HTF REVIEW: Star Trek - The Complete First Season (1 Viewer)

[Doug Otte]

I've so far only watched the extras, and last night Conscience of the King w/ the text commentary.

The extras were pretty anemic - very little archival photos or films. Shatner's rambling was truly shocking - is he getting demented? No offense intended, but it was sad. He couldn't remember any specifics, and kept taking credit for writing the show. I did enjoy Nimoy's bits (and his discussion of the make-up development did include some photos w/ Phillips), as well as John D.F. Black and his wife. Justman also seemed a bit spacy, but could recount detailed info.

I liked the text commentary. Some of it was obvious, some I had heard before, some was new (e.g. pointing out the matte city outside the window that was recycled from the Cage). Overall, it was just fun.

Doug

 

[ScottR]

I'll bet the dvd's were taken from later prints and the blue boxes were the originals.

 

[Daron]

Nelson,

I'm not at home now to check the DVD, but the scene in question is in the first few minutes of the episode before all hell breaks loose. (It could be the first bridge scene in the episode.) Kirk is in his chair, Spock walks up behind him, and starts talking about Psi 2000. They look at the viewscreen. It's in the cutaways to the viewscreen that the screen flashes to black a few times. (It's in the stock shot with Sulu in the foreground on the left.)

The flashing to black is also not in my black series VHS copy from 1985.

--Daron

 

[Nelson Au]

Thanks Daron- Sounds like it's in the teaser then. I'l look for it.

Nelson

 

[Dave Farley]

After checking out the viewscreen issue, I spent a few minutes last night doing a quick comparison of "The Naked Time" VHS with the DVD and found something interesting. This may be old news to all of you as I wasn't a member of HTF when the 40 volume set was being discussed and I only own three from that set. The framing is different between this episode on VHS versus DVD. I haven't compared any other episodes yet. The DVD obviously looks better but it reveals more picture information bottom and left, but less top and right compared to the VHS. It's like the image on the DVD was shifted slightly on a diagonal from the lower left corner to the upper right corner, thus revealing the differences I mentioned. I don't know which version has the correct framing.

Some more news...My set will have to be returned. Disc two has quite a few terrible scuffs, disc four is badly scratched, the BB bonus DVD is badly scratched, and discs three and five have some kind of discoloration going on, possibly delamination. Great, I love doing DVD returns at BB.Where was the quality control on my set? Check out your DVDs closely. I ran into a two-page thread on another board on the topic of scuffs and scratches on the DVDs from this TOS set. I'm usually one of those people who rarely ends up with a defective DVD. Exchanging and being forced to go through an 8-disc set in the store is not going to be fun, especially considering BB's policies and the way their employees try to open and manhandle your replacements. If it was a 1 or 2 disc set and any store but BB, it wouldn't bother me a bit.

In my opinion, don't buy the set at BB just to get their bonus DVD. The completist in me sent me over there. It has two featurettes, if you want to call the second one that, but they were quite lame in my opinion. If you can save $15-20 buying somewhere else, do it.

 

[David Dias]

I've been watching the episodes according to the order that are presented on the discs, but a friend said I should watch them in their production order. Do any of you agree with this?

 

[Jason Borchers]

.

 

[Eric Paddon]

I agree that production order is much better for Trek, not just because of the oddity of the second pilot "Where No Man Has Gone Before" being the third episode aired, but the out of sequence nature means we see episodes shot after Grace Lee Whitney was dropped from the cast popping up first and then episodes with her again, and then the first actual episode of the season shot "The Corbomite Manueuver" appearing much later on.

 

[David Dias]

Thanks you guys, I'll be watching them in production order from now on. I should've said too that the reason I ask is that I've only watched about a dozen or so episodes from the original series, so I really want to maximize my enjoyment from watching this classic series for the first time.

Thanks again!

 

[Ric Easton]

You have my sympathy, I'm right there with you. I'm still trying to decide whether I'm going for these again. There's just too much other stuff out there I want.

Ric

 

[Britton]

My set looks pretty good. Disc 2 has some VERY slight scuff marks on it, but if it plays with no hiccups then there's no problem as far as I'm concerned. I have opted to watch them in broadcast order to get the 1966-67 viewing experience. Aside from some cosmetic discrepancies, the show can be viewed in almost any order. This show is definitely the anti DS9 in that regard.

 

[Nelson Au]

This evening, I cracked open the new TOS S1 box set to compare with the original DVD's from 1999 and the laserdisc.

Since there was such a commotion about The Naked Time's flashing view screen, I had to check it. The scene is early in the second act, as mentioned above, Spock is talking to Kirk on the Bridge. The viewscreen on the 1985 laserdisc is solid, no flashing. The 1999 DVD and the 2004 DVD both exhibit the flashing to black or no screen image of Psi 2000. When you compare the DVD's to the laserdisc, the LD is good looking, but definitely appears a tad washed out. Colors are bright, but the contrast is low compared to the DVD. The DVD's have colors that are rich, saturated and solid.

One advantage to having the LD's of the entire series, they do represent the series as it did air, mono sound, and all the elements are there, as aired. The only exception is The City on the Edge of Forever, where the song "Goodnight Sweetheart" is replaced with alternative music.

These new DVD sets are really nice though. I like the new photos they're using of the cast and how they are composed on the disc artwork and the packaging, it's very dynamic and gives a whole new image to the show. Sort of harkens back to the cool teaser trailer Paramount made for Star Trek 6 The Undiscovered Country. The scenes from TOS supre-imposed on the hull of the TMP Enterprise as a send off to the classic crew.

