DVD Box Set Review: 'Star Trek: The Motion Pictures DVD Collection'
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| (C) 2008 Paramount Home Entertainment |
Pros: The few great Trek films are included;
extras are mostly nice
Cons: If you have the two-disc Collector
Editions, you don't need this!
Although I've come to love the DVD (Digital Video Disk, or
Digitally Versatile Disk) format ever since I purchased my first in the spring
of 1999, there's one particular sales technique involving the admittedly-useful
and versatile format that has made me somewhat annoyed with the various movie
studios - the seemingly endless re-release and repackaging of popular films
such as the Alien franchise, the Jack Ryan film series and
the Die Hard series.
All right, I confess: sometimes it's good that studios will backtrack and improve upon a "bare-bones" first edition of one of my favorite movies, particularly DVDs that lacked such extras as director's commentary tracks, deleted scenes, and behind-the-scenes featurettes. I tend to like those bonus features; as an online reviewer, I find them incredibly helpful, and if done right, they can be fun additions to the feature films they're supplementing.
That's why I was willing to replace the first single-DVD versions of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Star Trek: Generations and Star Trek: First Contact when Paramount began releasing the 2-disc re-issues of all the 10 Star Trek feature films. Some lacked English subtitles, others had spelling errors in them (in Star Trek: First Contact, the subtitles misspelled the last name of warp drive inventor Zefram Cochrane as "Zefram Cochran." A small error, yes, but it bugged me to no end.)
So when my late best friend Richard de la Pena gave me the Director's Cut of 1979's Star Trek: The Motion Picture as a Christmas present in 2001, I was hooked on the new editions of the big-screen voyages of the three Starships Enterprise. I liked (but not loved) the tighter and better-looking version of the first movie, and I really enjoyed all the commentaries, both in the audio track and the text ones by Michael and Denise Okuda.
And I was wowed by both Director's Cuts of The Wrath of Khan and The Undiscovered Country, which were slightly expanded versions of the second and sixth entries in the Original Series-based saga, both directed by Nicholas Meyer.
To make a long story short, I own nine of the 10 Special Edition double-disk sets; I'm dithering about getting the one for Star Trek: Nemesis because it's one of my least favorite entries of the Next Generation movies, and as much as I like the extra features disks and the Okudas' entertaining text commentary, I don't seem to be too keen on buying the re-issue.
Of course, Paramount Home Entertainment knows that not every Star Trek fan purchased either the previous bare-bones one-disk "first issues" or the two-disk "Special Edition" re-issues, so when the 10th film was given the bells and whistles treatment, the company bundled the entire collection "as is" and packaged it as a 20-disk box set.
The Star Trek Motion Pictures:
This 20-disk set includes all 10 feature films made so far, along with a huge assortment of extras such as audio commentaries (except, curiously, for Star Trek: Insurrection), text commentaries, and a starship's cargo bay worth of making-of documentaries and featurettes.
The films, which were released over a span of 23 years, are based on two of the five television series that form the Star Trek franchise, and their quality tends to swerve between the very good (The Wrath of Khan, The Voyage Home, The Undiscovered Country, and First Contact and the bad to bland (Final Frontier, Insurrection) with three so-so chapters bridging the extremes.
Star Trek: The Motion Picture: The first of the series, ST:TMP is a film that started out with good intentions and a solid first act, then got bogged down in a mish-mash of rehashed storylines from the Original Series: the refit Enterprise encounters a powerful alien entity that turns out to have a NASA Voyager probe at its very heart in a screenplay that combines elements from "The Changeling," "The Immunity Syndrome," and "The Doomsday Machine." (Some fans waggishly call this Robert Wise-directed film Star Trek: The Motionless Picture because its pace is so slow and the plot is so turgid.) Paramount's insistence on long effects-heavy scenes and the bland costumes, sterile interiors, and "cold" procedural storyline practically overwhelm the good intentions of Roddenberry and crew to create a smart, non-shoot 'em up science fiction film.
