I picked up Star Trek: The Complete First Season. I didn't get the best buy bonus DVD, but will address that in a second. First, the packaging: I really didn't like the packaging for the Star Trek: TNG packaging. It's cumbersome to get discs out and the cardboard casing gets worn easily. Happily, the new Trek box is an improvement. The outside is a hard plastic shell that splits open, allowing you to remove the DVDs which are kept in a clear plastic case that has book-like page things that hold the 8 DVDs. The thing stays together and it's easy to get the discs in and out. There's also a basic booklet describing the episodes.
The picture quality is at least as good as the old DVDs, which is a very good thing; this is by far the best the series has ever looked There is, like on the previous DVDs, a choice of either a 5.1 surround track or a stereo track. I wish they could have included the original mono, but that's nitpicking. The thing that annoys me are the menus. Sure they're kinda cute and slick, but they've made it impossible to skip or fast forward through them so every time you insert a DVD, you have to sit through several minutes of crap...pet peeve time: if you guys want to make these snazzy menus, fine, just let us skip them after we've tired of them (and in a show like Trek that many are going to buy and watch over and over, this is a bigger deal than on a copy of Hey Dude, Where's My Car?).
As for the extras, I've sampled the first one and while it's OK, I don't know why they have to have a blaring music track going while the cast is talking and have cheesy transporter sound fx whiz by everytime a name flashes on the screen. Maybe your typical Trek fan goes for this, but it's quite juvenile to me.
For those real Trek geeks, here's a list of stuff that was apparently wrong on the old DVDs and whether or not Paramount has corrected them:
1. In The Doomsday Machine, there's a missing music cue right after Kirk says, "I'm gonna ram her right down that thing's throat".
------The studio says this has been fixed-------
2. In The Menagerie, Part I, the background sound is supposed to stop when Spock touches the singing flowers. It doesn't (however this same scene is CORRECT in The Cage).
------The studio says this has been fixed-------
3. In The Tholian Web, right after McCoy tells Uhura that Captain Kirk really is alive, he takes the restraints off of her, then gets a page. In the DVD, right after McCoy gets the page, it cuts to Scotty talking to Spock. Well, on the VHS version, the scene shows McCoy getting paged, then answering it and being told that the antidote has been found. The cut on the DVD is pretty abrupt, and distractingly obvious.
------The studio says this has been fixed-------
4. In Patterns of Force, the sound effect when Kirk slaps Gil, and when the guards are pounding on the door is also missing.
------Still waiting for an answer from the studio on this one-------
5. For episodes 3-13, different opening theme music was used. I believe they used the music from Where No Man Has Gone Before, with Shatner's narration added, for these episodes... but fans posting on the internet complained on the HTF, so Paramount went back to using the original music from episodes 14 on.
------The studio says these are the same as was on the original DVDs because the music was correctly used.--------
6. On The Menagerie (both parts I believe) the DVD producers used different music in some scenes... music that actually came from a 1980's rerecording of the music sold in record stores. I believe it came from Varese Sarabande records... a recording of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Fred Steiner himself. I believe one of the tracks used during the Menagerie, Part II title and Enterprise flyby is clearly from The Doomsday Machine.
------The studio says these are the same as was on the original DVDs--------
7. On The Naked Time, as Spock approaches Kirk in his chair on the bridge, they look at the viewscreen of Psi 2000. The image on the viewscreen flashes to black a few times.
------The studio says these are the same as was on the original DVDs-------
And Minneapolis Star-Tribune columnist, Randy Salas posted this picture of Bruce Hyde, aka Lt. Kevin Riley from "The Conscience of the King" and "The Naked Time." He did an interview with him and got him to pose in front of the projection screen...
Maybe I'll write more later after I've sampled more of the shows and extras like the text commentary (ala Pop-Up Videos). But needless to say despite my grousing, it's nice to have the series in a more convenient and less expensive form (the set takes up little shelf space). I haven't found much on the bestbuy bonus stuff, so I'll check back when I do.
