The Best of Star Trek The Original Series
The Trek fun continues with a look at the original series that started it all and a fun peak into the science fiction series that started the whole Star Trek phenomenon.
Film making 18/25
Cinematography 18/25
Audio 18/25
Selection of Episodes 20/25
Total 74/100
The Best of Star Trek The Original Series is a quick glimpse at the series that ran for only three seasons of 79 episodes. The show was not a big hit and was almost cancelled twice near the end of the first two seasons until Lucille Ball saved it after the first season and fans started a mail in campaign to save the second season.
The original series Star Trek aired in 1966 through 1969 but has spawned plenty of series following the science fiction hit and several movies starring the main actors of the original show. Leonard Nemoy played Spock as the shows alien star and also as the narrator of that now famous saying; Space, The Final Frontier.
William Shatner plays Captain James T. Kirk as the leader of the space ship Enterprise on her mission of exploring space. The series did a lot for science fiction and does a great job of exploring many taboo subjects in a roundabout way for the time.
Race and gender play a totally different role in the series with women and different ethnicities playing major roles in the show to take on the racial stereotypes our country was facing in the late 1960’s. Gene Roddenberry saw a way to show that we would eventually overcome our biases and face our troubles head on together.
The four episodes chosen for The best Of Star Trek The Original Series is The City on the Edge of Forever, The Trouble with Tribbles, Balance of Terror and Amok Time. The four episodes are great but I really could not tell you if they are the best for this DVD but they are very good.
The City on the Edge of Forever is a quick time travel jaunt when the Kirk, Spock, and others as they attempt to stop McCoy from altering time. When the Enterprise was investigating a time disturbance they suffer an explosion and McCoy, played by DeForest Kelley, injects a wounded Sulu with medicine and then accidentally injects himself with the rest in the syringe.
McCoy goes nuts, violently paranoid, and beams down to the planet where the temporal disturbances are occurring to jump through a portal in time and space. He winds up in 1930’s America and alters time by meeting and saving a woman who will become a peace activist.
While McCoy has only been gone a minute from the planet and the crew of the Enterprise they find out the Enterprise has disappeared. Time has been altered and Spock creates a recording to jump through the portal so each member of the away team can try their hand at stopping whatever it is McCoy does in the past.
When McCoy saves Edith, played by Joan Collins, she becomes a world renowned peace activist so the United States is not ready for the war with Germany and ends up being defeated so we never develop space flight. The Enterprise is never built and the crew that is abandoned due to the temporal disturbance needs to correct the mistake.
Spock and Kirk find McCoy only to see him try to save the Edith but stop him in time so she is killed in a traffic accident. Time is returned to normal and they all go happily about their space exploration having known that time travel is not always a good thing.
The second episode of the Best of DVD is a comedy called The Trouble With Tribbles and is about a problem with an alien species of cute little fur balls that take over the Enterprise and a space station. The Enterprise is called to a space station using an emergency call so that they can protect a shipment of grain.
When the Enterprise arrives Kirk is enraged that the commander of the space station would use an emergency call to ask them to guard a grain shipment. The crew takes shore leave and Kirk orders a couple of guards on the grain as they go about their usual routines when docked at a space station.
Klingons arrive at the same space station and Kirk orders guards to follow them around but eventually a brawl in a bar breaks out and tensions run high. The grain shipment is eaten by the furred critters called Tribbles that reproduce rapidly the more they are fed.
The crew soon discovers that the grain was poisoned and the Tribbles who ate it die off quickly to solve that little problem. Some live Tribbles root out the imposter Klingon who poisoned the grain and Scotty ends up giving the departing Klingons the rest of the Tribbles for fun.
Balance of Terror is the next episode and takes a look at the Romulans and a new cloaking device they have started using. Outposts along the neutral zone between the human space and Romulans are being destroyed by a vessel using a cloaking device that makes them invisible to scanners.
The Enterprise seeks out the vessel and fights them to a standoff with both vessels heavily damaged and finally the Romulan commander destroys his ship. The episode does a good job of showing the battles faced by exploring space by the Enterprise but was not all that good.
The fourth episode is Amok Time which gives a glimpse into Vulcan culture as Mr. Spock faces his ritual Pon Farr or mating. A Vulcan must mate every so often in his life or die due to emotions flooding the man and overcoming them so they head to Vulcan for the ritual.
The episode has Kirk disobeying orders and getting Spock to Vulcan so he can mate but in a twist for the ceremony Spocks mate chooses Kirk to be her champion to fight to the death over her. Spock and Kirk fight to the death and Spock wants to leave Star Fleet because he thinks he has killed Kirk.
McCoy revived Kirk once his body was beamed back on board the Enterprise due to a neural drug he gave him when he told the leader of the Vulcan’s he wanted to inject Kirk with a drug to make the fight fair. Spock shows great wisdom and courage in his fight and other decisions before the fight but oddly never mates during the show having rejected his intended mate.
The show is interesting as it delves into the Vulcan culture and how they choose mates but goes about as far as the series will with sexual moors. The episode is fun and worth the viewing as all of the Best of are but is also good in that it starts a trend of adding background to the series.
The Best of Star Trek The Original Series is a great addition to the Star Trek universe and well worth purchasing if nothing more than a good chuckle or two at the outdated effects. The show did break ground for many things including special effects and you can easily overlook the lesser quality with the great stories and acting.
Star Trek the Original series won plenty of awards in its time and started the whole universe of Trek including the most spin offs of any show. The Best of Star Trek The Original Series is worth the cost of admission and a great way to catch a few of the best episodes of the series.