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan: In order to avoid the excesses of the first motion picture and to save the franchise from extinction, Paramount Pictures took creative control of the movies away from Gene Roddenberry and hired Harve Bennett from the studio's television division to take the producer's reins. After watching most of the 79 episodes of The Original Series, Bennett realized that there were two elements needed for a good Star Trek movie: a story about the Kirk-Spock-McCoy trinity and Khan, the genetically engineered 20th Century warlord who nearly defeated Kirk in the episode "Space Seed." Writing the script with Jack B. Sowards and hiring Nicholas Meyer to direct, Bennett gave Trekkies a movie that zipped with energy and had enough dramatic impact to make film critic Janet Maslin start her review with the phrase "Now, this is more like it!"
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock: The middle chapter in the Spock Trilogy, this movie is not a bad film at all, considering it was Leonard Nimoy's directorial debut and that it had to depict the return of a character -- Spock -- who had died in a previous film, shake up the audience somewhat (by destroying the USS Enterprise), and set up the next film in the series. Its main drawbacks -- besides the obvious negative fan reaction to the death of Kirk's son David and the loss of the Enterprise -- are its cliffhanger ending and the obviously low budget; the sets, particularly those of the Genesis planet, look, well, like sets, and cheap ones at that.
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home: "The one about the whales," as non-fans refer to what turned out to be Star Trek's most successful theatrical release, is the light-hearted and delightful conclusion to the Spock Trilogy. Harve Bennett and Nicholas Meyer's script involves time travel, witty observations on the mores and folkways of 20th Century America, a pro-conservationism message, and broad comedic turns not seen in Star Trek since the episode "The Trouble With Tribbles." This collaborative effort gave The Voyage Home wide crossover appeal, as repeat viewings by fans and non-fans alike made this one of 1986's top grossing movies.
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier: The weakest, and therefore worst, film in the franchise, this movie had every flaw a Star Trek film shouldn't have: a lower-than-normal budget, a bargain-basement special effects company, William Shatner's directorial debut, and a mediocre script involving the takeover of the Enterprise-A by a Vulcan renegade on a mission to find none other than God Himself. It doesn't help the film's reputation that Gene Roddenberry expressed his disdain for the idea that the Vulcan renegade was also Spock's half-brother, or that the Enterprise-A was a "lemon" of a starship for about two-thirds of the film. The only good thing -- besides a few scenes between Kirk, Spock, and McCoy -- about Star Trek V was Jerry Goldsmith's score
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country: The last of the Treks completed before Roddenberry's death in 1991 (he managed to see it at a private screening on the Paramount lot before he passed away), this was the final film to feature the entire cast of the Original Series and was part of the series' 25th Anniversary celebration. Basically a 23rd Century take on the end of the Cold War (substituting Klingons for Soviets and the Federation for the U.S.), Star Trek VI boasted a literate screenplay by Nicholas Meyer and Denny Martin Flinn, solid directing by Meyer (who insisted on a Hunt for Red October feel for the Enterprise-A's interiors), and above-average performances by the regular cast and the supporting actors, including David Warner, Christopher Plummer, and Kim Catrall.
Star Trek: Generations: This first film to feature The Next Generation cast -- and the last appearances of William Shatner (Capt. Kirk), James Doohan (Scotty), and Walter Koenig (Chekov) -- is watchable but, in the end, uninvolving and somewhat lackluster; even the screenwriters, Brannon Braga and Ron Moore, think it's not as good as it could have been. Spanning two eras in Star Trek history, substituting "normal" time travel with a bizarre energy ribbon called the Nexus, Generations pits Picard and the crew of the Enterprise-D (in its first and final appearance on the big screen) against a mad scientist who is willing to destroy entire star systems in order to achieve eternal life within the Nexus. And though there is genuine chemistry between Patrick Stewart and William Shatner in their scenes together, the plot is muddled by several subplots which require some knowledge of the TNG lore, such as Data's emotion chip and the resolution of the Duras sisters' story arc. Director David Carson did the best he could with this somewhat awkward story, and the special effects are good, but Dennis McCarthy's musical score was too subtle and what should have been a hell of a dramatic moment -- Kirk's death -- was anticlimactic at best, uninvolving at worst.