The menus are fun. The widescreen viewscreen on the Enterprise bridge is amusing to see. And I enjoyed the text comentary on Where No Man Has Gone Before. Regarding the spindles, try this; hold one edge with a finger and lightly lift, at the same time, rotate the disc, it might come out faster and easier. It worked for me.

 

[Eric Paddon]

Okay, I need some help. Where the heck do you access the text commentaries? I tried bringing up the "Communications" screen for "Where No Man Has Gone Before" and I see no option there or anywhere for a text commentary.

 

[Randy A Salas]

Eric, just choose to "play" the episode. When you do, it will go to a screen that asks if you want to watch it with or without text commentary.

It's a real clunky way to do it, as far as menu design, but the only one I've found. Aside from the notation in the booklets, there's no indication on the DVDs themselves of which episodes have commentary. You don't know until you choose to play the episode. You think it would have been part of the "Communications" option, as you tried.

 

[BernieV]

The text commentary can be selected as the second subtitle option during play. It's possible to turn it on or off at any time, but not to view it and English subtitles concurrently.

 

[Randy A Salas]

That's why I said "as far as menu design"--meaning there is no other way to select the commentary via the menus. If you're watching the episode to be able to choose the second subtitle option, you've already seen the screen asking if you want to watch it with or without the text commentary.

But you make a good point that it can be toggled on or off with the subtitle control.

 

[Nelson Au]

Randy- Nice article on Bruce Hyde. I did see him at a convention in San Francisco in the late 70's.

For the newbies (and oldies) to Star Trek, if you really want to watch TOS in production order, there are lots of resources out there that list it in production order of course. Until now, I've never watched it that way, and I've been watching it forever. The Star Trek Compendium by Allen Asherman is a good resource as each show is listed with overview in production order. And it has some background info on each show and other information. The changes in the early shows are noted and changes to personel and actors are also noted by each season too.

 

[BernieV]

I finally had a chance to A/B my new DVD and LD versions of City on the Edge of Forever. I used a basic DVD player, LD player and 23" mono TV - no HT setup, but easy to compare with the flip of a switch.

I had bought the 1985 laserdisc edition of CotEoF to replace my copy of the single episode VHS release. The difference between the two was like night and day. The tape had much lower resolution. Colors were saturated but tended to bleed in the reds. I was so impressed with the LD volume I upgraded other favorite episodes. The difference between the LD and DVD releases is even more remarkable. DVD resolution is overwhelmingly better, colors are truer and the lighting is more balanced. Even the sound, which I have to play in mono on the builtin speaker, is noticably richer with the DD 2.0 track. Less dirt and fewer film defects are apparent [there's also a bit of laser rot on the LD].

In order to check for the reported jitter, I did simultaneous playback of the two recordings. For the first fifteen minutes the discs were in perfect synch. Then during the scene where Kirk and Spock first arrive in the past, synch is lost during a long shot of the street. I noticed a slight stutter on the DVD that didn't show on the LD. After that scene and for the rest of the episode, the DVD playback lagged the LD by about two seconds. I didn't notice any additional jitter or synch changes after that point. In all respects but that, the DVD release is a superior transfer, including use of the correct score for "Goodnight, Sweetheart". I've viewed about half the S1 episodes so far and got the same impression for all of them - very high quality.

Several people have expressed a desire to view the episodes in production order rather than broadcast order. That's a legitimate choice, of course, but I question the advantage. In order to strictly follow the production sequence, you'll have to swap discs at least twice as often. You may observe a few continuity errors in costuming or casting by following broadcast order, but remember that TOS episodes were pretty much self-contained and standalone. That's one of the strengths of the series, IMHO. The writing is tighter and you're not required to view episodes in a certain order because of continuing story arcs, as is the case for other ST series.

There may even be times when it's preferable to watch in broadcast order, as the Okuda's note concerning the Court Martial and The Menagerie episodes. If you watch them in production order, it appears that the Enterprise is returning to Star Base 11 immediately after departing it in the previous episode. The creators deliberately chose to delay the Court Martial telecast by several weeks to avoid showing the same matte paintings in consecutive episodes and having to explain a sudden change in the base commander. There's nothing sacred about shooting order. Scenes are shot out of sequence for most productions. The very first scene in Star Trek was the one between the doctor and the captain in Pike's cabin, for example. That's just my opinion about order.

 

[Britton]

I also thought that having "Shore Leave" air right after "The Balance of Terror" made sense as well. The crew kept referring to needing some leave after the stress the crew had been under. I suppose this could refer to their general mission, but it just made sense to me that they would make leave a priority after the threat of war with the Romulans.

However, Crewman Martine sure got over the death of her fiance pretty quick. She was all over Lt Rodriguez only a week after Tomlinson bit the dust.

 

[Eric Paddon]

Production order is pointless when the episodes are shot out of a continuity sequence, as in the case of "Battlestar Galactica" for instance. But it's precisely *because* of Star Trek's self-contained nature that I prefer production order because then the true continuity of a developing series that didn't rely on continuing storylines like Galactica or the first six episodes of "Lost In Space" really sticks out IMO. There are too many jarring shifts in dialogue references/costuming and the irregular nature of Grace Lee Whitney's appearances that make the airdate order more confusing to me.