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featuring the episodes This Side Of Paradise and The Devil In The Dark

The thirteenth volume of Star Trek on DVD offers a couple of solid episodes for the Spock fans out there. Still an early contender in the race to see how many episodes could break the rules and show Spock emoting, This Side Of Paradise at least takes a somewhat original approach to the task. Almost equally involving is Kirk’s plight, and his attempt to snap Spock back to his senses. (more…)

The second half of Space: 1999’s second year kicks off with Seed Of Destruction, an episode which truly shocked me. I’ve harped quite a bit on how many Space: 1999 plots seem to have been recycled later as Star Trek: Voyager episodes, but Seeds was recycled by Star Trek: The Next Generation. Koenig is snared in an alien trap, an almost-exact duplicate of him is created and sent back to Moonbase Alpha, and the doppelganger issues bizarre instructions to an increasingly suspicious crew while the real Koenig tries to figure out a way out of his predicament. Sound familiar? Think of Allegiance, an episode from Next Generation’s third season, where virtually the same thing happens with Picard. (Only we’re not treated to the sight of Martin Landau leading his castmates in a round of drinking songs - darn!) (more…)

featuring the episodes A Taste Of Armageddon and Space Seed

The first season of Star Trek really begins to hit its stride here with an extremely solid run of excellent episodes. A Taste Of Armageddon is a slightly dated allegory of the futility of war. The show’s novel notion that two warring nations would fight their war via computer simulations, voluntarily surrendering the required quotas of both people and resources, almost seems far-fetched until we see the next round of U.N. sanctions against [insert country here] come to nothing but bloody grief. (more…)

The first disc in the North American-only release of Doctor Who’s full 16th season, The Ribos Operation is something of a stripped-down release compared to the other Doctor Who DVDs on the market. But not without reason: when it won a poll for most-desired DVD release shortly after the launch of the Doctor Who DVD range in North America, the Key To Time season meant that the Doctor Who Restoration Team, BBC Video and Warner Bros. Home Video had to prep not one, but six titles for a simultaneous release. In that context, it’s surprising that the Key To Time DVDs are as good as they are: each contains a full-length running commentary and production trivia subtitles at least, and a couple of them have other features as well. That’s not too shabby. (more…)