:: theLogBook.com DVD Reviews ::

How many times can Paramount go to the classic Trek well on DVD? Appropriately enough for a SF series, the answer would seem to be an impossibly infinite number. This pricey box set gathers the full first season in its newly “remastered” form - in other words, all of the exterior space, planet and spaceship scenes have been replaced with CGI, and a select handful of effects on the show’s live action footage have gotten a makeover as well. Most of the live action is left completely untouched, with even 1960s hand phasers left intact for the most part. The transporter effect is unchanged, as are the sound effects. Compared to, say, the special editions of the three original Star Wars films, these changes are relatively small potatoes. But do they help?

The answer, in some places, is a spectacularly resounding “yes”. One need only look at Tomorrow Is Yesterday, the episode whose infamous opening shots show U.S. Air Force fighter jets scrambling to intercept a large UFO in Earth’s atmosphere - which turns out to be the Enterprise after an accidental trip through time. To be fair, the original effects shots as aired in the ’60s were nothing to sneeze at, not then and not now. But the new “remix” of Tomorrow features stunning shots of the Enterprise adrift in the clouds, and in keeping with the story’s plot point that nearly the entire crew was knocked out by their turbulent time travel, the ship is more obviously drifting instead of flying in a straight line, as with the original episode.

For an equally impressive example of purely space-based effects, check out The Galileo Seven, which renders the Murasaki Quasar setting of the story as a massive thing of fierce, untamed natural beauty, and then throws in a great shuttle launch sequence that - if you’re anything like me - will send a giddy thrill up your spine. The shuttle’s decaying orbit is made more believable - and raises the dramatic stakes - with the fiery glow of re-entering the atmosphere (though the Galileo’s yeoman moaning “It’s getting hot!” is just as unintentionally funny now as it was 40+ years ago). This episode’s otherwise incredible effects are let down by a slightly video-gamey look to the scene in which Spock gets desperate enough to ignite the ship’s remaining fuel, but for the most part, the new scenes are uniformly excellent. Court-Martial now shows the Enterprise damaged by the ion storm that apparently caused the death of Ben Finney. Space Seed really does show Khan’s DY-500 sleeper ship pulling away from the Enterprise and peeling off on its own course. Where No Man Has Gone Before turns the vague, hazy purple cloud at the edge of the galaxy into an area of dense wisps of matter that looks more like what one would imagine flying into some sort of nebula would look like. I could go on, but you get the idea.

Don’t expect to see impossibly fast, gives-it-away-as-CG-because-no-human-operated-camera-could-move-that-quick angles either. One rule that the CG artists seemed to stick to in the making of their replacement scenes is that the Enterprise shouldn’t be seen to do anything that it didn’t do in the original series. It’s not suddenly doing barrel rolls or “skidding out” braking maneuvers (thank you very much, In Harm’s Way). Many - but not all - of the shots are framed and composed similarly to what they’re replacing. There are exceptions, but they are exceptions and not the rule. Also, as noted before, very, very seldom are changes made to live-action footage. Errand Of Mercy’s Organians revert to their noncorporeal natural state with a bit more flair, sure, but the Where No Man’s gravestone still says “James R. Kirk”, and the laser cannon used on Talos IV in The Menagerie is still just this side of a liquidy energy beam out of Ghostbusters - they haven’t been altered at all. There aren’t suddenly Okudagrams in the large screens above Uhura’s bridge station. The Gorn hasn’t been replaced with the CG Gorn from Star Trek: Enterprise. The Romulans and Klingon’s don’t suddenly have forehead ridges. And the episodes are all at their original 50+ minute runing time.

The changes really are just a matter of personal taste. I’m happy to have both the original episodes and these nicely polished-and-shined versions on the same DVD shelf. And that’s one area where you do have to give Paramount more points than George Lucas - the originals are still available, they’re not just there “for a limited time only”, and they’ve also been brought up to digital spec as much as they possibly can rather than left in some couldn’t-bother-to-spare-the-effort-to-even-slightly-remaster-them condition. Unfortunately, this also means that you’ve got to give Paramount more megabucks than George Lucas, because the originals aren’t part of this box set: there’s no option to switch back and forth between the two. If you want to have the un-remastered shows in your library, you have to shell out for the other classic Trek box sets that were released just a few years ago. (And the price on those hasn’t exactly dropped much.)

Those who have purchased those sets may get an eerie sense of deja vu, though - most of the extras and bonus features in this set are exactly the same. The profiles of Shatner and Nimoy are exactly as they appeared on the previous season one box set, as is the overview of season one and most of the other features. New to this set are “Beyond The Final Frontier”, a cleverly-edited but slightly over-long History Channel special about the Christie’s auction of the Paramount Star Trek prop vaults, and a feature narrated by - and including Super 8 home movie footage by - Trek extra Billy Blackburn, who often filled out a non-dialogue Starfleet uniform on the Enterprise bridge and a red shirt in many an away team. An avid documenter of his Hollywood adventure, Blackburn shot candid footage behind the scenes, and it’s being seen here for the first time along with his remembrances. It’s really a neat little bonus.

One thing I do wish to note here is that I don’t have an HD-DVD player (nor, for that matter, do I have a Blu Ray DVD player), and so this review doesn’t cover any of the features that are available only on the HD-DVD sides of the discs. An unwillingness to step into the fray of a still-unresolved format war and, quite frankly, budget has kept me strictly in standard-definition territory for now. (Notice that I’m not really complaining.) Supposedly the HD-DVD sides of the discs have all sorts of cool extra features that I simply can’t see, which really do make this a different box set from the previous releases, but I just can’t see them.

Some might wonder if all this tinkering with effects actually makes the original series better in some way, and my answer can only be: that depends on what you’re here for. If you’re here for the light show, or want classic Trek to suddenly be visually consistent with all of the other series, then…maybe. But the original series was already the best of the bunch, and it still remains the one with the most staying power. (Notice how whisper-quiet the “celebration” of Star Trek: The Next Generation’s 20th anniversary was in 2007?) Again, better or worse is a matter of personal taste, but even though it’s an unashamedly high-priced double-dip, I give Paramount credit for keeping the original versions of the episodes in circulation. And it’s not as if we don’t need to be getting used to the idea of a CGI-rendered NCC-1701 before this year’s out anyway.