Star Trek: First Contact: Clearly the best of the Next Generation crew's feature films, the eighth entry in the series has most of the ingredients a good Trek film requires: a well-written script (by the Braga-Moore team),a good directorial debut by Jonathan Frakes, a good ensemble that includes guest stars James Cromwell and Alfre Woodard, a dangerous "heavy" (Alice Krige's Borg Queen and her host of Borg drones), and a storyline that blends elements from four Star Trek TV series. Although it does succumb to the temptation of making this basically a Picard/Data episode writ large for the silver screen, the introduction of the Enterprise-E and its action-packed mix of drama and comedy lifts First Contact head and shoulders above the rest of the Next Gen features.
Star Trek: Insurrection: This ninth film in the series also ranks ninth in quality, even though it was penned by Next Generation vet Michael Piller and directed by Jonathan Frakes, the same filmmaker behind the wonderful Star Trek: First Contact. Its lackluster story about a greedy alien race -- allied with an equally greedy Starfleet admiral -- that seeks to take a "fountain of youth" world from their rightful owners, forcing Picard and the crew of the Enterprise-E to intervene is not very involving, and the two heavies, played by F. Murray Abraham and Anthony Zerbe, are not in the same league as Khan or the Borg.
Star Trek: Nemesis: This movie isn't as bad as The Final Frontier by any means, but it isn't all that great, either. Basically, this is another Picard-Data film; the A storyline has the good captain of the Enterprise-E facing off against Shimzon, a ruthless human who has seized the reins of the Romulan Empire in a bloody coup and seeks to defeat the Federation by destroying Earth. He's also Picard's clone, though when and how the Romulans obtained the genetic material is never explained. The B story has Data having to deal with his own prototype B4, who -- unbeknownst to all -- has been reprogrammed by Shimzon to act as a "sleeper" spy. Although well-directed by Stuart Baird (the acclaimed editor of Superman: The Movie), this lame attempt to meld elements of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan with The Next Generation was not well-received by fans and died a quicker-than-average death at the box office.
Who should buy this set? Obviously, if a Star Trek aficionado never bought the individual Director's Edition/Special Edition two-disk reissues, then perhaps this is one possible option that might prove a bit economical, depending on whether one is interested in buying "new" copies rather than used ones on eBay or even Amazon Marketplace.
Who shouldn't buy this set? Anyone who already owns the 2001-2004 two-disk sets. The only difference is that all 10 films and their extra features DVDs are sold together, with only the slipcover box to hold the 10 two-disk sets together. There are no new featurettes, no theatrical versions of the second and sixth Original Series' cast's films, and still no audio commentary on Star Trek: Insurrection, so there's no need to bother.
Unless, of course, you want to use the DVDs as Star Trek-themed coasters.
All right, I confess: sometimes it's good that studios will backtrack and improve upon a "bare-bones" first edition of one of my favorite movies, particularly DVDs that lacked such extras as director's commentary tracks, deleted scenes, and behind-the-scenes featurettes. I tend to like those bonus features; as an online reviewer, I find them incredibly helpful, and if done right, they can be fun additions to the feature films they're supplementing.
That's why I was willing to replace the first single-DVD versions of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Star Trek: Generations and Star Trek: First Contact when Paramount began releasing the 2-disc re-issues of all the 10 Star Trek feature films. Some lacked English subtitles, others had spelling errors in them (in Star Trek: First Contact, the subtitles misspelled the last name of warp drive inventor Zefram Cochrane as "Zefram Cochran." A small error, yes, but it bugged me to no end.)
So when my late best friend Richard de la Pena gave me the Director's Cut of 1979's Star Trek: The Motion Picture as a Christmas present in 2001, I was hooked on the new editions of the big-screen voyages of the three Starships Enterprise. I liked (but not loved) the tighter and better-looking version of the first movie, and I really enjoyed all the commentaries, both in the audio track and the text ones by Michael and Denise Okuda.
And I was wowed by both Director's Cuts of The Wrath of Khan and The Undiscovered Country, which were slightly expanded versions of the second and sixth entries in the Original Series-based saga, both directed by Nicholas Meyer.
To make a long story short, I own nine of the 10 Special Edition double-disk sets; I'm dithering about getting the one for Star Trek: Nemesis because it's one of my least favorite entries of the Next Generation movies, and as much as I like the extra features disks and the Okudas' entertaining text commentary, I don't seem to be too keen on buying the re-issue.
