Re-visit the best of Star Trek

Back in late 80s, when Start Trek: The Next Generation came to the air, I was not a big Star Trek fan. Granted, I was also 9 years old at that time, and I had never seen The Original Series either.

It was really only with the Voyager series that I got into watching Star Trek on a more regular basis, and I watched TNG reruns when I would get the chance. Considering the fact the most fans consider TNG to be the best Star Trek series, I couldn’t pass up the chance to own it on DVD. So I went out and purchased TNG The First Season 7-DVD collection.

Some might find the price tag somewhat steep for a collection of TV shows. Consider that you get almost 20 hours of entertainment for about 85$ though, and the cost appears very reasonable. Just the possibility of seeing the episodes in 5.1 surround sound without commercial interruptions is worth the price to me. And I’d like to pint out that it’s much cheaper that The Original Series DVDs that sell for over 20$ with only 2 or 3 episodes on each.

While TNG’s first season has not been acclaimed as the best, the episodes on this DVD set are certainly worth the watch, especially if you didn’t get a chance to watch them when the series aired originally, like I did.

The DVD set includes all 24 episodes, plus the 2-hour pilot movie, in chronological order as they aired originally, plus some small features where the cast discusses the making of some episodes and the roles of the characters. There’s also a feature where the production staff discusses their favorite episodes. But for the real fans, it’s the episodes that count.

There has been much controversy about the fact that Paramount released the DVD set in Fullscreen (4:3) format rather than Widescreen. Personally, I’m not sure what the big deal here is. TNG always aired in Fullscreen format; that’s how it was meant to be seen. While it may have been shot in Widescreen format, all editing was done in Fullscreen, and as such, it would not be fit to show in Widescreen. Actually, only the newest series, Enterprise, is a Widescreen finished product.

The quality of the DVDs is excellent, which is to be expected from a Paramount release. Sometimes the conversion between video material and DVD is less than stellar. This set came out great. This is not to say that it doesn’t look like a series that was filmed almost 15 years ago, but it’s the best it could possibly be, especially with the 5.1 surround sound.

I mist report that I had a slight technical glitch with 2 episodes on disc 2 however, which would not play correctly using my computer to play the DVD. It played perfectly in my Playstation 2, so I assume that it’s mostly a software issue, but I think it’s worth reporting anyways.

This set is a must for Star Trek fans that never got a chance to see the original airing of TNG. Paramount will be releasing ever season on a DVD set at 2-month intervals, and I see no reason why the upcoming seasons wouldn’t be as great a set as this one.