To hear the review

      Here is a DVD I do not understand.  First of all, the idea of a “greatest hits” album for a band has always struck me as something that must be reserved for bands that have made at least four albums.  Except for Jimi Hendrix, because he was just that damn good.  And Star Trek, The Original Series is no Jimi Hendrix.  It’s pretty good, but it’s no Hendrix.  The second thing that strikes me as odd is - to whom is this Best Of DVD directed?  People are, as I understand, either INTO Star Trek in a hardcore way, or they don’t care a whit when it comes to the Shatner years.  And thirdly, when it comes to the Shatner-level Star Trek freaks, how can you possibly choose four episodes as “the best” without pissing off every single one of them?

     Well, I think I can answer at least one of those questions.  Paramount is hoping that the people who went out this weekend and saw the brand new Star Trek prequel will be newly-minted Trekkies on Tuesday, May 12th.  And they will want to run back to the classics and learn everything there is to know about the history of this fine program.  And they will want to check out something smaller and cheaper than a full First Season DVD set.  So this, and the Best Of The Next Generation DVD also being put out on Tuesday by Paramount Home Entertainment are for those people who want to dabble after seeing the big-screen story of the young Captain Kirk.

     So, on that level, I get it.  No idea how successful that will be, I suppose it depends on the success of the movie.  But as for picking the four Best Episodes, I don’t know how the Trekkies will react.  Then again, I suppose it doesn’t matter, because those Trekkies will already have picked up the superior First Season Blu-Ray set from Paramount last week, right?  Not being a Trekkie myself, I probably have a different opinion of the four Best Episodes than others.  But these are some fine ones, and I get why they were chosen. 

     The first, The City On The Edge Of Forever, sees Kirk and Spock and Dr. McCoy (it’s always those three) transported back into the 1930s, where Shatner falls in love with Joan Collins.  I get it.  I could fall in love with Joan Collins.  Well, in the late sixties, I could have.  The western clothes and scenes make this one memorable, if not a great episode.  The second one, The Trouble With Tribbles, is probably the most-talked-about, best-known episode of the Original Series, where the little furballs called Tribbles take over the Enterprise and make cute little noises and act all cute.  Trekkies still talk about Tribbles as though they were an important part of the series.  Like the Borg, or Klingons, or Federation meetings at big long tables.

     The last two episodes chosen as the Best Of are Balance of Terror and Amok Time.  Balance Of Terror sees the Romulans enter the Star Trek universe for the first time.  It’s a very good episode, where Kirk and the Enterprise do battle and play a cat-and-mouse game with a Romulan ship and captain which both closely resemble their own.  This all stems from some historic animosity between human beings and Romulans, which is never really explained at all.  But it involves a no-fly zone in some way.  I expect that the introduction of Romulans to the Star Trek universe is a pretty big deal.  Then there’s Amok Time, which involves the famous scene of Kirk and Spock fighting each other among giant styrofoam rocks.  Not as fun as the episode where Shatner fights that big green lizard, or the movie where he fights himself, but I understand this to be a Big Moment in Star Trek history.

     I will let the Trekkies comment on this post to quibble over which of these episodes deserves to be among the Best Ever.  But then, they likely won’t read this, because they will likely already own the first three seasons on DVD, and it will be a moot point.  They are ALL The Best Ever!  But for those of you who don’t know Tribbles from Troglodytes, and who have a limited vocabulary in Klingon, you might want to check out this set.  It comes out May 12th from Paramount Home Entertainment.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 12th, 2009 at 4:45 am and is filed under 1966, 1967, Classic, Joan Collins, Leonard Nimoy, Science fiction, TV series, William Shatner. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.