With: Leonard Nimoy, William Shatner, DeForest Kelley, Nichelle Nichols, James Doohan, Eddie Paskey, George Takei, Walter Koenig, Majel Barrett, Grace Lee Whitney, Mark Lenard, Jeffrey Hunter, Gary Lockwood, Joan Collins, Ricardo Mantalban, Jill Ireland, Sally Kellerman, Michael J. Pollard, Karen Steele, Julie Newmar, Elisha Cook Jr., Lee Meriwether, Frank Gorshin, Teri Garr, Vic Tayback, Charles Napier, Yvonne Craig, Michael Pataki, Sid Haig, Keye Luke, Fred Williamson, Roger C. Carmel
Written by: Gene Roddenberry, D.C. Fontana, Gene L. Coon, Robert Bloch, Theodore Sturgeon, Richard Matheson, Harlan Ellison, etc.
Directed by: Marc Daniels, Joseph Pevney, Ralph Senensky, Vincent McEveety, Jud Taylor, Herb Wallerstein, Gerd Oswald, Joseph Sargent, etc.
As a kid I loved to catch reruns of the old Star Trek series on television. I was especially mesmerized by the transporter and wished I had one of my own. In college I learned to make fun of the show's campiness, such as the disposable "red shirt" crew members, the limited music score and William Shatner's hesitating performances.
Those reruns were often shown in a haphazard cluster, totally out of order, the good mixed in with the bad. In this new Blu-ray box set of the complete series, it's much easier to see just what a high quality show this was – at first.
Writers such as Harlan Ellison and Robert Bloch (not to mention creator Gene Roddenberry) contributed to these early scripts, and strange and interesting ideas floated around from episode to episode. They worked to establish just who the main characters would be, and so Captain Kirk (William Shatner), Spock (Leonard Nimoy), Dr. "Bones" McCoy (DeForest Kelley), Lt. Uhura (Nichelle Nichols), Scotty (James Doohan), Sulu (George Takai) and Yeoman Rand (Grace Lee Whitney), shared the spotlight with lesser and one-shot characters. (I never realized that Walter Koenig's Chekhov didn't appear until the second season.) Shatner even gives a more measured and intense performance in these early episodes.
Directors on these episodes included the "B" movie master Gerd Oswald (A Kiss Before Dying) and Joseph Sargent, who would go on to make the 1970s crime classic The Taking of Pelham, One, Two, Three.
Season One is rife with classics. We have arguably the all-time greatest episode, the Harlan Ellison-scripted The City on the Edge of Forever, in which Bones – having accidentally taken an overdose of a strange drug – leaps through a time portal and disrupts Earth's past. Joan Collins co-stars.
We also have Balance of Terror, starring Mark Lenard – later to return as Sarek, Spock's father – as the first Romulan, attempting to start a war with the Earthlings.
Season One also includes the two-part The Menagerie, which incorporated footage of the show's unaired pilot episode (The Cage) into a flashback structure.
Other episodes include the comic Mudd's Women, Where No Man Has Gone Before, co-starring a young and beautiful Sally Kellerman, the very odd Shore Leave, the first appearance of Kahn (Ricardo Montalbon) in Space Seed and the spooky This Side of Paradise, in which the Enterprise crew members lose their inhibitions to a strange, spraying plant spore.
Season Two (1967-68) finds Star Trek hitting its groove, less risky but more comfortable. Even Chekhov is here now. Highlights include the great, spooky Mirror, Mirror in which a transporter accident sends Kirk to an alternate reality, while an alternate Kirk lands in "our" reality. But of course, many fans will head straight for classic The Trouble with Tribbles, about which very little need be said. Jolly villain Harry Mudd returns in the sequel I, Mudd. The fan favorite The Doomsday Machine is also included. Other season-best episodes include Amok Time, in which Spock must return to Vulcan for a fateful mating ritual, The Changeling, and Journey to Babel.
Season Three (1968-69) is widely considered the weakest, although it does include one standout: The Enterprise Incident, in which Kirk appears to go mad and detours into Romulan space, only to find the Enterprise surrounded and with nowhere to go.
In 2007, Paramount released all three seasons with enhanced digital FX, which sometimes looked dazzling, and other times seemed like a bit too much, ruining the mood of the show.
In 2021, there came a Blu-ray box set that happily supplied both the original episodes and the new, enhanced ones, giving viewers a choice. The 2026 box set, released for the show’s 60th anniversary, is essentially a re-packaging of that set, with twenty discs, 79 episodes, and “over 9 hours of extras” (I apologize, but I lacked the time to go through all of them). I only wish that the infamous "Star Trek" bloopers (which I remember seeing once as a child) were included. Given that this is a show that has stuck with me my entire life, I was very excited to get this in the mail. It’s Highly Recommended.
