01734: Sharing Adventures With Old Friends

Over the holidays, I had managed to snag one of those Amazon deals for the Blu-Ray editions of all three seasons of Star Trek: The Original Series. As much as I had already secured an alternate digital copy of the show some time back, the opportunity to get the digitally remastered Blu-Ray version of the show was too tempting to resist. Of course since all of our US purchases are collated with Tobie's brother in LA before they all get shipped over here, it wasn't until pretty much Christmas itself before I actually got to get my hands on the discs themselves.

Ever since getting back from our family Singapore trip, I've been having Tobie watch the series with me as part of his continuing Star Trek education. I had already managed to get him to watch the entire series runs for Voyager and Deep Space Nine and had exposed him to a mix of both TOS and TNG episodes since then. But it wasn't until I had gotten this full collection did I feel it was truly imperative to have him complete TOS before anything else. And with a lot of our regular shows still coming back from their holiday breaks, that has given us time to revisit this classic science fiction series.

I have to admit, the team behind the restoration of this collection did a phenomenal job of presenting the show in the way it was originally meant to be seen. The colors are more vivid than in any other version of the series that I've seen over the years and it's quite a delight to go through all the classic adventures together with Captain Kirk and his crew in a format that is wonderfully crisp and clear.

I am surprised by how much I'm liking the digital enhancements made to many of the special effects in the show, particularly the exterior shots of the various starships themselves. As much as I'll always have a nest of nostalgia reserved for those original clunky models, it is rather nice to see more diverse space vistas this time around without deviating too far from the original. Even the CGI models of the Enterprise that they've created for this restoration aren't too far from the original physical model - just a bit cleaner and certainly capable of more shots than the stock footage that has become part and parcel of the show. And best of all, they made sure to leave viewers with the option to toggle the enhanced effects on and off at will so you can get the best of both worlds.

I'm glad Tobie is enjoying our little Star Trek adventure. While the original show was still mired in many 1960's sensibilities and had some pretty hammy actors other than Shatner involved, the show shines best in terms of the amazing stories written for the various episodes. A lot of great science fiction concepts were brought to the screen by this original series and the quality of these stories is something that we no longer see as often in typical shows these days. The fact that they had accomplished so much despite limitations of various forms is always one of the greatest feats of the show. And this is why I'll always have a special place in my geek heart for the classic Star Trek universe. If you haven't seen the show yet but enjoyed one of the latter incarnations, you're doing yourself a horrible disservice not going back to the show's roots.

Note: Photos in this blog are shots of the Eaglemoss model of the movie version of the USS Enterprise.
Enhanced by Zemanta

Comments