Star Trek TOS - Season One HD-DVD Review

I recently procured the first season of Star Trek The Original Series (TOS) on HD-DVD. All four seasons will eventually be available this way.

It's amazing what they have done here; they took each episode using the original film and then restored each frame. The color and clarity is simply amazing, just too incredible to describe. side by side comparisons available on the DVD show just how effective they were here. They also re-recorded the orchestra music to provide higher quality.

THEN, while staying true to the original content they replaced all the old optical effects with state of the art CGI. It is incredible! Shots of planets and such which originally were painted balls look fantastic as does the enterprise and other ships and such. Existing effects in live actions shots are enhanced or added where missing, it is just fantastic.

Some episodes have what they call "Starfleet Access" where a series of icons is displayed on the screen to the right of the picture. These can be life form or science/device specific and clicking on them pops open a box with specific information on the highlighted items. For example the first time a Romulan is displayed, there is more detailed information.

There are also comments and other content related to the episode. When you activate this icon the current screen is shrunk down a bit and shifted to the left side of your screen and the new info pops up. This content is fantastic, anything from original footage showed side-by-side with the new footage, little known facts, and lots of other information from various people.

I've watched about a third of the episodes, and it is almost like rediscovering Star Trek. They went to great pains to preserve the spirit of the original, such as in the opening which is all redone, but the Enterprise movements across the screen, the star movement and patterns, have all been painstakingly duplicated.

There are also tons of extras available outside the episodes themselves, such as Billy Blackburn's Treasure Chest: Rare home movies and special memories, Spacelift: Transporting Trek into the 21st century featurette, Interactive Enterprise inspection where you can fly around side the Enterprise, interviews with cast members, and more.

While the price is a bit high in my opinion, though this is somewhat understandable now that I know how much work went into this, I must say this is one of the most monumental sets of DVD's I have ever seen! They are also playable on SD DVD players, though without some of the extra content described above.

This link takes you to an 8 minute movie about these DVD's with some behind the scenes information on their creation.

If you want to know more (much, much more!) about Star Trek TOS, you can click this link from Memory Alpha, the free Star Trek reference.