Star Trek Volume 8
featuring the episodes The Menagerie Part I and The Menagerie Part II
The original Star Trek two-parter (and, for the original series, the only one), The Menagerie is a brilliant re-use of the original (and, at that point, unaired) Star Trek pilot episode, The Cage. This has been said about 16,000 times by fans and critics alike, but re-watching the two-parter makes it hard to come to any other conclusion. In some ways, it’s easy to see the measured, introspective Picard lurking in the shadows of Jeffrey Hunter’s portrayal of Christopher Pike. (In some ways, you can also see that in these episodes’ portrayal of Kirk, sidelined somewhat by Spock’s court-martial.) Some of Gene Roddenberry’s other ideas - namely a female second-in-command - would also be sidelined, not to be seen until a Star Trek spinoff 
came along that Roddenberry didn’t create. In many ways - more than I had remembered - The Menagerie reminds one a lot of Star Trek III, only this time it’s Spock who’s putting everything on the line for his former captain, not the other way around. Somehow, here, the payoff is more surprising and satisfying. A solid four-star pair of episodes, and all that’s missing is some four-star featurettes to accompany them; sadly, like nearly every other volume of the show on DVD, all we get is a quartet of the original preview promos.
For those interested, the original The Cage appears in two distinct forms on the 40th and final Classic Trek DVD.