Of course, Paramount Home Entertainment knows that not every Star Trek fan purchased either the previous bare-bones one-disk "first issues" or the two-disk "Special Edition" re-issues, so when the 10th film was given the bells and whistles treatment, the company bundled the entire collection "as is" and packaged it as a 20-disk box set.
The Star Trek Motion Pictures:
This 20-disk set includes all 10 feature films made so far, along with a huge assortment of extras such as audio commentaries (except, curiously, for Star Trek: Insurrection), text commentaries, and a starship's cargo bay worth of making-of documentaries and featurettes.
The films, which were released over a span of 23 years, are based on two of the five television series that form the Star Trek franchise, and their quality tends to swerve between the very good (The Wrath of Khan, The Voyage Home, The Undiscovered Country, and First Contact and the bad to bland (Final Frontier, Insurrection) with three so-so chapters bridging the extremes.
Star Trek: The Motion Picture: The first of the series, ST:TMP is a film that started out with good intentions and a solid first act, then got bogged down in a mish-mash of rehashed storylines from the Original Series: the refit Enterprise encounters a powerful alien entity that turns out to have a NASA Voyager probe at its very heart in a screenplay that combines elements from "The Changeling," "The Immunity Syndrome," and "The Doomsday Machine." (Some fans waggishly call this Robert Wise-directed film Star Trek: The Motionless Picture because its pace is so slow and the plot is so turgid.) Paramount's insistence on long effects-heavy scenes and the bland costumes, sterile interiors, and "cold" procedural storyline practically overwhelm the good intentions of Roddenberry and crew to create a smart, non-shoot 'em up science fiction film.
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan: In order to avoid the excesses of the first motion picture and to save the franchise from extinction, Paramount Pictures took creative control of the movies away from Gene Roddenberry and hired Harve Bennett from the studio's television division to take the producer's reins. After watching most of the 79 episodes of The Original Series, Bennett realized that there were two elements needed for a good Star Trek movie: a story about the Kirk-Spock-McCoy trinity and Khan, the genetically engineered 20th Century warlord who nearly defeated Kirk in the episode "Space Seed." Writing the script with Jack B. Sowards and hiring Nicholas Meyer to direct, Bennett gave Trekkies a movie that zipped with energy and had enough dramatic impact to make film critic Janet Maslin start her review with the phrase "Now, this is more like it!"
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock: The middle chapter in the Spock Trilogy, this movie is not a bad film at all, considering it was Leonard Nimoy's directorial debut and that it had to depict the return of a character -- Spock -- who had died in a previous film, shake up the audience somewhat (by destroying the USS Enterprise), and set up the next film in the series. Its main drawbacks -- besides the obvious negative fan reaction to the death of Kirk's son David and the loss of the Enterprise -- are its cliffhanger ending and the obviously low budget; the sets, particularly those of the Genesis planet, look, well, like sets, and cheap ones at that.
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home: "The one about the whales," as non-fans refer to what turned out to be Star Trek's most successful theatrical release, is the light-hearted and delightful conclusion to the Spock Trilogy. Harve Bennett and Nicholas Meyer's script involves time travel, witty observations on the mores and folkways of 20th Century America, a pro-conservationism message, and broad comedic turns not seen in Star Trek since the episode "The Trouble With Tribbles." This collaborative effort gave The Voyage Home wide crossover appeal, as repeat viewings by fans and non-fans alike made this one of 1986's top grossing movies.
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier: The weakest, and therefore worst, film in the franchise, this movie had every flaw a Star Trek film shouldn't have: a lower-than-normal budget, a bargain-basement special effects company, William Shatner's directorial debut, and a mediocre script involving the takeover of the Enterprise-A by a Vulcan renegade on a mission to find none other than God Himself. It doesn't help the film's reputation that Gene Roddenberry expressed his disdain for the idea that the Vulcan renegade was also Spock's half-brother, or that the Enterprise-A was a "lemon" of a starship for about two-thirds of the film. The only good thing -- besides a few scenes between Kirk, Spock, and McCoy -- about Star Trek V was Jerry Goldsmith's score
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country: The last of the Treks completed before Roddenberry's death in 1991 (he managed to see it at a private screening on the Paramount lot before he passed away), this was the final film to feature the entire cast of the Original Series and was part of the series' 25th Anniversary celebration. Basically a 23rd Century take on the end of the Cold War (substituting Klingons for Soviets and the Federation for the U.S.), Star Trek VI boasted a literate screenplay by Nicholas Meyer and Denny Martin Flinn, solid directing by Meyer (who insisted on a Hunt for Red October feel for the Enterprise-A's interiors), and above-average performances by the regular cast and the supporting actors, including David Warner, Christopher Plummer, and Kim Catrall.
