, so this didn’t happen too often), some time away from the bridge for Sulu, and one of the original false-alarm major character deaths in Trek history. The highlight, however, still has to be the oft-spoofed appearance of Kirk’s old nemesis from Starfleet Academy, a lively and comedically brutal Irishman named Finnegan. (more…)

featuring the episodes The Galileo Seven and Court-Martial

Encompassing two of my favorite Classic Trek episodes, Volume 7 of the original series on DVD gives us one all-time fan favorite (really, did you like The Galileo Seven because it was a damn good story, or because it introduced the now-iconic Star Trek shuttlecraft?) and a somewhat more underrated episode which happens to be my favorite of the entire Kirk-era series. (more…)

featuring the episodes Miri and The Conscience Of The King

Some of the first season’s most disturbing outings fill this volume of classic Trek. Miri presents us with the then-novel idea of an all-conquering plague that has wiped out an entire world’s adult population, leaving only children to either rebuild society or languish in the ruins. (more…)

featuring the episodes What Are Little Girls Made Of? and Dagger Of The Mind

Nothing brings a smile to my face like packing two of my least-favorite Classic Treks on a single disc – so I can avoid them! What Are Little Girls Made Of? is a tale of lookalike androids, Ted Cassidy in flowing robes, and cute android women in skimpy outfits. I suppose it does raise some questions about identity and mortality that were interesting at the time of its original broadcast, but it doesn’t do so in such a way that I’m ready to stand up and defend this episode as the definitive reading on that topic. (more…)

featuring the episodes Charlie X and Balance Of Terror

These two episodes are among Classic Trek’s finest, showing the original series’ daring in a couple of revolutionary hours.

Charlie X poses two questions which, asked together, really are kind of terrifying: what if a child was given ultimate power over matter and energy, to do with as he pleases – and what would that child do with such power when going through the insecurities, hormonal mood and body changes, and identity crises of adolescence? This is a story that future Trek series really never touched, and that’s probably for the best, as the 24th century’s too-perfect future (and the apparently utterly bland past-future of the 22nd century) would’ve robbed the story of its edge. (more…)

Okay, I’ll admit it – I’m in my thirties. I’m a member of that generation who used to stay up until all hours on the weekends watching Night Flight, nearly two decades before Rhonda Shear was staying Up All Night. I remember fondly the music of Gary Numan and A Flock of Seagulls and the Human League – and the videos that went with that music. Oh, how I remember the videos. Weird settings, weirder costumes, and quite probably the weirdest hairstyles human history had ever produced. And as works of amateur filmmaking, music videos wore the “amateur” part of that description as a badge of honor. Jump cuts, massive leaps in continuity and visual logic, that signature overlit-low-budget video look, and a total disconnect between the song’s lyrics and the video’s imagery…nothing was too weird, and it wasn’t entirely improbable that the whole thing was shot in a single day. It was the age before MTV took over from radio the task of deciding what got listened to. It was the age when music video was truly in its infancy, not yet bestowed with mammoth budgets that would dwarf some hour-long television shows. Or some feature films. (more…)