Star Trek
Original Motion Picture Collection
Paramount
Blu-ray

Star Trek
Motion Picture Trilogy
Paramount
Blu-ray

Perfectly timed (duh) for release as the new incarnation of Trek has won the box office, this latest anthology of films featuring the cast from TOS (The Original Series) gets the Blu-ray face-lift.

There’s 1979’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture, often grand, sometimes plodding, but actually holding up much better than it seemed to have some years back, and it looks fantastic, despite the aged effects. Plus there’s the emotional resonance of the actors reunited for the first time in a decade since the TV series had gone off the air (though, of course, it lived on and on and still does in syndication around the world).

Then we have The Wrath of Khan – for many Trekkers, the Trek movie — a tale of aging, revenge, friendship and loss, filled with grand drama and humor, plus a darn cute Kirstie Alley as a Vulcan/Romulan (bet you didn’t know that), as well as that Kirk-Spock-McCoy troika and, of course, Ricardo Montalbán as “Khaaannnnn!” The sequel, The Search For Spock, directed by Leonard Nimoy, isn’t quite as good but does continue the story arc, which wraps up in “the funny one,” aka “The Whale’s Movie.” The Voyage Home also helmed by Nimoy and is still very Trek yet also quite non-Trek at times too (ironic, huh). It was also the biggest of all six original cast films, money-making-wise. All three are collected on the Trilogy Blu-ray set too.

The William Shatner-directed The Final Frontier actually has some very Trek moments, as well as one of the best lines ever from Kirk, talking to the energy creature showing itself as a bearded G-O-D: “Why does God need a starship?” The big send-off, The Undiscovered Country, is really on par with Khan, from its story of Federation/Klingon peace-brokering, Sulu finally a Captain, and a great mix of drama and humor.

The special features are all solid enough. However, the biggest complaint is: each film’s disc should’ve offered both the original theatrical versions (which you do get) and the extended cut versions with the deleted scenes (which you don’t get) that actually add to most of the stories and the stuff of fan delights anyway. Well, maybe the next set issued to milk the long-running franchise will include that.

The Best of Star Trek, The Original Series
The Best of Star Trek: The Next Generation
Paramount
DVD

Single disc, casual fan releases to be sure, neither of these are truly “best-of” because what’s best can be debated.

The Original Series anthology does include the Harlan Ellison tale “City of the Edge of Forever,” considered the best TOS episode by many, though I’d argue for “Amok Time” here, written by another science-fiction great, Theadore Sturgeon, and offering insight into Vulcans. “The Trouble with the Tribbles” is surely a beloved episode, while the cat-and-mouse space chase of “Balance of Terror” introduces the Romulans. But what about “The Menagerie,” Parts 1 and 2? Or “Journey to Babel” introducing Spock’s parents, Sarek and Amanda? Surely those are among the best too, proving a single disc with only four of the shows can’t really make that claim.

The same goes for Next Gen (or TNG). “Best of the Both Worlds” Parts 1 and 2 made for one of the most harrowing, nearly cinematic Trek two-parters ever (a shame we never saw Commander Shelby again until she turned up as a Captain herself in Peter David’s greater New Frontier books), puts the cybernetic Borg up front as the major Trek universe antagonist, without a soul too, making them all the more scary (and they’d get creepier with the film First Contact). The alternative-universe story of “Yesterday’s Enterprise” is also a classic, revealing what happened to the NCC-1701-C before there was a D (we wouldn’t find out anything about the Ent-B until a few years later in the movie Generations). And then there’s “Measure of a Man” — again, definitely one of the greats from TNG’s seven-year run, as Captain Jean-Luc Picard must defend android Commander Data’s rights as a sentient being, proving him to be such. All excellent, but what about “The Inner Light” or the two-part “Redemption,” focusing on Klingon society and politics, and the series finale — the two-hour “All Good Things…” Again, not quite the complete “best-of,” but an excellent sampler, certainly.