Star Trek: Generations: This first film to feature The Next Generation cast -- and the last appearances of William Shatner (Capt. Kirk), James Doohan (Scotty), and Walter Koenig (Chekov) -- is watchable but, in the end, uninvolving and somewhat lackluster; even the screenwriters, Brannon Braga and Ron Moore, think it's not as good as it could have been. Spanning two eras in Star Trek history, substituting "normal" time travel with a bizarre energy ribbon called the Nexus, Generations pits Picard and the crew of the Enterprise-D (in its first and final appearance on the big screen) against a mad scientist who is willing to destroy entire star systems in order to achieve eternal life within the Nexus. And though there is genuine chemistry between Patrick Stewart and William Shatner in their scenes together, the plot is muddled by several subplots which require some knowledge of the TNG lore, such as Data's emotion chip and the resolution of the Duras sisters' story arc. Director David Carson did the best he could with this somewhat awkward story, and the special effects are good, but Dennis McCarthy's musical score was too subtle and what should have been a hell of a dramatic moment -- Kirk's death -- was anticlimactic at best, uninvolving at worst.
Star Trek: First Contact: Clearly the best of the Next Generation crew's feature films, the eighth entry in the series has most of the ingredients a good Trek film requires: a well-written script (by the Braga-Moore team),a good directorial debut by Jonathan Frakes, a good ensemble that includes guest stars James Cromwell and Alfre Woodard, a dangerous "heavy" (Alice Krige's Borg Queen and her host of Borg drones), and a storyline that blends elements from four Star Trek TV series. Although it does succumb to the temptation of making this basically a Picard/Data episode writ large for the silver screen, the introduction of the Enterprise-E and its action-packed mix of drama and comedy lifts First Contact head and shoulders above the rest of the Next Gen features.
Star Trek: Insurrection: This ninth film in the series also ranks ninth in quality, even though it was penned by Next Generation vet Michael Piller and directed by Jonathan Frakes, the same filmmaker behind the wonderful Star Trek: First Contact. Its lackluster story about a greedy alien race -- allied with an equally greedy Starfleet admiral -- that seeks to take a "fountain of youth" world from their rightful owners, forcing Picard and the crew of the Enterprise-E to intervene is not very involving, and the two heavies, played by F. Murray Abraham and Anthony Zerbe, are not in the same league as Khan or the Borg.
Star Trek: Nemesis: This movie isn't as bad as The Final Frontier by any means, but it isn't all that great, either. Basically, this is another Picard-Data film; the A storyline has the good captain of the Enterprise-E facing off against Shimzon, a ruthless human who has seized the reins of the Romulan Empire in a bloody coup and seeks to defeat the Federation by destroying Earth. He's also Picard's clone, though when and how the Romulans obtained the genetic material is never explained. The B story has Data having to deal with his own prototype B4, who -- unbeknownst to all -- has been reprogrammed by Shimzon to act as a "sleeper" spy. Although well-directed by Stuart Baird (the acclaimed editor of Superman: The Movie), this lame attempt to meld elements of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan with The Next Generation was not well-received by fans and died a quicker-than-average death at the box office.
Who should buy this set? Obviously, if a Star Trek aficionado never bought the individual Director's Edition/Special Edition two-disk reissues, then perhaps this is one possible option that might prove a bit economical, depending on whether one is interested in buying "new" copies rather than used ones on eBay or even Amazon Marketplace.
Who shouldn't buy this set? Anyone who already owns the 2001-2004 two-disk sets. The only difference is that all 10 films and their extra features DVDs are sold together, with only the slipcover box to hold the 10 two-disk sets together. There are no new featurettes, no theatrical versions of the second and sixth Original Series' cast's films, and still no audio commentary on Star Trek: Insurrection, so there's no need to bother.
Unless, of course, you want to use the DVDs as Star Trek-themed coasters.
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