Star Trek (1 Viewer)

I was in Sam's Club the other day (they occasionally have some great buys on dvds) and I saw a few Star Trek season sets. The ones I remember seeing were Next Generation seasons 2 and 3 and Deep Space Nine season 3. They were each priced at $43.00! I had looked at Star Trek season sets before but was always scared off by the $100+ price tags. I looked them up on amazon.com and saw similar pricing. Has Paramount finally dropped the sticker price or are these some kind of "bare bones" releases. I didn't have anything to compare.

It's been discussed in a few other threads here. The new "CBS Paramount Television" division of Viacom decided to drop the prices of the first three seasons of TNG, DS9, and Voyager. I've seen TNG Seasons as low as $39.95 at Costco recently.

Of course, this makes sense in light of the fact that "CBS Paramount" is releasing theme sets that combine the best episodes of all five live-action Treks all through 2006 in order to help celebrate the 40th Anniversary of the original Star Trek.

Between now and June we'll be seeing a Theme box with the best Borg eps; another box with the best Time Travel stories; and another based around the best "Q" stories. More Theme sets will be announced later. All of this is an attempt to help cater to the more casual Star Trek fan (the hard-core fans already have their Trek season boxes by now.)

You can read more about this stuff over at the "TVShowsOnDVD" site:

http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/newsitem.cfm?NewsID=5170

If only they would put the original shows out at these price levels. I would buy the origianl at this price in a second.

DeepDiscount has the whole TNG set on sale for $315 or so, which averages to be $45 per set, less than half of what they initially sold for.

Me too. I've seen ST-TOS so many times over the years I can afford to wait for the inevitable price drop. I will NOT pay upwards of 95 dollars for a season set. I plan to do the same with the Twilight Zone season sets.

I was one of the tools who did buy TOS, TNG and DS9 when they were released. However, I won't pay that same kind of money for VOY or ENT. I may start to get Voyager at the lower price, I'm not sure. But they're going to have to knock down the price for ALL 7 SEASONS for me to start on them, not just the first three.

Exactly what Jason_V said. I simply can't justify the expense for VOY or ENT. (...and I'm one of the folks who enjoyed ENT.) When the price drops on THOSE sets, I'll certainly get ENT, and MIGHT get VOY. Maybe...

I must say that I just completed watching all 4 season of Enterprise on DVD. And I paid full price as they came out. I've enjoyed them more then Voyager, I sort of stalled out on Voyager during the 6th year. Perhaps part of the enjoyment of Enterprise was that I have a new widescreen TV, but the content was really good of course during the last 2 years, but there were some gems in the first 2.

ENTERPRISE was just getting going when it was cancelled. Some of the S4 episodes are as good as any Star Trek out there. Took them too long to make it a Star Trek show in my opinion. I might buy S4 at a good price. Deep Space Nine seasons 3-6 are about as good as you're going to get from Star Trek. As for Voyager... Well I liked the pilot...
I'm one of those schmucks who might buy a "best of" for Next Gen as there are too many clunkers in its 7 year run. What I would like to see, if the price is kept high is an a'la carte offering where you could choose episodes you want. Maybe that is going to happen with the advent of dv-r and pay for play download services.

I just made Enterprise my new project. I watched about 18 episodes during the run and could never quite get into it.

I own the complete TOS and TNG and watched all of DS9 through Netflix last year (and I can't stand Voyager), Enterprise is up next. Any suggestions for the voyage?

I would definately seriously think about picking up the season sets if they would drop the prices on all of the sets, they'd actually be affordable to consider picking them up.

I thought there was something strange about this because Paramount, as a whole, wouldn't drop the prices on their sets so it looks likes this is a plan by CBS. I wouldn't doubt that sometime in the near future that CBS will end up dropping the prices on all of their sets since CBS owns the library now.

My guess is that now that CBS can influence the prices on the Star Trek boxed sets I would expect that CBS would want to sell more of these sets so I would expect for these sets to drop in price sometime by the end of this year. CBS is going to want to generate progits for their CBS/Paramount library and this is good news for fans.

Hard to say who is responsible for the price drop. When CBS became a seperate company from Viacom, Paramounts's TV properties went with CBS but the Paramount Video stayed with Viacom as did Paramount studios. CBS's DVDs are still released by Paramount video for now. That could change in the future. Not sure if Paramount Video or CBS sets the price.

I don't know that the math has changed a whole lot with CBS gaining control of the Paramount TV library - the prices of these sets will be reduced once CBS/Paramount/Viacom feels they have sold as many copies as they are going to sell to those willing to pay $100/season, and not before.

Yes - start with Season 4. It is by far the best, and by the end of it, you will want to see more adventures with this crew. Then I would get seasons 1, 2 and 3, if you want to see them all. The danger in starting from the beginning (especially if you didn't like Voyager) is that you will lose interest before you get to season 4, which is nearly uniformly great (the finale excepted).

Thanks, guys!

Actually, the only episodes I saw of Enterprise when it aired were the first ten and the last eight so I'm familiar with what awaits me in Season 4.

I decided not to buy but to rent them on Netflix. Just finished disc 1 of season 1 and so far it's like I remember. Good potential that didn't work hard enough to be great.

Regarding Voyager-

Having taken a break from it when the Enterprise DVD's came out, I am now continuing with season 7 of Voyager. I know these shows from broadcast, but the thing I'm doing is selectively watching shows randomly, not exactly in order of the discs. By watching the 7th year this way, I've actually been enjoying something unexpected, I am picking shows that tend towards farce and comedy and it's fun! Seeing the Doctor inhabit Seven's body and the race that the Delta Flyer enters and Q leaving his son on Voyager. All good goofy fun if you don't take it seriously.